Just want to know because I'd like to stay home for the rest of the week except the lab days if there are podcasts

Yeah Harrison podcasts the lecture but his lectures are useless. Read the textbook and you'll be fine.

Is that the prof for the summer session? I couldn't find a prof listing under the master timetable

Originally Posted by bobsingh

Yeah Harrison podcasts the lecture but his lectures are useless. Read the textbook and you'll be fine.

I just read reviews on Harrison, is he as awful as people say? Quite scared now :/

Originally Posted by daftypatty

I just read reviews on Harrison, is he as awful as people say? Quite scared now :/

I had him, and I don't think he's that bad. You should form your own opinion.

Originally Posted by daftypatty

I just read reviews on Harrison, is he as awful as people say? Quite scared now :/

Definitely the hardest prof i've ever had and he would be nominated for the hardest prof at mac. His midterm is straight forward but the exam is a whole different story. It's ruined the GPA of many students and he has no regrets of keeping a class average of 54. His moto is: can't get a percent yield..no orgo mark...no med school..no M.D. can't become rich :p. His jokes are okay but definitely read the textbook and do ALL practice problems to have any hope of doing well on that final.

Originally Posted by bobsingh

Definitely the hardest prof i've ever had and he would be nominated for the hardest prof at mac. His midterm is straight forward but the exam is a whole different story. It's ruined the GPA of many students and he has no regrets of keeping a class average of 54. His moto is: can't get a percent yield..no orgo mark...no med school..no M.D. can't become rich :p. His jokes are okay but definitely read the textbook and do ALL practice problems to have any hope of doing well on that final.

To be fair, if you are incapable of calculating % yield, I certainly don't want you as my doctor

I don't think he's anywhere close to the hardest prof at Mac. If he's the worst you've had, consider yourself lucky

It's not the prof's responsibility to keep the GPA high...sometimes you just have a below-average class. I had a class average on a midterm (~300 people in the class) that was 38% once. And yet, classes before and after us sat through essentially the same course with the same prof and very similar test questions, and managed to get an average of 70. And even in my year, where people got 38%, there were people who got 100%, which doesn't even happen in most of my classes where the average is 70-80. I guess my point here is that the class average is not indicative of a prof's teaching ability, and when I had Harrison, our class average was 72.

Starfish, what was your opinion of the final exam?

Originally Posted by starfish

To be fair, if you are incapable of calculating % yield, I certainly don't want you as my doctor

I don't think he's anywhere close to the hardest prof at Mac. If he's the worst you've had, consider yourself lucky

It's not the prof's responsibility to keep the GPA high...sometimes you just have a below-average class. I had a class average on a midterm (~300 people in the class) that was 38% once. And yet, classes before and after us sat through essentially the same course with the same prof and very similar test questions, and managed to get an average of 70. And even in my year, where people got 38%, there were people who got 100%, which doesn't even happen in most of my classes where the average is 70-80. I guess my point here is that the class average is not indicative of a prof's teaching ability, and when I had Harrison, our class average was 72.

Hey starfish, do you have any tips for the final exam for orgo? I'm aiming for a 70 on the exam, but I don't know if that's possible considering the class average for it is usually 54.

Was the 2OA3 exam harder than the 2OB3 exam, because I kinda got killed on the 2OA3 exam lol, but I think I know how to approach mechanisms better now in 2OB3.

Originally Posted by bradyr

Hey starfish, do you have any tips for the final exam for orgo? I'm aiming for a 70 on the exam, but I don't know if that's possible considering the class average for it is usually 54.

Was the 2OA3 exam harder than the 2OB3 exam, because I kinda got killed on the 2OA3 exam lol, but I think I know how to approach mechanisms better now in 2OB3.

I definitely found 2OA3 harder, because to me it seemed more disconnected, whereas in 2OB3 it was literally the same thing over and over (nucleophile attacks the electrophile which in 2OB3 is nearly always the carbon on a carbonyl).
I'd just go through and know WHY the electrons move the way they do, rather than simply memorizing the reactions. That way, you can figure out things you haven't seen before.
Idk if you still do structural elucidation in 2OB3? But if you do, just come up with a systematic way of thinking about it and going through the different spectra, and know what sort of information each spectrum can give you. Go for understanding, rather than memorization. There's a bit of memorizing with the catalysts/solvents and stuff because you don't always learn the chemistry behind it (although sometimes you do, especially for solvents), but the bulk of the work that you do should be understanding what's going on with the electrons.

Originally Posted by starfish

I definitely found 2OA3 harder, because to me it seemed more disconnected, whereas in 2OB3 it was literally the same thing over and over (nucleophile attacks the electrophile which in 2OB3 is nearly always the carbon on a carbonyl).
I'd just go through and know WHY the electrons move the way they do, rather than simply memorizing the reactions. That way, you can figure out things you haven't seen before.
Idk if you still do structural elucidation in 2OB3? But if you do, just come up with a systematic way of thinking about it and going through the different spectra, and know what sort of information each spectrum can give you. Go for understanding, rather than memorization. There's a bit of memorizing with the catalysts/solvents and stuff because you don't always learn the chemistry behind it (although sometimes you do, especially for solvents), but the bulk of the work that you do should be understanding what's going on with the electrons.

Thank you so much! And I agree, 2OA3 does seem more disconnected, which is probably why the exam was so challenging, trying to come up with a mechanism you've barely had practice doing. But in 2OB3, we have a lot of tools for mechanisms and I think I can approach a mechanism more logically, and hopefully, this helps me for the 2OB3 exam, because mechanisms was the main problem of the 2OA3 exam.