It’s a lot of waiting for things to boil, or dry or vacuum. Nothing complicated. Just be careful when you are doing experiments that are graded based on what you yield, to not skimp and follow the instructions. When you are doing multi-step experiments, you have to be careful cause it could be realllly hard to catch up if you make one mistake along the way. But it’s nothing more complicated than regular gen chem, just more waiting and more fumes.

I enjoyed my organic lab, i didn’t like the class so much though. Every school is different but mine started with determining boiling points, then progressed to making acetaminophen, we isolated caffeine from tea, extracted compounds from a mixture, we made camphor from borneol. Its pretty interesting because some of the things you deal with are everyday things. Even if you don’t enjoy the class, the lab can be fun, just remember to do your assigned readings before hand it makes it easier. And make sure you review your procedures several times before the lab, not only will you gain a better understanding of why you do what you are doing but some things need to be performed quickly and if you’re trying to read your reaction will get screwed up. Hope that helped.

You generally do synthesis reactions (ie Micheal- Aldol reaction, Wittig reaction, etc). My organic chemistry lab was a microscale one, meaning we used very small quantities of reagents and got small quantities of product back. Generally, you will be graded more on the yield of product you obtain moreso here than in Gen Chem labs.