Fin lein los kruziik, hon fin norok zaan, zeymah. Mu draal wah zindro fin kein

The title means "The world is ancient, hear the fiercest shout, brothers. We pray to triumph the combat." It's in dragon language, by the way.


Yea, this blog will be for some college rants. Mostly organic chemistry.


Okay, so my professor is honestly not a bad teacher. In fact, personally, I think he is a great teacher, at least better than the other one who honestly got me a few wrong answers on the test because he simply did not explain the material as well as McDaniel did. But something is simply not translating well enough from his lectures to our grades. Like I get the stuff, but I have slowly done progressively worst for the four exams, and honestly it is really demoralizing.


Especially the hydrogenation of alkynes with NaNH2. I was pretty sure he told us that it was only partly due to the different in pKa and that it has to be NaNH2 if it involves hydrogenation. And there it was the question with an alkyne with a hydroxyl end. I suppose I shouldn't have listened to him and actually considered the electronegativities of both carbon and oxygen instead. Hixson, you screwed me over big time. Also the MC's are such a pain. I think in conclusion, he either needs longer tests and spread out his points, and/or make his tests entirely open response. It's not that big of a hassle if he's already grading 70% of his exams by hand anyways.


But then again, I honestly think that McDaniel could have stressed the importance of the geometry of a sp2 carbon in terms of a carbocation, and the fact that it has to flatten out.

Also, he has no mercy in his explanation portion of the test. He doesn't count efforts into account, and if you don't mention the keyword--even if you wrote almost a paragraph--you will get 10 points off, just like that. I really think that's outrageously brutal. He also uploaded the grades of both of his classes (without names, of course), and less than 10% of the 300 people have an A- or above, and about 60% have a C- or below. He will have to scale this, or an academic probation awaits him, no doubt.


I find the fact that I have a B+ right now slightly surprising; I thought I had a B-. o.o Not complaining, really. But that also mean I need at least a 87 on the final (out of 200 points) to keep this grade. It also means that I need almost a perfect score to get an A- or possibly an A too. He also needs (well...he claims...) the class average to be around a 75 ish, so I guess he has to scale it, because more than half of the class is either failing or has a low enough score to not go on to organic chem 2. Scale, I'm counting on you...Q.Q


And it's not like this is my only subject too. I'm not that worried about physics or anthropology. I'm a bit concerned about mythology, but it's mostly organic chemistry, and some ecology, that I'm worried about because they are the two that I need A's on my finals to get A's in each. This translates to 30+ hours for organic and roughly 10+ for ecology. Yes, one test. Organic is acceptable, but ecology? Worst decision of my life. I don't give a shit about this class, I don't even know why I took it in the first place. I better get an A in it or else, really, I'm gonna be so incredibly sad.


Time turner, where are thou....


This shall mark a break in my rant. I can still get back to an A in organic so I'm not all that pissed off. But honestly, I think he should take a look at our evaluations. At the same then, though, I wish other people did not just completely shit on him because he's not a bad teacher; he just needs to adjust his tests a bit so it's more flexible.


That is all. Gonna do another post, then physics lab for the night, maybe some ecology reading, then heading off.


-l.h-