Anyone take organic chem? Do people really cry in lab?

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I'm taking orgo lab right now and while there's been no crying, there has been lots of frustration; not all from the girls.
 
i went to berkeley, where no one gave an s about labs. or at least i didn't. and it didn't really keep me from getting a med-school worthy grade.
 
etf said:
i went to berkeley, where no one gave an s about labs. or at least i didn't. and it didn't really keep me from getting a med-school worthy grade.
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amen brotha. i could have cared less about lab. half the time i never even got a product (exaggeration). part of the reason is at my school you dont even get a credit let alone a grade. the course is worth 4 units and the labs ZERO. they just incorporate the points in lab into your final grade in the class, which really doesnt do anything at all. lame huh?
 
my advanced Inorgo class, now that lab sucked

Usually in orgo lab I could finish in a few hours, and while i didnt always get the best results in the class, atleast i got something. My school also combines lab and lecture so i dont have to worry to much
 
The only real frustration I had in Organic lab was with my labmates who didn't care

I figure if I'm gonna be in there for 5 hours I might as well make an effort. Others felt differently. Oh well
 
Agree with the above posters. I've never seen anyone cry; just get frustrated when they have to repeat an experiment because they tried to go too fast.
 
i cried....... worked for like 5 hours to get the product... then accidentally washed it down the drain
 
I saw one girl cry, at the very first significant experiment. She was just extremely frustrated because she could not get anything to work, and understandably she thought that lab could be a precursor for things to come.

Luckily, as we all learned, the product counted for almost nothing. We just had to be able to write insightful lab reports and ace a final exam.
 
In my orgo lab... One day,
A 2 girl group was doing a distillation of some sort and somehow the pressure kept building up in the flask with no where to go. Eventually the timebomb exploded and glass shattered, also catching the hood on fire... One of the girls was somewhat burned and had to go to the nurse's... Before she left, she was crying... not from the pain, but from the lost product...
The end.
 
dtepper said:
In my orgo lab... One day,
A 2 girl group was doing a distillation of some sort and somehow the pressure kept building up in the flask with no where to go. Eventually the timebomb exploded and glass shattered, also catching the hood on fire... One of the girls was somewhat burned and had to go to the nurse's... Before she left, she was crying... not from the pain, but from the lost product...
The end.
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:laugh:
 
I've never seen anyone cry during orgo lab. Tests, now those are a completely different story. I've seen several people burst out into tears in the middle of an orgo exam. Good luck.
 
mmm nothing like going through distillations/reflux then taking your "product" to the IR only to realize that youre totally missing the OH stretch that is supposed to be there.

p.s. How many schools do experiments on the microscale kits?
 
Definitely saw some girls cry last semester. 4 hours of work and then they dropped their product all over the floor. Good times 👍
 
lame.

people should try working in fields 16 hours a day working to produce both enough grain to satisfy your liege and survive the winter.

do that for a few years middle ages style then come back and complain that you have the opportunity to go to university and learn organic chemistry so that you can become a physician.
 
Bartelby said:
I saw one girl cry, at the very first significant experiment. She was just extremely frustrated because she could not get anything to work, and understandably she thought that lab could be a precursor for things to come.

Luckily, as we all learned, the product counted for almost nothing. We just had to be able to write insightful lab reports and ace a final exam.
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As an organic chem TA, some experiments were just ridiculous and students had to be actually SKILLED enough to get a product. I couldn't care less if students got a product as a result. I did, however, care for students to write "insightful" lab reports. 👍 As a side-note, I disliked pre-med students that only took organic chem as a prerequisite and couldn't care less about learning anything during the course. Since I minored in o-chem, I am biased. Everyone should love "orgo"!

Oh, and one girl did cry during the lab. I think she thought she was going to fail the lab. The policy in my school is you must pass every lab to pass the course.
 
I liked Organic lab- we did the stuff and then while we waited talked. I can only remember one lab that was super frustrating and that too passed- I think it was Aldols reaction but I am not positive. Our professors were cool so we had a blast- it was much better than Biology 1 lab (from 8-11pm!) that lab drove me nuts and the teacher was a nightmare too!!!
 
something is wrong in the world if peopel are crying over spilled products. seriously.
 
it definitely can be frustrating... i remember knocking over the vial containing the ether that took an entire lab to synthesize (4 hours). that sucked, but i cut down the reaction times and synthesized it again in 45 minutes 🙂

who actually cries in a lab??? i think i would throw caustic chemicals at someone if i saw that.
 
coldweatherblue said:
lame.

people should try working in fields 16 hours a day working to produce both enough grain to satisfy your liege and survive the winter.

do that for a few years middle ages style then come back and complain that you have the opportunity to go to university and learn organic chemistry so that you can become a physician.
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I nominate this post for best non-sequitor of the year.
 
It's just time consuming...and boring. It takes atleast an hour to write the whole procedure out, and then the friggin lab write up...and it's only 1 credit!!!
 
Orgo Lab is the fun part. Nobody should cry in lab, it's difficult but not make or break. However, I definitely remember people breaking into tears during more than one Orgo exam. Come to think of it, I came close to tears during an Orgo exam once...
 
A few people cried in my orgo lab class, 'cos of spilled product. I personally disliked the class 'cos of the ridiculously elaborate lab reports we had to write. My instructor actually took huge points (like 25%) off for lost product, lab errors, and 0% yield. And the exams weren't any better. boy, am I glad that's over!
 
I TA'ed orgo and yield was never factored into your lab report grade. The only legitimate grade that may have been somewhat difficult was the final project where each person was given a mystery compound that you had to decipher via provided NMR data, running your own UV-VIS/IR spectroscopy, melting point, etc. and any of the reaction tests you had learned about throughout the semester.

If you had legitimate questions, I would provide you with a legitimate path to follow. I think everyone ended up "getting" their compound; some just took longer than others. I also made 10% of your grade determined by the number of glassware products you had remaining at the end of the semester. The great part was that on the last day of class you could go to the storage room and replace any and all glassware you had broken and come check out with me. This was really just to make my life easier since I was ultimately responsible for all that administrative crap.

One kid did decide not even to show up the last day of lab and had like 8 broken things. I had to give that little rascal a 9/10.

There really isn't a reason to cry in orgo lab. If you give it 50% effort, you'll learn a great deal that will help you in class. Unfortunately, most people look at the fancy chemical names, freak out, and just go through the motions.
 
orgo was alright...I feel like analytical chem lab was much worse...
 
My orgo labs were quite odd. We were graded by this TA based on percent yield (so a 60% yield, which is actually decent, was a failing grade), which she verified by taking the product vials. She was required by the department to return each one within 2 weeks- so wer had 3 vials, and could have 2 out and working on filling the third.

This was the plan, at least. The two-week cycle became 3, and one day there were no vials. She lost all our vials- apparently they were all in a box and the box had been lost. Making it worse, she refused to admit it, so we were all charged by the department to replace them, to the tune of about $40. Since she couldn't grade what she didn't have, she just gave everyone Cs.

I tried going to the department, but no dice. The C stood, as did the charges.
 
xrevision said:
mmm nothing like going through distillations/reflux then taking your "product" to the IR only to realize that youre totally missing the OH stretch that is supposed to be there.

p.s. How many schools do experiments on the microscale kits?
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Not sure. I took a 2 hour lab at a large 4 year school and it was not microscale. My distillations took FOREVER. Seriously, I'd still be there after 4 hours.

Then, I had to retake 2nd semester O. chem at a community college. The lab was integrated into the class, so I had to take it again 🙂barf🙂. This time it was microscale and our experiments went relatively quickly. If you messed up, you didn't have to wait 4+ hours to find out. We also never had to check our samples with IR or GC.
 
I have never seen anyone cry. I did tear up one time, but that's b/c the clown working on the same bench left a liter beaker full of concentrated HCl uncovered. It is not that bad really.
 
I came close to tears after four hours of hard work and then dropping my flask with all of my product after burning myself from using the steam cone...stupid yes, but when you're graded partially on yield and product quality it messes with your head. If only I had noticed that everyone else was holding their flasks with tongs...Haha!
 
Flaxmoore said:
My orgo labs were quite odd. We were graded by this TA based on percent yield (so a 60% yield, which is actually decent, was a failing grade), which she verified by taking the product vials. She was required by the department to return each one within 2 weeks- so wer had 3 vials, and could have 2 out and working on filling the third.

This was the plan, at least. The two-week cycle became 3, and one day there were no vials. She lost all our vials- apparently they were all in a box and the box had been lost. Making it worse, she refused to admit it, so we were all charged by the department to replace them, to the tune of about $40. Since she couldn't grade what she didn't have, she just gave everyone Cs.

I tried going to the department, but no dice. The C stood, as did the charges.
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This is ludicrous.
 
Flaxmoore said:
My orgo labs were quite odd. We were graded by this TA based on percent yield (so a 60% yield, which is actually decent, was a failing grade), which she verified by taking the product vials. She was required by the department to return each one within 2 weeks- so wer had 3 vials, and could have 2 out and working on filling the third.

This was the plan, at least. The two-week cycle became 3, and one day there were no vials. She lost all our vials- apparently they were all in a box and the box had been lost. Making it worse, she refused to admit it, so we were all charged by the department to replace them, to the tune of about $40. Since she couldn't grade what she didn't have, she just gave everyone Cs.

I tried going to the department, but no dice. The C stood, as did the charges.
Click to expand...

how the hell do schools get away with this stuff?

Ridiculous. I'd go to the dean.
 
Orgo lab is kinda fun. Couple hours refluxing, 20 minutes recrystaling , and in the end, you still didn't get the product you expected. Great thing about orgo lab is that even if you did screw up, no one would know because the lab doesn't work to begin with.
 
Crying? I've never heard of anyone crying in orgo lab.

I think I recall hearing about people crying after orgo exams, though. Most typically it's a premed who got an 89 (average low 70's) on it and is probably going to end up at WashU anyway.
 
You cry in lab after breathing in phosgene gas.
 
I can't remember any of my organic students ever crying (except for one that I caught cheating, and she deserved to be made to cry), but I had a gen chem student have a temper tantrum in lab once. That was my very first semester of TAing when I started grad school. We got zero training; the dept. just handed me the books and said, "Your first section is tonight."

This student who had the tantrum was very tall and muscular, a total Amazon girl. I came up to about her chin. Everything was fine until about halfway through the lab when she realized that she had done something wrong. So she starts throwing the glassware around and breaking it because her experiment didn't work, and she's frustrated. I walked up to her and said, "You, come outside, right now." Much to my surprise, she actually listened and went outside. I followed her out and was thinking, "Crap, what do I do with her now???" And as I shut the door to the lab and turned around to face her, she starts absolutely bawling. So then here I am, kind of hugging this huge girl who a minute ago I was worried was going to make mincemeat out of me, and telling her it's ok and she's not going to fail the whole lab just because one experiment didn't work. She's literally soaking my shoulder. I told her to stay out here for a few minutes while she collected herself together, then come back inside and I'd help her with her experiment. After that, she didn't have any more tantrums, and she did pass the lab.

Ah, college freshmen. 🙂
 
Naw, Orgo lab is like cooking, I loved it. Almost all of my experiments worked. My lab grade saved me cuz I did awful on the lecture exams. I don't think my professor knew what to do with me, this total disconnect between performance on her exams and grasp in the lab. 😉
 
Am I the only one here who had an orgo lab that was counted as its own individual class with its own grade? (it was only 1 credit though)

Anyway, orgo lab for us was pretty easy. If our experiment didn't work our grade wasn't going to drop for it as long as we did well on the lab report and could come up with potential reasons of why our experiment failed. The only thing I disliked about this lab was the fact that we had to IR our product every week (which seems fine)...but there were too many people and not enough machines...so we would end up sitting around for an hour just waiting to IR our product. I don't think anybody ever cried about that though.

As someone above did mention - I HAVE seen people cry during orgo tests...I think watching your grade spiral the drain must be quite tear jerking 👍
 
primadonna22274 said:
Naw, Orgo lab is like cooking (...)
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hah, that's what our o-chem teacher told us on our first lab day. I've never looked at cooking the same (in a good way).

fwiw, I loved o-chem. Possibly the best teacher I've ever had and the subject is awesome. All logic and problem-solving outside memorizing a few hundred reagents and their reactions. 👍
 
There was crying, but that's because I wasn't smart with ammonia....
 
nah but ive seen a whole lot of frustration and anger. especially the girls...jeez it's like freakin life or death to them if you make a mistake 😕
 
No one ever cried in our lab. In the lecture class though, two girls balled their eyes out during different exams during the semester. Awkward.
 
Flaxmoore said:
Mine were this way. Made the C not hurt quite so badly.
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I'm taking organic 2 with lab right now, lab is only one credit.

My prof told me that "3 credits for this class is a joke, 5 is more like it"
 
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