Originally Posted by jamiebenyovi

I took Chem 1A03 first semester and didn't do well at all (ended with a 5). Now i'm taking Chem 1AA3 and i did terrible on the first midterm. I'm really having trouble pin-pointing exactly what i'm having trouble with but it seems as though I'm able to do the math problems that show up as 2 mark questions and some of the 3 mark ones but it seems like i'm having the most trouble with the conceptual questions and the harder 3 mark questions.

Do you guys have any suggestions about what i could possibly do to improve? I think my study habits will also need to be changed because clearly I'm not getting great results. I'm really desperate at the moment because I really want to do well because I know the exam is gonna be a killer.

Any help would be appreciated!

realize that it isn't biology, and you have to actively learn, by writing down questions and getting them answered during the lecture. And do all the practice problems.

Yess, just go to Farshid's tutorials. He's the single greatest TA I've seen since I've been at Mac, he helped me so much for our first midterm. I'm going to his TA help hours come midterm two.

does anyone know when Farshid's tutorials are?

Originally Posted by jamiebenyovi

does anyone know when Farshid's tutorials are?

Last year they were early Thursdays...might be similar...

Farshid pwns, but chem still sucks.

Originally Posted by jamiebenyovi

Thank you that's really helpful! I find reading the text book is impossible and that the practice problems are really useless. I did the tutorials and old tests for the last midterm but there really weren't that many problems on Kinetics which was where I was having trouble since there really wasn't a lot to practice with.

Is chemistry the same in second year or are they just trying to get rid of the kids that shouldn't be taking chemistry in first year and then the upper year courses aren't as bad?

If you find the practice and tutorial problems useless, then you're obviously not doing them right.

And second year chemistry (assuming you're talking about the orgo course) is NOT the same as first year.
If you're talking about the chemistry and chemical biology programs, they're absolutely nothing like first year (I'm speaking for chemical biology, I'm not quite sure what the pure chemistry program is like, but I'd imagine its similar).

I'm not saying the tutorial problems are useless, I'm saying I did the textbook practice problems to prepare for one of the tests last semester and it didn't really help me at all

Farshid is the best!! His tutorials are Wednesday at 930 and 330! Try to check one of them out. Unlike the other TAs he does like a mini lesson at the beginning reviewing material from the tutorial, then takes up most, if not all, of the tutorial problems.

Besides the "organic" (more like "memorizing functional groups") part, 1AA3 requires a little bit of thought. You'll do well if you stop and ask yourself what you're trying to do with each question. When you start doing that, you should find the majority of the course to be really straight-forward (besides the memorization bit, of course).

Originally Posted by Biochem47

Farshid is the best!! His tutorials are Wednesday at 930 and 330! Try to check one of them out. Unlike the other TAs he does like a mini lesson at the beginning reviewing material from the tutorial, then takes up most, if not all, of the tutorial problems.

Awesome! Where are his tutorials?

I think it would be a good idea to do those practice problems that are found within the chapter as you're reading it, the ones in the purple boxes since they try to highlight strategies and show you what you should be thinking about. And also the concept assessments, the green boxes, to handle the non-calculation stuff.

What I'm basically trying to say is, you need to find a way to approach novel questions. That is to develop a strategy when certain questions comes your way. You need a thought pattern that will lead you to the answer. So say you encounter an acid/base problem, what is it you think about first? Are you trying to identify if its a buffer first? Or are you going to ask yourself if its a strong/strong or weak/strong reaction. The first thing I try to do for any question is identify all the information it gives me, since now a lot of questions require you to infer information. Write it down as you're discovering things the question isn't explicitly giving you (and even underline the stuff it does) and then ask what it is you need to solve for and then ask what method you should go about using to solve it (say if its buffer, I can use Henderson-Hasselbach equation or if you're missing information: is there a way to find it given the information)

Then keep trying your strategy on the practice problems and see what you can change such that you always get the answer for novel questions.

The conceptual stuff probably comes down to testing yourself about that concept and being able to apply it. And then from that fixing the misconception you just had. You can always ask yourself why something turned out the way it is in a practice problem.

tl;dr Develop a problem-solving STRATEGY for different types of problems and find stuff you don't know and learn it

Originally Posted by tatski-p

Awesome! Where are his tutorials?

I'd assume they are in the same place as all Level 1 Chemistry tutorials this year, which is ABB 136, I believe. It's the room to the left through the entrance to ABB closest to BSB.