The course was somewhat interesting to me, even though I don't plan on majoring in chemistry. However, enjoyment of the course and ease of understanding heavily depends on how good your professor is and how much effort you put in to reading and doing the ChIRP problems. Midterm 1 is a canon event for all first-year science students taking this course but midterm 2 is better. The labs are kind of fun but tedious to prepare for. They started doing in-class tests before each of the midterms as a low-stakes assessment for students to gauge how well they knew the material. Just put in effort to studying the ChIRP, don't skip lectures, and go to office hours.

Lots of bonding theories - VSEPR, molecular orbital theory, hybridization, etc.

Dr. Kil was one of the reasons I was able to do well in this course. He is always open to questions after class and during office hours and tries his best to support his students. His lectures are never boring and he incorporates great analogies to help his students understand the material. He also has a humorous personality and throws in jokes mid-lecture, and a loud voice that can project to the back of the lecture hall. He often uses models and visual simulators to explain concepts, which I found particularly helpful as a visual learner.

The labs are not as hard as you think, but prepare well for them so you know what to do during it. If you are unlucky and end up with a bad professor, see if you can crash another professor's lectures. Although, each professor does have their own participation portion (iClickers, surveys, etc.). Go to office hours if you don't understand something!! If you don't like your professor's explanations, try another professor's office hours, but you might have to ask around for their office hour times. Do ALL of the ChIRP exercises and additional problems and take advantage of ALL RESOURCES available to you. If you are in the Faculty of Science, SUS hosts CHEM midterm and final review sessions, and so does AMS. So go to those! AMS tends to use more exam-like questions and SUS reviews more basic a...read more