Reviews for CHEM136

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Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/18/2024	The professor for this class doesn't matter a lot because you won't see them unless you go to office hours. That being said, GO TO OFFICE HOURS. She gives a 45 minute presentation about how to do the lab report during her office hours. She gives you the calculations for the lab report and answers questions. The lab manual is confusing and it is hard to understand what many questions are asking for, but it is much easier when you go to office hours. Also, this class will take a lot more time than a 1 credit class should, but that's the chemistry department's fault.
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/15/2023	CHEM136 is definitely worth more than 1 credit, but that reflects the course, not the professor. Will you have to put in a lot of effort into the lab reports to do well? Of course. Will the professor and TAs help you? Absolutely! You'll almost never see her in the lab because her TAs run it for her, but my TA, Jonathan was the absolute best and he helped out a lot when I reached out over email, no matter how late I sent the email. I went to the weekly review sessions that she had about each lab, AND THOSE WERE WORTH IT! Go to her in-person review office hours each week and she will basically give you the answers for calculations in the lab. Once you start going every week, she just gets funnier and she's really nice to those who consistently go. The pre-labs are about 5 questions and you have 3 attempts and the highest score is kept, due the night before the lab. A lot of it is either from the lab manual or you can look it up online. Her last review exam was just a bunch of pre-lab questions together and you had two attempts to do it and she opened it for an entire week. I'm giving her a 4 instead of a 5 because the lab manual was poorly worded and even the TAs had trouble figuring stuff out at times. But overall, definitely a good professor for CHEM136 as long as you put in the time and effort for the lab reports!
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/19/2023	So I will say that the reviews stating that you never see the teacher are true, but that is true for any lab, and not indicative of the teacher. However, there are several other reasons that I have decided to score Dr. White low. Firstly, her labs are incredibly poorly worded, both in the instructions, pre-lab, and post-lab questions. However, I think most people’s saving grace was the move of pre-lab questions to a virtual format, which included 30 minutes each attempt and 3 attempts. However, I know several people did not even get full points with this, as these are often her own designed labs, and she expected us to know the right calculations and conclusions to the labs already (which, in my opinion, should be the point of doing the lab in the first place). And the labs themselves were designed poorly, for example, our second lab had us doing analysis, and according to our TA, one of the first things she told them was that everyone who got X chemical would have several lab errors, yet I know she took points off those groups for said errors. In addition, another lab’s post-lab was entirely calculations, which she spelled out everything to do in the instructions. However, the instructions did not align with the rubric and neither aligned with how she phrased certain things. Plus, she was out during this entire week and TAs are not allowed to send out announcements without permission, so anyone unable to go to TA office hours got that wrong. In addition, my TAs sections were told to use a particular number of significant figures, which apparently did not align with the rubric (but how were we supposed to know that?) and so got points of for following our TA and she refused to give points back for that. In addition, in her review session (the day before the final exam), she told us that we needed to memorize the common names, formulas, reactions, colors, smells, etc for every single product and reactant over the course (probably about 50 reactions, although some compounds overlap). Now I would be annoyed but it would be reasonable if she told us this ahead of time. But the day before the final is not the time to do so. The only reason I gave two stars instead of one is that she was occasionally decently helpful when I emailed with questions.
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/18/2022	There is not much you can do to make sure you do well in this class except try your best and remember it is a one credit class. The instructor is pretty nice in office hours but your TA may be a problem. You will spend hours on lab reports just to get low grades because things are unclear but if you stay ahead and go to office hours before a report is due they are very helpful in answering questions and clearing up confusion. The curve is great, I went from a 77 to an A-. Try and stay above average on everything and double check your submissions and make sure not to submit at 11:59 pm the day it is due because they do not give you anything if your submission is wrong or late.
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/23/2022	Prof. White takes a hands-off approach to running the lab. She implemented Friday review sessions that were phenomenal; I finally began to understand the experiments. She is a great teacher, so attend her office hours and review sessions. Exams are extremely difficult. Reports are graded harshly. However, the course is curved 8-10%.
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/21/2021	There are no good professors for CHEM136 that I am aware of, so take this review with a grain of salt. Dr. White is clearly passionate about Chemistry and is knowledgeable on the subject. BUT... she is not an understanding professor and does not care about her students, making this class very unfair. I spend more time doing work for this class than CHEM135 (I ended CHEM135 with a 95% and CHEM136 with a 82%... make that make sense). The labs are extremely stressful because they don't make sense and the TA's have zero clue what's going on. Also, before each lab, you have to take a short "pre-lab quiz", for which they pull questions out of thin air and slap them onto a piece of paper (you'll be happy to get a 6 out of 10). Then comes the lab report. It's a living hell trying to figure out what the questions are asking, especially if you haven't taken AP Chem in high school. Each lab report takes me a minimum of 5 or 6 hours to complete (I once spent a good 8 hours on one and many tears were shed). Then comes the grades. The rubric for our lab reports is out of this world ridiculous. She takes off points if you don't draw the axis of your graphs with a ruler!!! And I got a 9 points off on a lab report which was 100% correct... all because I used 3 sig figs instead of 2 for my final answer calculations! And if this wasn't enough, you have a midterm and a final which are more of a guessing game than an actual test on knowledge (average lies around a 60%). Moving on... the only way you will manage to pass this class is if you go to her office hours and ask her as many questions about the lab as you can possible think of. I almost forgot to mention that because the grades are so bad in this class, she rounds the highest person up to an A+ and everyone else accordingly. Good luck and remember that C's get degrees :)
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/18/2021	You will never see her in any of the labs. I saw her once on the very first day and then the TA's just run the rest. Also when the labs are going on and the TA doesn't know something they can't even get ahold of her. Then when it comes to the material it doesn't align with CHEM 135 and she assumes that it does so she thinks that we know how to do the math and understand the material when most of us don't. Then when it comes to the pre-labs they are a joke and most of the time they don't even match what was written in the background etc so most of the time you just have to guess unless you have prior knowledge from previous chem classes. This class causes a lot more stress than there should be for a one credit class.
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/15/2018	Not sure if professor or course, but chem lab stressed me out a lot. Some of the questions on prelabs and tests seem like complete non-sequiturs. Kinda frustrating because CHEM135 lecture didn't align with lab, so I always had to teach myself the concepts for lab before learning them in lecture. But, if you go to office hours and the review sessions, she will basically give you the answers to the lab report / upcoming test, so I managed a good grade.
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/29/2011	One of the most disorganized courses i have ever taken. prelabs were near impossible to get 10's on cause some of them had questions about sigfigs and others had q's tht had no answers just clickable buttons and u had to just guess what was being asked. The grading rubric for labs asked for parts in answers that was required by the actual question so you lost points for really stupid crap. Overall idk if this was the professor or the course but it was awful. I know friends in 132 did not have the same issues with prelabs as we did. DO THE EXTRA CREDIT ON BLACKBOARD IF U WANT TO GET AN A.
Natalia White CHEM136 Expecting an A zhangsta 12/23/2010	You don't really get to see much of her as she only comes in to explain the concept behind the experiment you'll be performing for 10-15 minutes. For the most part, you'll see your TA for most of the lab. Lab reports tended to be between 6-8 pages long. Lab midterms weren't so bad, but you have to watch out for sig figs because there will be answers on the midterm that will essentially be the same. For example, it could be 29.05g, 29.051g, or 29.0510g.