this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
734 points (99.5% liked)

Comic Strips

18495 readers
2567 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

I had an organic chemistry class in college where the average grade was a C. I was a chemistry major and I passed with a D. A couple of other would-be chemistry majors dropped the class. The professor actually told us that we were the worst group of students he had ever taught (and it was his last class before retirement).

I don't think he was a bad teacher, because I certainly was a bad student.

Also he talked about the need to cut down on burning fossil fuels, but less due to environmental concerns and more due to the lost opportunity to make plastics and other interesting substances out of them.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Yes, often the course is just hard or the students are lazy, but not always. I've had several teachers who were strangely proud of the low succes rates.

[–] janus2@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 day ago

love the completely unhinged take of "we need to reduce fossil fuel use so I can use all the crude oil to make weird stuff"

[–] Almonds@mander.xyz 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My organic chemistry prof was equally weird about synthesis. But his ego rested on everyone passing, in contrast to the biology prof who failed half the students in her classes. She was the better teacher. I don't remember much from my second semester of o chem because I didn't really need to learn anything to get an A, but I have retained quite a lot from her classes

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Maybe it’s just chemistry professors. I had one try to expel me for plagiarism because my lab partner and I had the same measurements on our lab reports (no overlap other than the numbers, which weren’t open to a lot of interpretation). You know, because we had the same experiment.

Luckily, part of the process was sitting down with the professor and the head of the department, and as soon as the professor explained what the problem was, the dean rolled his eyes, asked why my professor didn’t even report both of us, and told me someone else in the department would grade my exam, then let me leave.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I actually failed my molecular biology course, and I'm still a little salty about that. I understood molecular biology. I didn't memorize stuff like the order in which subunits bind to assemble the pre-replication complex.

After ORC1-6 bind the origin of replication, Cdc6 is recruited. Cdc6 recruits the licensing factor Cdt1 and MCM2-7. Cdt1 binding and ATP hydrolysis by the ORC and Cdc6 load MCM2-7 onto DNA.

Note that they're numbered but the numbers aren't related to the order in which they act. I don't need to know that. No one who doesn't do research specifically on the pre-replication complex needs to know that.

(Excuses, excuses...)

Fuck organic chemistry in particular. That is the only class I've ever taken where it felt like I was arguing my grade before a judge who had already decided I was guilty. Like even if you're right, you're still wrong. You know it and the judge knows it, but what are you going to do about it? It's his courtroom.