Chem 337HONORS ORGANIC CHEMISTRY (III)
Dr. Gelb is one of the more notorious professors in the Department of Chemistry. Going into the class I was informed by previous students that he was tenured and had created extremely important newborn disease screening assays with his research group. I had also heard that he once drew a single line in sharpie across three whiteboards and part of the wall and, when questioned about it, shrugged and responded with, "I have tenure." His lectures were supposedly a mess of tangents and theory: extremely informative but not necessarily relevant to the material at hand.
As a part of his class, I saw some of this first-hand. On the first day of class he informed us that he saw no point in learning any names for a single quarter and, instead, would assign us nicknames. His lectures would cover material in the textbook, which he flipped through during the class, and were supplemented by information from Wikipedia that he pulled up on his phone. He would sometimes divert topics into something he found interesting or lecture on the same material for multiple days. At the Chemistry Awards Dinner, he alone wore cargo shorts and a graphic t-shirt. However, although the lecture style frequently frustrated me due to a lack of cohesion and linear organization, Dr. Gelb lives up to his reputation as an intelligent man and, often, his tangents gave us additional information on topics in order to promote a more holistic understanding. Furthermore, his tests were fair. When requested, he offered us study lists, and the tests did not deviate from them. My greatest struggle with the examinations was that the scoring was inconsistent across various tests, rather than the material itself. As an artifact, I have attached my final exam, although the score on the exam does not accurately reflect the score I received. The exam was scaled differently than originally decided because of the students having less time to complete it as a result of a 45 minute delay in the final arriving in the classroom. CHEM 347ORGANIC AND QUALITATIVE ORGANIC HONORS LABORATORY
CHEM 347 is a continuation of CHEM 346 and, as such, we continued to learn organic laboratory methods. For every experiment we completed we took 1H NMR and IR spectroscopy, along with melting point measurements. We also learned to use a polarimeter. The experiments were a lot more do-it-yourself and a many of the experiments tested our abilities to take an idea or concept and then build the procedure individually using data and procedures from literature.
The last lab, of which I am most proud of my performance for, we were given three unknown organic compounds and asked to identify them using chemical tests, derivatives, and spectroscopy. I identified all three of my unknowns, even though one of them was contaminated and another was volatile enough that it gave an inaccurate result for one of the more important spectroscopic tests (to me). I have attached my graded lab reports for those three compounds as my artifact. This was my favorite class of the quarter and, due to how much I enjoyed it, I am seriously considering taking further organic chemistry laboratory classes. BIOL 355FOUNDATIONS IN MOLECULAR CELL BIOLOGY
This class was the first biology class I took as a student accepted into the biology major and it did not disappoint. This class was meant to be an overview of cellular functions and an introduction to reading and analyzing scientific biological literature. Most of this content was new to me but Dr. Liepkaln's class slides and practice PollEverywhere questions were set up well enough to ensure that students understood her priorities. Furthermore, although the quiz sections were somewhat boring, the material covered in quiz section were useful in cementing concepts and understanding processes, which were the focus of the class.
For every exam in the class, I drew and re-drew diagrams of the processes in order to memorize them, as the exams tested understanding of the processes both in terms of memorization and in terms of what would be the result if a certain function did not occur. My "official" review guides included correct, detailed processes that I would re-draw on scratch paper and then check against the study guide. The guides allowed me to successfully study for the three midterms and the final. As such, I have attached my final study guide as my artifact. As the final was cumulative, the study guide contains essentially all of the processes that I learned, along with some miscellaneous information that seemed necessary. PHYS 122ELECTROMAGNETISM
The highlight of this class was that Dr. Tolich is a good lecturer and is able to explain the concepts in the class. However, the style of the class was such that understanding of the material is expected before the lecture and concepts were not well explained or reviewed in class even though the textbook was poorly written. Labs and tutorials had little support from the TAs or professor and the answers were not provided after material was graded to increase student understanding. While I used to enjoy physics to an extent before the class, this class killed most of that enjoyment. The artifact I attached for the class is my first midterm - the test I did the best on and one that was a result of self-studying essentially all of the material (as were the others). This class ensured that I would not attempt a major or minor at physics, although I had been considering completing some biophysics coursework.
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