<p>I'm taking a biology and chemistry lab course this semester and I'm just curious about what other people's experiences have been like. Has it been more or less difficult than the accompanying lecture course? This is my first semester taking lab courses, so I was wondering if it was something hard to get a hold of at first?</p>
<p>What school are you attending?</p>
<p>Miami Dade College, it used to be a community college a few years back.</p>
<p>Labs are very different from the lecture course, and the difficulty varies significantly depending on the class.</p>
<p>For example, my intro biology lab was scheduled to last 3 hours every week. I don’t think it ever went longer than an hour. It was very laid back, the experiments were simple, and the “lab reports” consisted of easy short answer questions from the lab notebook which took about 15 minutes to complete.</p>
<p>For biochemistry, the labs always lasted the full 3 hours (and often ran over) and the experiments were very involved. The lab reports required many hours of work outside of class, sometimes reached 20 pages in length, and were graded harshly. The lab section took 3x the work of the lecture.</p>
<p>Don’t let that scare you too much, though! Introductory labs won’t be that crazy. Just make sure you take good notes during the lab, follow the directions, and go to your TA’s office hours if you have any questions.</p>