Here is my advice to your upcoming students and I hope it is helpful...

Brianna Waterstradt
Chemistry 6B; spring, 2009

How to succeed in Organic Chemistry Lab!

            My name is Brianna Waterstradt and I am just finishing my semester of Organic Chemistry in Spring 09.  I started the semester thinking that this Chemistry Lab would be just like all of my previous labs in that we would do a pre-lab, do the experiment, and then do a post-lab.  While this is the general set-up, this is not totally true of how this particular lab is run.  Professor Toofan does not do pre-labs and you think, “Yes!  I hate pre-labs.”  However that does not mean that the labs will be easy or that you should not do any pre-work before coming into lab.  Before lab it is crucial that you read the information in the Lab Manual.  There is so much valuable information that will do nothing but make the lab easier for you.  It is also very important to listen to the Professor when he lectures before you start the lab.  There are many pieces of information that he gives you then that will help you get a good grade on the lab.  All this pre-lab work is necessary to succeed in the class.
            After you begin the lab, you need to take good notes of what you see because almost all of the questions on the post-lab include observational questions where you cannot answer if you didn’t actually see what you were supposed to.  Don’t just think that you cannot do it and slide by.  When you are done with the lab, I have found it the most beneficial to do the post-lab questions immediately because then you won’t forget any of the things that you saw during the experiment.
            For me, this semester was hard to transition because I have never had a lab like this before.  I went into thinking that lab is the part of the class that only helps improve your grade but I was wrong.  The post-lab write-ups that you do are actually graded, and they are graded hard.  You have to have the correct answers, not just any answer.  I know from my experience, most lab professors just check to make sure you wrote up the lab in the correct format and see if you did the lab generally.  In this class, just doing the lab doesn’t mean anything.  You have to do the lab correctly and really understand what you are doing.  If I could take this lab again I would read the pre-labs as I am doing the work because almost all of the answers are in there.  I would also ask the professor if I have questions because he will not just tell you the answer but he will make sure you understand.  It is a hard lab but if you put the work into it, you will learn a lot about chemistry.  Just take my advice and don’t think this will be another lab where if you do the work you will get full credit because you can’t just go through the motions, you have to know what you are doing and what the goal of every lab is.