are you in the right class?

As soon as you start honours, you are given the privilege of teaching a first year laboratory class, commonly referred to as a demonstrating class. Depending on which time slot you choose/happen to have, you may have a class of about 18 to 20 first year chemistry students, ranging from zero chemistry experience, to those who topped chemistry in their school and to those doing chemistry only as a requirement to biology or pharmacy or even veterinary science. Once again, this semester, I have a class with students with zero or limited experience in chemistry. Having taught both these students and students in the advanced class, the differences between the two groups are very distinctive.

As a comparison, the students in the advanced class tends to ask questions related to the theoretical and practical side of the experiment, whereas students in the fundamental class ask questions more akin to *stuffs a micro-test tube in your face* "Does this look like 0.5 grams to you?" Unfortunately for me, not being blessed to measure the weight of a sample just by looking at it, I often refer the students to the top-loading balances to help them.

I absolutely do not mind them asking me questions like that. Sure, I cannot specifically answer them with either a "yes" or a "no", but at least I can help and show them how to find out. After all, assuming no chemistry experiences whatsoever for the whole class, how can I criticise them for not knowing how to do something, since they've never done it before. That is the reason why I am there, is it not? What annoys me the most, is having students who just sit there and mentally wonder off. They don't pay attention and they don't do the experiments. When you ask them if everything is fine, they reply with the affirmative, but with an angry tone as if I had just disturbed them from their Winter Wonderland daydream. To confirm my suspicions that they are in fact daydreaming rather than doing their work, I would ask a follow up question, relating to the experiment, to which the most common reply so far would be "I don't know".

Other ways to know first year students are not paying attention is when they insist you do the experiment with them. Before the actual practical experiments start, we are required to give them a quick run down on what the experiment is about and what it is they have to do. Even before the lab session, they are required to read the whole experiment and to also submit answers to an online quiz. Having done all that, and telling them specifically what they have to do, some students would refuse to do it unless you are there, right by their side, doing the experiment separately with them. In case they haven't realised yet, university is very focused on individual learning. We demonstrators, unlike high school teachers, will not spoon-feed you and perform the experiment with you to get "perfect" answers. We help and support the students by telling them what to do and showing them how to do it, as opposed to doing the experiment with them, which is basically doing it for them.

So if you are one of those kind of students who can only pass by sucking up to your teachers and getting them to do your work for you, then I must ask...are you in the right class?