Chem Lab

Ok, so I got back from my Chem 102 lab little more than an hour ago. I have taken chem lab before so I kinda knew what to expect and how everything would work. So all of the chem 101 and 102 kids are piled into chapman211 and we are all trying to size up the TA's to see who looks friendly, praying that we get someone nice and that he/she can speak english. Then, as a group, we read all of the lab policies and you can see everyone getting nervous at that point. Because the lab policies basically say that from that point on, you are responsible for everything that goes wrong during or concerning chem lab. Let's say you go to use your beaker next lab and you realize that it has a crack in it. Well, if you missed this little detail during check in, you have to pay for it. If you break something during an experiment, you pay for it. If you don't do your learning device before you enter the lab, you will receive a zero and not be allowed to participate. The most concerning policy is the one that talks about computers. Let me just say that technology pretty much hates me. Well, we have to upload our lab reports so that we can turn them in online. But apparently, you have to make sure that they are in the right format. So even if you turn them in before the due date but they are not in the right format, it will be considered a late lab which automatically comes with a 10 point deduction if you manage to turn in a hard copy to the director before noon the next day. O and they made it clear that they really don't care if your computer crashes...

I know that we have to be responsible during the lab but all of the policies and warnings take all the fun out of lab. We don't get to blow anything up in the first place so lab isn't the most exciting. And to make all the students paranoid isn't helping anything. Labs should be somewhat enjoyable. You would hope you could spend 4 hours on something that it interesting.

Here's something else I found ridiculous this week. My roommate got a zero on her statistics homework. She's been doing really well and she would have done well on this assignment but she apparently committed an academic sin by not stapling her paper though she had her name on both pages. The crazy thing is, they put the grade she would have received at the top in big numbers (which would have been a good grade) and then they put "please staple-- 0." The TA must have been having a REALLY bad day...