<aside> 🚨 Reminder: Please fill out your course evaluations if you haven’t already. The entire section will get +5 points added to their final exam if we can get 92% or more of the class to provide feedback.

</aside>

Thank you to those who have already filled out Instructor/course evaluations! 😁

These are very helpful to me and to the department and University. Ultimately they are most useful when all students participate. If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to fill it out:

Instructor/Course: eval-duke.evaluationkit.com

Filling these out thoughtfully and honestly helps me out so much, I read every one. I really, really appreciate it, and I appreciate you for taking the time to do it. 💙

1. Resources for Exam preparation

• The exam will be comprehensive of the entire course. I would recommend that you do review problems that are representative of the main topics that we spent the most time on.

  • Roughly: 25% Alkenes/addition reactions, 25% substitution/elimination/alkyl halides/alcohols, 25% acid-base/stereochem/spectroscopy, 25% structure/resonance/conformational analysis/synthesis.
  • Most of the topics that we covered after exam 3 were really sneaky reviews of our older material, so if you’re working these problems you’re reviewing anyway. See the relevant problem/reading checklists that have been posted to Canvas since the beginning of the term for details on which specific sections of materials that you’re responsible for. If you've kept up with working the problems you should be fine.
  • To acknowledge the effort you’ve put into the course already, about 15% of the exam will come directly from previous exams this semester.

• This will NOT be a “3-hour exam”, but you will have up to 3 hours to complete it, if you wish. By that, I mean that it will be designed such that it can probably be finished in 1.5-2 hours.

• A sample final exam is posted. The key will be posted soon. The purpose of the sample exam is to (a) show you the format and length you can expect for the real exam and (b) give you more practice problems to work. The sample exam is NOT designed to emulate exactly the difficulty or precise content of the real exam. For example, the real exam may seem slightly easier or more difficult, or place a somewhat greater or less emphasis on some topics over others. My goal though, is to have the real exam be representative of the course coverage so far, and not to surprise you with any curve balls! It will be a straight forward test. Your goal should be to focus on understanding concepts and working problems, and not to worry too much about exam format, obscure details, etc.

• Your TAs and I will be available for student hours, review sessions, and lecture reviews this week. Please check the student hours page for details.

  Student hours 201 F24

• A BONUS Discussion problem set is posted, along with a key. It’s in the Discussion folder on Canvas.

• A BONUS Synthesis problem set is posted, along with a key. It’s in the Discussion folder on Canvas.

• Approaching the exam the most important thing to do is work problems. You have lots available: the book problems, lecture reviews, the discussion problems, and the sample/old exams. Remember to do problems thoughtfully, by finding the answer yourself and not consulting the answer key except to check yourself. Tips for doing problems:

  • Do a few problems from each chapter to refresh yourself on the relevant concepts and reactions. Anything that you’re worried you don’t remember, put it on The Paper!
  • Some times people ask if they should redo the old exams, discussion sets, etc. To that I would say: only if you don’t remember the solutions. It’s best to challenge yourself with new problems that you haven’t seen before, as this most accurately simulates an exam.

• Get plenty of rest the night before the exam! Your brain is not a file cabinet, it is a problem solving machine. And it does its best work when it’s rested. Pulling an all-nighter so that you can try to memorize tiny bits of information is not beneficial! Take care of your brain 🧠 and it will take care of you 💙.

• No:

2. Thursday 12/12, 2-5pm is the Final Exam

To bring:

🖊 Pen or pencil(s), blue/black only

🪪 Duke ID (digital is fine if you don’t have access to a physical card)

🟢 Molecular model kits (plastic pieces only, no other reference materials or stencils, etc.)