General comments

The student should be as prepared as possible when s/he enters to the lab. Eight hours of lab time sounds like an eternity, but it will pass very fast because the setups take much more time to prepare and the reaction are longer themselves as well. Poor preparation for the lab and poor organization skills will cause significant delays. Most of the time, the student will not be able to complete the experiments in the allotted time, which in turn will have a very negative impact on the in-lab grade.

For preparation, it is not enough to copy down the information given in the reader. It is necessary to consult the original literature (references given in the experiment and what else can be found using Scifinder, Reaxys and public domain). If the procedure or other things are not clear, talk to your TAs or your instructor to get assistance. However, you should put a reasonable effort into it yourself first, in order to be more to the point with your questions. Just showing up in somebody's office hours and complaining that you do not understand the paper does not allow the person on the other side to explain to you what you need to know in order to understand it. To ensure that you have a basic idea about the project, you will have to pass an oral exam with the instructor first before you start a new project (starting with the second project).

Writing a decent scientific paper takes significantly more time than writing a postlab (like in Chem 30 BL or 30CL). The students that took Chem 30 CL and Chem 144 prior to Chem 174 are aware of this. If this is your first upper division lab course, it is highly advisable to start with your paper early. As soon as you start the project, you can start writing your introduction. Try to write the experimental part and the discussion as you go along in your experiment. Preparing a checklist which information is needed for the paper cannot hurt either. It is not uncommon that the student forgets to acquire data, which will result in a lower score for the report. Writing a scientific paper is a process of writing, re-evaluating and editing. It could not hurt to ask your fellow student to proof-read your draft in order to get some feedback as well.

Cookbook chemistry is not getting you very far in this course. You should always have the main objective of the experiment in mind. Which data is critical to prove that the experiment was successful? In this context, it is advisable to research the reference data ahead of time in order to have a reference point already when conducting the experiment. This makes it easier for the experimenter to evaluate the obtained data right away or set up the experiment properly, instead of wasting a lot of time in trials that produce meaningless results because the measurements were conducted in the wrong range i.e., cyclic voltammetry, NMR spectra for paramagnetic samples or uncommon nuclei (i.e., ⁹⁵Mo), EPR spectra, infrared spectra, etc. The student should always ask himself what he wants to show with this data.

Overall, this course will be a learning experience for most students. As such, do not expect everything to work the first time around. However, it is very important to learn out of your own (and your fellow students' mistakes), which means that you have to be also be critical with yourself. If you have problems, there are plenty of resources (course reader, lecture, office hours, etc.) that can help you mastering the materials. The goal of the course is to provide the students with a stronger synthetic background, which will be helpful for graduate school. Or like a former student used to say: "We are doing REAL CHEMISTRY here."