Final Grade: A-

Well from my previous posts you might already know, Chem 121 was not my favorite course. While I think it is well set up, and the labs are very interesting, the actual course material focused a lot on memorization (which I am not a fan of).

 Textbook: For this textbook we used the CHIRP which is a thin textbook written by UBC profs. (Cool side note I met two of the three profs who wrote the textbook, and Tyler –who is also on the blogsquad- reviewed the CHIRP). It is nice to have a book that you will actually use every single page in, however I felt like there were not enough practice questions in the CHIRP. Another annoying thing was that the answers would only be posted online, after the section had been covered. The online answers had weird titles when you downloaded them, making it difficult to figure out which chapter was which.
Overall the book is pretty good though, as is the lab book.

Impression: I really liked the demos that were presented almost every week in class. The course material is at the core of Chemistry, however I hated how we learnt one method, (Lewis Structures) which then was replaced by a better method (VESPR) which was replaced by a “better” method, which was replaced by a better method e.t.c. e.t.c…. I cannot even name these methods off the top of my head right now… this people is a problem… ohhh… Valence Bond Theory and Molecular Orbital Theory were the other two.
My prof Dr. Wolf was really great too, he is really calm, funny, and great at explaining all sorts of questions in class.  Even though I dislike Chemistry, Dr.Wolf made it very bearable =). For me Chemistry was a challenge and towards the end of the term I frequently found myself falling asleep in class, and not really getting the most out of what was being taught. By the time the final exam period started I realized that I was in trouble…. I had retained very little from the last part of the term and I had gotten 79% and 72% on the midterms… not quite so stellar. So I signed up for the prep 101 courses that are offered to help people get ready for their exams. While I can’t say it was the most useful thing I have ever done in my life (most of the concepts were briefly touched over, and only very easy examples were done in class), it did make me study (which was very useful indeed). I am glad I took it.

Useful Things to Know:
– There is a Chemistry resource centre that is pretty helpful, hours are posted on Vista
-Labs are tedious and fairly stressful to do. Be prepared, read all of the online material and write realllly detailed notes/observations, and measure everything out as precisely as possible. If you find yourself not sure of anything always ask your TA.
-Do all the problems in the Chirp, if you can, get hold of someone’s prep 101 package from this year and do all the questions in it too.
-Make cue cards and make sure you know all of the common anions/cations in the back of the Chirp.
– THIS IS THE ORBITRON: Stare at it, copy the graphs out from it, it is very useful!
http://winter.group.shef.ac.uk/orbitron/
-Memorize all the reactions in the Chirp…. have fun… start early!
-aNions have Negative charge, ca+ions have positive (+) charge
***Will add more when I get back to my notes =P****