<p>Alright so really quick... I kind of didn't too hot with Chem 159 (Engineers), an F to be exact, and I was debating if I should go onto continue off to Chem 160? I know that on Webreg, I'm still signed up for the course, because there was no pre-req for the 160 class, but should I even consider on just going to 160? </p>
<p>I'm on Academic Probation, so its even more harder for me to decide. Right now I've narrowed my three choices:
a) continue onto Chem 160 and take 159 in the summer or fall...
b) take an elective and take Chem 159 next year...
c) take Chem 161 (the harder one) and do Chem 162 next semester; also regarding this, does this class overweight the F for the 159?</p>
<p>Which should be the best choice for me? I'm doing CivE, so I do have a little more leway than other engineer majors, but not by that much. It's just that last semester I had no motivation and Chem was the all time worst, because of all the exceptions. Also some nice tips on Chem would be welcomed too.</p>
<p>First off, I’m fairly certain you’re going to be dropped from Chem 160 at some point because 159 is a prereq for it (you can check that on the Online Schedule of Classes). I don’t think it would even be a good option to to try to take Chem 160 anyway. It is MUCH harder than 159.</p>
<p>Gen Chem for Engineers isn’t offered in the Summer, so if you were going to take it in the summer, you would need to take it at a community college.</p>
<p>If you take Chem 161, it is not going to take the place of your F since it is not the same class. Chem 161 is also much harder than Gen Chem for Engineers, so I don’t see why you would want to do that.</p>
<p>The first thing you need to figure out is whether or not you failed because of lack of motivation/not putting enough time in etc or if the material is too much for you. From what you’ve said, I’m gonna assume it is the former, which is good. It’s your first semester of college, many people have a tough time transitioning for a variety of reasons. This is manageable though as long you don’t let it happen again. You need to go into this next semester with the mindset that academic work comes first and foremost. Only you can determine what that is going to take.</p>
<p>Given that none of the CivE required classes for sophomore year have chem as prereqs (from my quick perusal of their suggested course schedule), I’d believe you are better off retaking Chem 159 in the fall next year. Before you make this decision, you should definitely make an appointment to talk to Dean Rankin. He’s definitely the best person to ask about these kinds of problems.</p>
<p>As far learning chemistry, the textbook they use is actually very good. You could very well learn the required material just by reading it and doing the homework problems. If you really want to do well though, I’d recommend reading whatever section of the textbook is going to be covered in lecture beforehand, go into lecture already having at least some understanding of the material, take good notes on what is covered in lecture, then do ALL the homework problems before your recitation. Then during recitation you have the time to ask questions about homework problems you didn’t understand. Obviously this requires a lot of time, but it’s the only surefire way to not only learn the material but retain it as well.</p>
<p>As far as exams go, you really need to know what you’re doing because there is not much margin for error. Since the exams are only like 20 questions (if I remember correctly), you can’t get too many wrong. This means that by the time you take the exam, you need to know how to to do every homework problem. The exams are pretty much based on homework problems with the occasional more difficult problem. Since the questions are multiple choice, you also need to be very careful. Nearly every problem has answer choices that are only slightly different than the actual answer, usually the result of using the wrong units or the wrong constant. I found that the best practice for this kind of thing is to use the practice exam they typically post before exams and time yourself as if you are actually taking the exam.</p>
<p>Overall, if you are willing to put the work in, you can definitely do well in the class. It’s just a matter of forcing yourself to do the work, which for some people, myself included, can be very difficult.</p>
<p>@Rhetorical13: I’m certain it wasn’t because the course was too hard because I feel like if I actually got focused enough, I probably would have seen it through. For some reason though, many times I just felt wandered off too many times when I actually made the time up to study for the class. To me at least, there was no motivation for me to focus.</p>
<p>I have 20 credits lined up (including 160), should I take another class to replace 160, or should leave it blank? I wanna try taking a 300 electives course, so I would ease up some courses next year, but I’m not sure how the whole levels thing works just yet with the electives.</p>
<p>Taking 17 credits wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would free up more time to focus on the other classes you have. If you want to take something in its place, a 300 level humanities class could work. In some cases, the 300 level designation is just a number and doesn’t reflect the difficulty of the class (not always true, though). Depending on what department you want to take an elective in, there may or may not be prerequisites for the 300/400 level classes. For example, most History, Classics, and Geography classes don’t have prereqs for their upper level classes whereas all the upper level Psychology classes require Gen Psych 101 as a prereq. In general, the upper level humanities tend to have heavy reading loads and may have a term paper, but it all varies by department and the actual class you take. You can typically find syllabi on the various department websites to get a feel for the structure and grading scheme for the class you want to take. I’ve only taken one upper level humanities, so I can’t really recommend many classes, but I took a Classics class and really enjoyed it. I’ve also heard good things about Employment Law, which doesn’t have any prereqs. Once again, talk to a dean when you get back from break. They’ll have a better idea than I do.</p>