Advice for the Chemistry Major/ UVA in General

1. Give up on competing with your peers. This is a competitive school. That means everyone here is extremely talented (including you). You will gain a much better life-long advantage NETWORKING with your other brilliant peers who will likely go on to be successful in a variety of fields than if you isolate yourself from them via competition. Form GroupMe’s for your classes. Help each other always. Never withhold help because you think it might give someone else an advantage over you. Do the best that you personally can do and then make friends.

2. If you’ve heard the class is a “weed-out” class, I guarantee you it’s not weeding based on intelligence (i.e. the “dumb” people fail or drop out at this point). Weed-out classes weed people out who don’t have the mental/emotional stamina to constantly feel like they’re failing. I thought I was failing OChem the entire time I was taking it. I got a B. Just keep going. Keep going to classes, keep going to office hours, and keep turning in work. When I TAed OChem, the only people I remember being in danger of failing had either stopped coming to class, stopped turning in assignments, or both.

3. If you’re a freshman, someone needs to tell you this: Professors do not scale their expectations to the 100-point grading scale. If you get a 30 on an exam, that is not necessarily immediate cause for panic. Sometimes a 30 is an A. Sometimes you win by not leaving anything on the test blank even if you were making up 50% of each answer. Lots of professors literally assign a point value above 0 for “wrote something.”

4. Your TA’s are your friends (and if one clearly isn’t, you’ll figure that out pretty quickly). If you are struggling, go to office hours. If you have multiple TA’s for a class, try all their office hours to see who best vibes with the way you learn.

5. STEM can be a cold and mean place. Don’t perpetuate it. If something made you miserable as a student, don’t inflict it other people when you TA, etc. because it’s “their turn.” Don’t let professors or PI’s step on you either. You don’t deserve to be treated harshly just because you’re young and inexperienced. Phrases I have found useful when dealing with professors and PIs

a.        “I do not like the way you are speaking to me.”

b.        “I am not experienced at this. If it is important that this be done perfectly in one or a few tries, then maybe someone else should do it.”

c.         “I need extra help/attention/guidance from you to complete what you’ve asked me to do.”

Also: A research position is not a binding contract. If you are miserable in the lab you are working in, find another one.

*Note: Not every professor that hurts your feelings is trying to. STEM is not always home to the most emotionally intelligent people, and some people are just sarcastic personalities.

6. Find social activities to do. You will go insane if your life is studying, class, and research alone. You may not think you can spare the time, but you’ll end up sparing it by having a breakdown instead, so go out to parties and give time to your hobbies.

7. Analyze the culture and policies you encounter. Do the rules you’re being asked to follow have good reasons? Do policies and penalties achieve their goals? If not, protest! Reach out to people, explain your point of view, suggest alternatives. Ex: I created the Emergency Lab Pants box because sometimes people forget to wear long pants to lab and need to borrow a pair. The policy in my time was that if you couldn’t get changed and come back in 15 minutes, you’d get a zero for the day. You can’t de-incentivize forgetting things because no one does it on purpose, so that was a harsh punishment that achieved nothing. Anticipating and accommodating human forgetfulness achieved the real goal: making sure people are safely dressed for lab.