Syllabus Breakdown:
Lecture Quizzes - 10%
Prelab Assignments - 15%
Participation/Attendance - 10%
Postlab Assignments - 25%
Final In-Class Presentation - 15%
Final Exam - 25%

Lectures:
You have to watch the in-person lecture and an old "experimental" lecture, which is basically a recycled video from when school was entirely virtual, in order to get all of the content required to understand the lab/ fill out the pre-lab and post-lab. The problem with this is that half of the content overlaps, but he doesn't edit his slides or material. He could easily fit everything into one lecture and save everyone's time, but he chooses not to do that. Anyway, if he continues with this, I would watch the experimental lecture first before attending lecture.

Participation/Attendance:
Attendance was mandatory for our 8am Monday lecture, but you could attend via Zoom. He sometimes did not even take attendance, so you get free points regardless if you are there. He does not tell you that he is doing this until you're 5 minutes into lecture, so it is a bit of a gamble.

Lecture Quizzes:
Every lecture has a post-lecture quiz that is posted on Gradescope. They are due about 24 hours after lecture I think. It is usually 3-4 questions, and they are pretty easy as long as you pay attention in class or have your notes to refer to.

Pre-labs:
Pre-labs were okay. If you watch lecture and take notes on the mechanisms for the week, you are good to go for the most part.

Post-labs:
Arguably the worst part of this class. The assignment itself is pretty standard, but they are graded pretty harshly. The questions have vague wording, but you can get a ridiculous amount of points taken off if they do not fit his standards. Many assignments rely on an NMR processing software called Mnova. He uploaded a video on how to install the program on your computer, but never actually shows you how to process real, imperfect lab data on it. Dan, if you're reading this, it would be helpful to have a more comprehensive video tutorial for people to reference. We turned our assignments in via Gradescope, but Dan hides the rubric, so you are not able to see what you did wrong unless you go to office hours or email your TA.

Final In-Class Presentation:
He puts you into a group with 1-2 other students in your lab section, and assigns you to one of the labs we covered during the quarter. You have to make a 10-minute presentation on the experiment (background, procedure, conclusion, etc.).

Final Exam:
All of his previous finals and their keys are posted a few weeks in advance for students to start studying early. Really take notes and study the most recent finals he has given because your final will most likely be the most similar to those.

Tips:
If you are willing and able to, I would suggest going to office hours to get your questions answered if you miss points on assignments. There is a lack of transparency in grading for most, if not all, of the assignments. This absolutely sucks, but I am doubtful that he will change that policy, so go and ask questions or email someone. Dan and the TAs are approachable, so that makes it a little easier to do. Also, if I were to do this all over again, I would not enroll in the first lab section of the week. Getting help is a lot easier if your section is in the middle or towards the end of the week because you have more time to ask questions and work on assignments.

Dr. Narsrallah is an amazing professor that always cares for his students. He is not only passionate about chemistry but also about teaching. His lectures are very interesting and engaging. The workload is also very reasonable.

I wish I took this class in person- I feel like I learned a lot and I love the structure of this class. Lab reports/prelabs every week and then just a final at the end as well as a group presentation. Overall not too much work and I could take it with like 3 other stem classes no problem. NMR definitely got annoying at sometimes but is definitely a useful skill if you're staying in chemistry. Also I think the grading scheme was adjusted so I think 93 is an A now and with tons of extra credit I do not think it's anything to worry about too much. Form a study group and I think you'll be fine. Would take again!

This class wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. At first I was very nervous about it because the cut off for an A was 95% and the TA's would really nitpick at your labs. I got points taken off for super minor things and they're looking for specific key words so if you don't have it then that's points off. I had Laura as my TA she was great overall I felt like she was pretty real with us and she would listen to our complaints or suggestions that we had throughout the quarter and would try to talk to the professor for us.

Professor Nasrallah was also very generous with extra credit points which made the 95% cut off not that bad. The lectures were based on slides and then you'd have pre-labs, post-labs, and alternative analysis due almost every week. It got better in the second half of the quarter since we got to the two week labs so it slowed down the pace which I really needed. TopSpin is a pain, it's a program to read and analyze the NMRs. Good luck with that.

The labs themselves are scheduled for 4 hours but you only need to attend 2 hours of it. The first 30 min is just the students there so you can discuss any questions you might have with each other, then the next hour is for the TA to go over the material for the lab, and the next 30 min is for the students to go over anything they have questions on with each other. There are lecture quizzes which weren't bad, they're just there to make sure you watch and understand the lecture. There is also a group presentation and we got randomly assigned.

The only thing that I really didn't like was the lack of communication. We found out really late about the format of the final exam and it was proctored on Zoom and we only got 2 hours. So that really stressed me out, but thankfully, the final was not like the previous chem 30BL finals. We had those for practice and they were hard but the one that Professor Nasrallah gave us was one that he wrote himself. Some of the questions were styled similarly to the old exams but I thought it was a reasonable exam and I felt like it was very catered to what he taught us, there were no surprises and very straightforward. I started reviewing a week before and got a pretty good grade. We also only had 2 hours but I finished the exam in an hour and spent the rest of the time reviewing my answers.

This class wasn't bad especially during covid and I was just taking this class as a requirement. But I probably wouldn't take this during covid/online if your future involves this material because I definitely would not be able to do these labs in real life. Otherwise, Professor Nasrallah really wants his students to learn and get excited about the material. He also tries really hard to engage students as well. I think this was his first time teaching so he's open to feedback and trying to improve. Overall, I would really recommend him! One of the best chem professors I've had.

This class is pretty interesting, and there is a decent amount of overlap with some techniques from 30AL at times. I struggled a bit with ochem, but as long as you prepare for the final well (there is no midterm which is a little scary), you should do fine, since there is not as many mechanisms and reactions you have to know.

Class attendance is required through lecture quizzes, which was a bit annoying. However, the prof tries to connect each lecture/lab to a real-life industry that uses chemistry, which made the class pretty interesting.

Your lab experience highly depends on TAs, who are there during lab to answer questions and grade your labs (submitted online). Another annoying aspect about the course is that you will likely lose a couple of points on your labs, but the grading rubric is hidden, so you never really know why you got off points. This class also introduces you to processing NMRs from your lab samples, which took the most time and was the most tedious thing to do at times, especially if you didn't have great samples.

I thought the final was fair, and the prof posts plenty of practice exams so you can get used to the format of the exam and what kind of questions he will ask.

We also had a group presentation project, that ended up being graded quite harshly -- if that is assigned again in the future, be warned that it's not the easy A you may think it is!

Dr. Nasrallah is an amazing professor and thorough at explaining mechanisms and chemistry! He is also very chill and kind- he plays student suggested music before lecture starts and sprinkles extra credit here and there for everyone whether it be through an ez TA appreciation comment, suggestions, or the designing a zoom background contest. It was not mandatory to attend all lectures but extra credit was awarded if we attended 4+ lectures after the mandatory first 2 weeks. The exam was more or less clear and straight forward, labs were a little challenging because of the software required but just watch the video tutorial! It was helpful and informative. Overall this class was moderate in busy work but not insane. The material was helpful and informative! :)

Even though the lab was online, I feel like I learned a lot about organic chemistry and its applications in the real world. Dr. Nasrallah was always very clear and open to questions. He wanted us to succeed in the course and in life. Great professor and a well-structured course!

So this class was fine but the grading for the labs was strict. Even though I averaged poorly on my lab work I was still able to get an A- in the class. I think Professor Nasrallah is very nice and caring and he definitely tries hard to be a fun professor. I would say the only thing that annoyed me was that they did not announce the final exam format/information until Week 9 and they did not give us feedback on the group presentation. The final was probably the most stressful part of this class as it was pretty long and covered a lot of content but you'll be fine if you go over the lectures. Labs were heavy but once you get to the 2-week labs they slow down and lighten up the load. Overall decent class.

DO NOT take Ana as your TA. I was really disappointed with her as a teaching assistant and her overall attitude. She would ignore questions that she couldn't answer and always seemed super bored or not 100% present. The questions she did answer were vague and either didn't answer the question or led us down a completely different path. She would also mark off points for not submitting the grade scope assignment 100% up to her standards (ie. I would match the question to the NMR data page rather than # question or vise versa and get like 2 points off) 0/10 TA.