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Hi Everybody, as you might be able to tell by the lack of posts, i have not been around for the summer. I was off finding adventure, exploring unknown lands, ect ect ect.
The task at hand right now though is, whether or not you have a good organic chemistry professor. Many of you are going back to school soon, and many of you will be enrolling in organic chemistry. Because the sciences have become so popular in recent years, many of the larger universities have several profs teaching o-chem, which means in financial terms, this is a buyers market. You have choices on whose class you take and whose class you drop. Of course the best way to learn who is good, who is bad and who is ugly is to ask the boys and girls who have already taken the class. In lieu of that, here are a couple of tell-tale signs that you have a bad o-chem prof:
1) On the first day, the professor brags about how many students fail/drop the class.
2) The professor is anti-medical school. (O-Chem is a big med school prep subject)
3) The professor does not have a degree in organic chemistry; some schools, due to staffing needs, will run someone out there with a degree in another field of chemistry.
4) The professor is not receptive to student questions in office hours.
5) The professor does not incorporate examples of more recent o-chem into the lectures. This is a tricky one. It shows that the prof is a little out of touch, or doesn’t care enough to find more interesting examples to present.
6) The professor focuses alot on physical organic chemistry (orbitals and such). First, this is not the main part of organic chemistry, which rotates around the synthesis of new molecules. Second, it is very boring.
What do you think? Any horror stories of past organic chem profs that made you run out of the room screaming?
