So I am a sophomore at michigan with coppola for orgo and wayne lau for physics. How does one succeed in these classes and some people tell me their studying habits for both classes and how they fared. This would be of much appreciated so I know what I am getting into before school starts in two weeks. Also are the labs for each of these classes extremely difficult or no?
First of all, I want to start off by saying I loved Coppola and Lau. Although people have mixed opinions of the two, I personally think of those 2 as 2 of my favorite professors here at UM.
Anyways, so for Orgo:
-Take advantage of the free resources available to you (i.e. SLC tutoring/study groups, your friends in the class, your older friends who have taken the class, etc.)
-Start the coursepack EARLY and keep doing it little by little every day (I started it about a week or two before the exam). You should be done with it well before each exam date and should be at that point checking your answers with your peers.
-Paying close attention in lecture. Coppola is a guy who heavily relies on the chalkboard and so his notes sometimes won’t make sense unless you are listening to what he is actually saying. I actually loved this about him, but it’s super important to this class that you pay attention every day in lecture and if you don’t understand something, you deal with it in office hours.
^^This is what worked for me, and so I can’t guarantee 100% if will work for you. But it got me an A, so I think it works pretty well. You’ll find your own routine at some point during the semester regardless.
Physics is a lot easier, and is probably one of the easier pre-med classes to take (generally speaking).
However, some tips:
-The exams will draw heavily from past exams/i-Clicker questions. While you will not simply survive from just memorizing past exam questions, it will help you A LOT. If you understand conceptually how to do most of the previous exam questions + the iClicker questions, the class should be a breeze.
-I didn’t find the SLC study groups for this class that helpful compared to Orgo, but if you want extra practice, the SLC study groups are a good place to go.
-Half your grade is literally HW + iClicker questions (which should more or less be a REALLY high grade since HW answers can be found online and Dr. Lau gives you the answers to the iClickers for a lot of them), so you really only need to average about an ~85% on exams to ensure that you get an A.
If you have any other questions, let me know! Btw, the textbook for Orgo imo was useless (and I haven’t met many ppl who used it). It might be good to supplement whatever you learned in lecture, but I thought it was confusing and that Coppola was way better at explaining things than the book. Same for Physics 135.
@hailbate wow this was so detailed thank you very much. I didn’t expect someone to give such a great and in-depth answer
If you are good at chemistry and physics, and you like the subjects, you will do fine. I just took both these classes ( I am a rising sophomore too) and personally I feel like the people who do badly are the ones who HATE chem and physics and just can’t wrap their minds around the information, no matter how hard they study. I really enjoy chemistry (that’s my major at this point) and I’ve always been strong in physics. For those reasons, the class I had the toughest time with last year was a humanities class. The advice from hailbate on orgo is spot on, but don’t feel like you have to put ridiculous hours into this class like so many people say. If you understand the information and you are getting an A, spend your time in another class you don’t understand as much, even if it is an “easy” humanities class. You get graded on your test scores, not by how much time you study. Outside of orgo lecture, I put in around 3 hours per week studying and I was in an SLC group and that was more than enough for me to get an A. Some people put in 20 hours/week and barely pass, it’s all relative. As for Physics 135, this class was pretty much a joke. Lau is seriously the coolest guy in the world and if you have ever taken AP Physics Mechanics or even regular physics, you should do well. My studying consisted of 5 hours the day before each exam, just reading over past exams and making note cards, and I pulled off an A+ pretty much 100% from my previous knowledge in Physics. My whole point here is that just because other people study a ton more than you in these classes, doesn’t mean they know more than you and will get a better grade. Don’t stress and trust yourself, you will do fine!
@illinoisgolf thanks for the input man I appreciate it. Yea I took AP Physics C in high school and got a 4 on mech but a 3 on E & M. AP Physics B was a joke for me tbh. Is the SLC the discussion class that I have to take? And how much does the coursepack for each class that I have to buy help in regards to how well I do in the class.
I’d definitely recommend the coursepack. That was most helpful to me. It’s a good resource to help you nail down the format of the exam and the types of questions you will be asked on the exam.
You are required to take a discussion section in Orgo, but attendance is non mandatory. A lot of Orgo discussion GSIs suck and nobody goes, but some are really good and can be helpful.
SLC study groups are other non mandatory groups you can sign up for, and they are each a 8-10 person group of students led by an undergrad who has taken the class before and you just go over problems in the coursepack and study together. Some groups are bad, some are good, like the discussion section.
If you get unlucky and get both a bad discussion class and SLC group, try to meet up with some friends in the class a couple times to compare coursepack answers, because you never get answers to the problems.
For me the best way to tackle this class was to do coursepack problems that I knew how to do and circle ones I didn’t know how to do, then go to my SLC group and check the ones I did and figure out how to do the ones I didn’t.
@illinoisgolf Ok hopefully I get a good SLC then haha. All right one more thing, how are the labs for both classes, are they something I need to worry about or no?
The labs aren’t too bad. It turned out I ended up putting more work into the labs then the actual classes because I had strict grading GSIs. But your grade is curved by each lab section. More work then a normal 1 credit class, and lab time is really long, but nothing is crazy difficult. A lot depends on your GSI
@illinoisgolf do you know who your gsi’s were