General Chemistry Lab...

[FantasyVesperia]

I swear, this class makes me want to throw my glassware across the room lol. Today in lab, I was the last one out and didn't even get finished the lab... I've asked for help, and my professor said I did the whole thing wrong and had to start over. I think I had to redo everything about 3 times . The week before, I had to restart twice...

I really don't know what's wrong with me, but I could never get the whole "lab" thing down. I'm starting to think I'm not really equipped for this type of thing and it'll only get harder. I understand the material, it's just actually performing it is what trips me up.

I talked with my professor about it, and she said that it's okay to make mistakes as long as you own them. That's fine and dandy, but I'm constantly messing up and I don't want my lab partner to suffer because of me. My lab partner is great and I just know that I'm pulling her down. I definitely want to contribute, but when I get my hands on something, everything goes downhill from there lol.

Do you guys have any suggestions or tips? I want to get better, but I just don't know how to.

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[catnips]

Ah labs... My own personal nightmares. Like you, I had really hard time in labs. In my first semester in college I switched out of science because of labs, yet for the love of vet med, I had to be back. So my advise is to stick to it, it actually got better. Labs themselves may get harder, but I think you get used to them. For me, worst was chem 1 and bio 1 labs. After that, I still never liked labs and never became great at it, but they became tolerable.

One thing that helped me was to look up youtube videos of the procedures I was suppose to do. That really helped me in orgo 1 lab. Reading the procedures didn't help nearly as much, (although you should) but knowing how it is suppose to look like beforehand really helped me.

And your professor is right. The whole point of labs is to learn. It is okay to make mistakes and it gets better. Good luck!

 

[animalrie]

I also agree that labs actually get better (I hated Chem 1 lab but really enjoyed OChem lab). I don't know if your professor does this, but ours required that we write out every step of the procedure in our lab notebooks before we were allowed to perform the lab. This helped tremendously because handwriting the entire experiment forced me to pseudo memorize it and I made way fewer mistakes in lab thanks to that. Just a suggestion if you're not already doing that!

 

[FantasyVesperia]

I also agree that labs actually get better (I hated Chem 1 lab but really enjoyed OChem lab). I don't know if your professor does this, but ours required that we write out every step of the procedure in our lab notebooks before we were allowed to perform the lab. This helped tremendously because handwriting the entire experiment forced me to pseudo memorize it and I made way fewer mistakes in lab thanks to that. Just a suggestion if you're not already doing that!

We have to do the same Hopefully it will get better because I do like chemistry, but I just wish it showed in my lab performance.

Ah labs... My own personal nightmares. Like you, I had really hard time in labs. In my first semester in college I switched out of science because of labs, yet for the love of vet med, I had to be back. So my advise is to stick to it, it actually got better. Labs themselves may get harder, but I think you get used to them. For me, worst was chem 1 and bio 1 labs. After that, I still never liked labs and never became great at it, but they became tolerable.

One thing that helped me was to look up youtube videos of the procedures I was suppose to do. That really helped me in orgo 1 lab. Reading the procedures didn't help nearly as much, (although you should) but knowing how it is suppose to look like beforehand really helped me.

And your professor is right. The whole point of labs is to learn. It is okay to make mistakes and it gets better. Good luck!

Thanks so much! Funny story, I was a chemistry major and then dropped that and was about to major in secondary education. Then just like you, I switched not into chemistry, but into a molecular bio, biochemistry and bioinformatics program. I actually emailed my instructor for some guidance

 

[WillowLeaf]

I think it can get better with practice. My gen chem 1 lab was really fun, but only because the TA was okay with us making mistakes. They just wanted us to know the material and know what the results should be, and then suggest a couple possible sources of error. There were quite a few labs where our discussion section went something like "I have no idea what went wrong - maybe this, or this, or this... there were lots of errors so who knows what threw off the results". By the time o-chem labs came around I was getting the results I was supposed to most of the time, and I think some of that is just practice.

Maybe make a checklist so that you can check off each step of the procedure as you do it. Or always double check measurements, which takes a little extra time but might save you time if you don't have to redo the whole experiment. Is there some part of lab in particular that tends to be a source of mistakes (measurements, unit conversions, calculations, mixing up chemicals...)? Or is it just random mistakes? If you have open lab hours, maybe it would help to go repeat an experiment on your own if that's allowed so you have a chance to work slowly and carefully and build good lab habits without feeling rushed by not wanting to delay the group.

 

[Cephal0pod]

Gen chem lab:

I remember finding gen chem lab to be pretty stressful as well. If I could travel back in time and give freshman Ceph advice, it would be to read the procedure and have a battle plan of sorts ready to go in your mind when you are walking into lab. This was absolutely crucial for ochem, but would have definitely saved me some stress in gen chem as well. Get out, set up, and organize all your glassware as much as possible before you begin so that you are ready to rumble. Also, be very attentive to what you are doing, always. Are you supposed to be monitoring the temperature of a reaction? Keep your eyeballs glued to that thermometer. Are you stirring? What is your rate of stirring? How is your stir bar behaving? Are you supposed to weigh out 0.3g or 3.0g of that substance? And so on and so forth. Preparedness and conscientiousness are key. As others have said, though, so is practice. The more you are in lab, the more comfortable you will start to become with your lab skills. It takes time and effort. Keep plugging along, things will get better!