In my opinion, this course is set up terribly. Students are required to purchase a lecture book, which has a bunch of information and spaces to fill in notes during lectures. This book is absolutely riddled with typos and straight-up wrong information, and having to spend money on it was one of the most infuriating things I've ever had to do. The lectures themselves are mostly a prof going through a slideshow while the students fill in the lecture book with notes. The slides and the lecture book are, for the most part, the exact same, but for some reason there are extra slides in the slideshow that aren't in the lecture book that matter, but the prof never has any idea which slides these are so there's often not adequate time to take those extra notes. There are a series of quizzes that go...read more

The content was all over the place. We started with a little bit of quantum mechanics, then moved on to compound structures, and eventually moved on to content that had been covered in BC Chemistry 12. Nothing felt related, nothing has been useful for anything else. It was a little bit like shoving a bunch of random cheap trinkets in a box and calling it a chest of valuable treasure.

Tatiana was lovely and did her best to make this chaotic hodge-podge of information make sense. She was really good about including examples throughout the lecture more often than the slides had space for, sometimes to the point that the lectures felt boring because the examples weren't challenging at all anymore. She was super responsive by email and very willing to arrange meetings outside of office hours if necessary. If I ever had the opportunity to take another course with her I would without question.

If you have your Chem 12 notes, keep them. I wished I had mine more than once. Don't rush through the quizzes, you have lots of time to get through them and can't go back once you've moved on from a question. Always submit something for the lab report. Unless you have a particularly mean TA they're super easy markers.

Lectures are beyond boring. I went to 3 classes all semester because of how dreadful they were (and got an 85% on the final). Hardest part about the class are the labs that feel like they don't really match up with what we learn. Lots of concepts from grade 12 chem.

Boring, uninspired, obviously didn't want to be there.

Class is structured so every class you fill out notes in your lecture book, so make sure you have your book on the first day. Lots of assumed knowledge so make sure you catch up on old chem concepts from HS, probably just by watching youtube videos. Can get away with using notes from the lectures to study for midterms, I had the class online and midterms were all MC. Midterms and final were very fair. Harmen is a great prof, he sometimes glances over things without explaining them in depth but if asked he will go over the concepts again in depth. He does teach very fast so you need to make sure you do not miss class. I also found he will say a lot of useful information that he doesn't write down, so taking extra notes in the margins helps.

Keep up with the weekly structure and you should be fine.

- I-Clicker Attendance quizzes. - Textbook sold by book store was a must get to write notes synchronously with the lecture. - Class was a combination of both first year chem courses, with some additions/subtractions from both. - Midterm was fair. - Prof was the most boring professor I have had in my engineering degree. I almost fell asleep in his class many times over.