A Lion's WELCOME

Welcome to my blog on ALL things to do with CHEM 233 at UBC including tips on good study habits and information about the course that I believe will give you a greater shot at success at this course. Please understand that my aim is not to simply cater to those who just want to pass this course, but help students who want to achieve and stand out make it. Whether you just want to pass CHEM 233 or whether you want to be the top of your class, I got something valuable to offer you. As you'll realize after reading my blog, most people don't fail CHEM 233, but they end up with a disappointing mark. My goal is to push you and bring your awareness to a new level of thinking that will hopefully resonate with you and transform into true mastery and success in this course.

If you want details on how the tutoring program will run and what exactly it involves, please scroll down to the last posting on this blog to find that information.

The Importance of the Big Picture and the question WHY

As you move onto 3rd year and beyond, you’ll encounter a lot of profs telling you to always look at the bigger picture. Quite simply, a lot of people don’t realize the power of this – to see everything from a bird’s eye view. In business schools everywhere, profs always ask their students what the “bottom line” is after a detailed discussion of some idea or concept. And a lot of times, most of the class sits there flabbergasted in silence without an answer. You have the few who see the big picture right away and as a result summarize all the details into one clear statement that everyone can understand as soon as they hear it. I’m sure all of you have experienced this before sitting in your classes whether they be business or science courses. At that very moment, you realize the power of reducing everything down to its most core and basic principle – a straightforward rule that anyone can grasp. And this is what sets those who score 90%+ in courses as opposed to everyone else. Anyone can study hard and get themselves all prepped up for their exam, but few can elevate their understanding beyond the superficial memorization and understanding of doing problems.

Seeing the big picture also goes hand-in-hand with knowing WHY something is. And I don’t just mean understanding WHY the concept is the way it is or why you do that problem like that. I mean WHY the hell are you learning this in the first place in this course. These are two very different things. To put it in perspective for all of you, let’s take an example to show you what I mean. BIOL 201. Why are there that many extra ATP made going through the TCA cycle? Next question you should ask: Why are we even bother learning the TCA cycle? I always constantly ask myself this question when I’m studying. WHY, WHY, WHY am I learning this? To give you some urgency on this matter, most of us only have about 21,170 days to live (if average life expectancy is 80 and most of us are in our early 20s). Life is precious and finite. If we are using up our life to learn something, it better be for a good reason and I better know why exactly I’m learning this stuff. As normal human beings, we’re always asking why to our friend’s facebook status says “John is feeling sad” or why to buying something when we’re making a purchase with our own money. But as students, we have been so accustomed to rote learning and exam mentality that has killed our interest in learning and always asking WHY we have to learn this. The A+ student always realizes the PURPOSE of learning something. Once you have reduced everything down to its core idea and knows its purpose, you can quite easily create a mental map of the entire course in your head and connect all the dots.

Tips to Improve your studying habits for CHEM 233 and beyond

1. Never leave CHEM 233 for last minute if you want to do well. This is not one of those courses where you just keep attending lectures all term, and then finally decide to put in some effort before the midterm and final. Speed and accuracy is part of the game when midterms come. And speed and accuracy can only be achieved with practice and time until you reach a level you’re comfortable with.
2. Spend less time in the SUB sippin’ on Starbucks and chatting with your friends and do some practice problems instead. As President Obama says, ‘we can’t get something for nothing. We all gotta’ sacrifice a bit.’
3. When you’re studying, always think BIG PICTURE.
4. In the winter session as opposed to the summer session, you got time on your side. So that means you can actually crack open that thick text book of yours. My advice to you, DO NOT study the text book fully. No one has time to do this unless they live on campus and seclude themselves from all social life. ONLY use the text book when you’re in desperation of guidance as you’re studying/reviewing/doing problems, if you want to clarify something in your class notes or your prof speaks in Hebrew. My notes are usually messy, so a text book really helps because the reactions are drawn and laid out so neatly.
5. Form study groups. This is not my personal style, but some people says this works, so I’ll say it too. I believe study groups only work in certain contexts.
6. If you start out with a negative attitude towards organic chem, you’re going to hate it all throughout the term. You’ll never be great at something if you have a genuine displeasure in doing it. So I say, even if you detest CHEM 233 with every nerve in your body, pretend you like it and SMILE.
7. On the previous note, if you force yourself to smile as you’re studying and doing practice problems, you’ll actually psychologically accustom your brain to liking and associating CHEM 233 with happy wonderful things in your life. Contrary to what you think, according to the book BLINK by Malcom Gladwell, scientific studies have shown that the process of being happy doesn’t start from an external stimulus that then translates into a smile on your face, it is rather the physical action of smiling that tells the brain you’re happy. People who force themselves to smile more for no reason are happier and less depressed. WIERD!
8. And of course, in promotion of my tutoring program, if you need help or you want to stay ahead of the game, e-mail me at tsangt@interchange.ubc.ca and SIGN ON UP!

So what`s this business about a ToolBox Method?

So I was sitting around with my friend’s really young daughter one day. And of course, I asked her who her favourite cartoon character was. She gave me two answers: Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder. These are two very popular kids shows among our youngest children. For those of you who don’t know who Bob the Builder is, he’s just a friendly cartoon character named Bob and he builds things. But what I remember about Bob the Builder the most is that he always carried with him a tool box full of useful tools.And that is where I drew my inspiration for the highly revered teaching concept I dubbed the “ToolBox Method.” My students always ask me why I found CHEM 233 easy and how did I do well in it. Well, to tell you the truth, I never found it easy. I can only say it was easy now that I’m done with it and I succeeded, but I had to struggle thru it just like anybody else had to back then. So, I sat down one day and thought about exactly what was going through my mind in 2nd year when I was studying this course in particular. And I actually came up with something that anyone could use. You’d be surprised that you don’t need to be a genius to make this work for you. The ToolBox method is a pretty systematic and universal approach that most students can master and use to their advantage. One of my students said he could make his own tool box and doubted what I was doing was anything different, but after he attended my lesson (I usually wrap up everything with the final lesson on this ToolBox Method), he realized it was well worth his time to listen in on my mentality. So of course, I’m not going to give it away here. If you want to see the ToolBox method in action for yourself, register yourself for the CHEM 233 Continuous Tutoring Program!

WHY is CHEM 233 so hard?

Here’s my take on why students find CHEM 233 so hard and impenetrable. Personally, I think that UBC Organic Chem is one of the 2nd year courses that reflects the difficulty level of a 3rd year course in the sciences. Of course, Organic Chem is a very different from other courses content-wise, but the same general principles that dictate the “toughness” of the course still rings true. Remember how in first year, some of your profs told you that in order to be successful, you cannot rely on memorization alone anymore to achieve that high mark, but rather you need a complete and total understanding of the course and all the concepts as well (a.k.a. critical thinking). I majored in Microbiology so my 3rd year level courses cannot speak for everyone, but I saw a transition from 1st and 2nd year where you need less memorization and more critical thinking to 3rd and 4th year where you need BOTH memorization and critical thinking at extreme levels in order to succeed. And that’s why so many 2nd year students are caught off guard in CHEM 233. They treat it like any other 2nd year course where memorization can be relied on still quite heavily. For the first time in University - especially students with all their AP high school prep who developed a complacent stance on University courses having seen things before they were taught - they meet something totally new and challenging. This course is called a “weeder course” for a reason. They use it as an indicator of who has what it takes to thrive in science at least in this limited context. Who has developed a mature awareness and outlook on how one should properly attack a course in University? Just think of it as UBC doing you a favour - giving you a heads up on future years to come. And who doesn’t like a challenge sometimes? BRING IT!

I find a lot of students memorizing for the wrong reasons. You shouldn’t memorize for the sake of knowing how to do a question on the exam that you had encountered before in your practice questions. In upper year level courses, you memorize for the sake of learning a new language and becoming totally comfortable in conversing with it so when you’re sitting at your final exam, you actually know what the question is asking. I tell a lot of my students, really spend some time memorizing and getting to know the “organic chem language” as you’re doing your homework and studying throughout the term. This will make life a lot easier and you’ll be more intelligent in your conversations about organic chem between your classmates, profs and tutors. It makes for more efficient learning when you at least know the terms down well and have a decent understanding and picture in your head of what a word represents physically (ie. you know that a cube means a 3-D box with sides of all equal length, so why can’t you tell me what a alpha beta unsaturated enone is after you learn it?) My tip for you - translate words into physical meaning that you yourself can see in your head.

Putting you in the know

Despite what rumours you have heard about organic chemistry, if you look at the grade distribution trends from 2002 to 2008 (I only went back as far as 2002 because pre-2002 CHEM 233 was originally comprised of CHEM 231 and 232 taken over 2 terms), I think that you have less to worry about failing than achieving a low disappointing mark in the end. Here, I have spent some time looking at past grade distributions for this course and compiled some simple stats about CHEM 233 so you don't have to go through the trouble yourself of looking through it all. I am by no means a STATS expert, but I'd like to share these interesting finds with you.


FYI, the average mark for every year is taken from averaging all the sections of CHEM 233 in that year combined (there's about 1200 students taking CHEM 233/year). As you can see with the graph above, there is clearly a steady and strong rise towards a higher overall average in CHEM 233. Students in recent years are doing better than they were a few years back. However, the average still seems low at its best of 66% last year. This rise is a good sign and can be attributed to profs realizing how to better teach the course, the trimming down of course content (what you have to learn now is only a fraction of what students had to know in 2002), more students being aware of the perils of CHEM 233 and perhaps pre-studying before the term starts, or the one we would like to believe which is that students of younger generations are increasingly becoming smarter and smarter. I didn't show the standard deviation error bars, but just to tell you, the deviations of grades around the means have remained quite constant at around +/-15% from the reported yearly averages. The grades overall are improving, however, we still have the problem of too great a spread in marks from 0% all the way to 100%. Hopefully, this great spread will be reduced over the years as students take on better personal studying habits and profs become better at teaching the course. Now let's look below at the failure rate trends from 2002-2008.

FYI, the failure rate was calculated by taking the total number of people who failed divided by the total number of students enrolled in that year. As you can see, the failure rate was at its highest at about 30%. Last year, the failure rate had been significantly reduced to only 14%. So despite what you heard from rumours, there isn't really a massacre of students' dreams and hopes. What's true is that a lot of students fail their midterm(s), but once it's all settled, most students pass. The biggest problem in reality is that you end up with a lot of students who pass but are extremely disappointed at their marks because a CHEM 233 mark is usually lower with respect to other course grades. I can help you correct that.

Despite what you think, UBC does NOT want you to fail. It'll actually cost UBC more to fail you in terms of cost efficiency in student turnover. More students failing means more empty spots in upper year courses. UBC makes less money by having a prof teach below the maximum capacity a classroom can hold at a given time. With the 2010 Winter Olympics around the corner, UBC is undergoing massive proliferation in construction and renovations and that's going to cost lots of moolah. UBC needs more students passing and more tuition revenue. This notion that UBC doesn't want you to fail may be totally false, but heh, who cares? I love rumours!

Welcome UBC CHEM 233 student!

Trevor Tutors CHEM233 introduces...

CHEM 233 Continuous Group Tutoring Winter 2009

Hi CHEM 233 Student! (Beware, this is a long read)

My name is Trevor and I’m a UBC student who graduated with a Major in Microbiology and Immunology in 2008. I received my Masters in Management at Sauder School of Business in 2009. And I have recently been accepted into UBC Medical School Class of 2013. I will be offering small group tutoring for CHEM 233 Organic Chemistry. This course is infamous for significantly lowering GPA averages which threatens your 2nd year success and thus your chances into getting into your preferred 3rd year majors. Moreover, your success and understanding in the course will also become important when it comes to professional school applications (ie. Med school, Dentistry, Pharmacy etc.)

THE EVIL HISTORY OF CHEM 233

CHEM 233 is considered to be a “weeder” course to separate and identify the students who are not necessarily geniuses, but who actually know how to think. It looks very good on one’s transcript to do well in this course when the class average every year ranges from 50-60% (and that’s a fact). You have your few students who do amazingly well in the course and you have the majority who cannot seem to find success in the course no matter how hard they try. Many students fail because of a very simple reason and I know exactly why after talking to many science students and my classmates. I will tell you that reason and help you to avoid doing poorly in the course as most people do. You may be surprised to know that even in my class of Microbiology major students (which is composed of many of the brightest and hard working students in UBC science), there were people who hated organic chemistry (or in other words, they achieved a low mark in the course). Don’t get me wrong, there were lots of students among this bright group who did well in CHEM 233 too, and after talking to them, I noticed the difference that made someone an A- person in the course or an A+ person.

After the midterm which everybody claims they have studied their hearts out for, you will find massive disappointment from the majority of your classmates. This has never changed over so many years that it has become a cliché. I recall when I was taking the course, the discussion board was pretty empty leading up to the midterm, but as soon as the marks were out, there were like 500 posts on the discussion board with post after post of complaints that the midterm was unfair (too many questions, too little time) and the whole course was bonkers. Students wrote essays on the posts (and I kid you not) proclaiming their God-given right to have high marks and “nothing less than an A ever in their life.” Many students were also in complete denial of their sudden failures saying that it could not be possible because they “play on a hockey team, do many extracurricular activities and do excel in all aspects of academics.” Another student thought it was very clever (feeling fully confident in his statistical skills from STATS 200 Intro to Stats) to establish a statistical proof that the class average on the midterm cannot possibly be below 50% and undoubtedly stating that the likelihood of him scoring a 50% on the midterm was not statistically possible given his usual A+ standard in ALL of his other courses. I could go on and on, but I won’t. To be honest, reading all these posts was extremely amusing to me and it raised my awareness as to how many people were still so full of themselves even after a finishing a year already at UBC. What I say to all these people is “Give me a break.” What I noticed is a lot of attitude and no self-humility towards a challenge. This course is so “evil” in fact that you don’t see many people offering to tutor on this subject on a regular basis. Some people do well, but they don’t understand well enough how they do well in the course. I on the other hand know exactly how to do well and it works for almost everyone (not just smart people). You will also have many tutors who offer to tutor the course, but they don’t have the enthusiasm or excitement to get you engaged in the right learning attitude for this course.

THAT’S WHERE I COME TO THE RESCUE

I have LOTS of experience tutoring CHEM 233 in the recent years for UBC students and I am proven to be a very good teacher. I am so familiar with CHEM 233 knowledge and all the tricks, pitfalls and hints because I have been tutoring this course almost exclusively for 5 years now. I am truly confident in my ability to get you to fully understand CHEM 233 and be able to approach any question with a systematic and logical way of thinking. Once you establish the right approach and mindset to deal with the questions, answering any question no matter how twisted it is can be is possible as you will encounter such questions on the exams. I scored the highest grade in my CHEM 233 class at 93% over the class average of 51% (I scored an 80% on my midterm, but ended by scoring a perfect final exam) where everyone agreed the professor was not very effective in teaching the course. In fact, only about 30 out of the 250 students in the class ever showed up for our class. Overall, I scored in the top 0.1% of all the CHEM 233 sections combined in the whole 2nd year science class.

MY APPROACH

My approach to doing well does not involve blaming the teacher and boycotting “useless” lectures. In fact there is a huge misconception that has been plaguing generations of science students that if the professor sucks, you shall too. The professor may in fact be incapable of explaining the material clearly and give you difficult exam questions to make it even worse, but that is NO EXCUSE that you do poorly. It’s about time we mature as University students and take the proper approach to scoring well in a course. I guarantee you I am NOT a genius. I am a very simple minded person and I make difficult things easy for me by translating everything I see to “ABC, 123 language.” I do well in the toughest science courses at UBC and in my major because I have the right mindset in learning and approaching the courses. Call me crazy, but CHEM 233 was my favourite course at UBC because I was so successful at working through it. I am a very energetic person and I teach with a serious and friendly attitude. I will make CHEM 233 easy for you. I never waste your time telling you stuff you don't need to know because that's the natural way I think. I believe I have the ability and confidence to destroy old misconceptions about this course and make this course “student friendly”, something UBC has failed to do from the beginning of time as we know it. This is my goal and my mission. No other tutor out there in any of those tutoring institutions has that mindset and can match my ability to teach CHEM 233 effectively.

SO WHAT SETS MY TUTORING APART FROM THE COMPETITION?

What I am offering is a new concept called “Continuous Group Tutoring” or CGT for short. That means we don’t meet for tutoring days or a week before the midterm and final like what most tutoring services offer or what you choose to do for the matter. Something that I have learned the hard way is that mastering CHEM 233 does not happen days or within weeks before the exams. It takes constant commitment and effort right from the start. And sometimes, it is hard to put in so much commitment into one course not only because of our busy schedules as students but also because it’s hard to stay committed when you’re not absolutely sure you’re on the right studying track.

So in order to save your time and effort to study in the most constructive and effective way possible, I am offering this new tutoring system which will most definitely help you achieve a higher mark in this course. In groups of 10-15 students, we will meet for 2 hours at the end of every week to go over all the material that the professor had just covered that week. During the meet, I will also give you ideal practice problems and equip you with all the necessary hints/tricks in mastering that section of your notes (stuff your professor wants you to figure out on your own and takes away lots of precious time). You are also free to ask questions or concerns out loud while I am speaking.

For non-believers of this new tutoring system, I have ran this concept in the recent CHEM 233 winter 2008 course and summer 2009 course and I have received great feedback on the effectiveness of this program structure. When asked if their learning was inhibited by learning in small groups versus individual private tutoring, they said that learning in groups actually benefitted them because important questions were asked and helped them to see the material in different lights. Group learning is also helpful because different students bring up important things that I may have overlooked or were not aware of for particular classes/professors.

DO I TUTOR PRIVATELY?

Some people in fact didn’t want to tell others how good I was in order to keep me all to themselves. Unfortunately, I will never be tutoring privately 1-on-1 anymore due to the increasing demand of students and my lack of time. Due to my lack of time, my sister also had to attend my group lessons when she completed CHEM 233 last year.

HOW THE PROGRAM WILL RUN

I will take a maximum of 4 groups of students (about 40 students with 10 students per group). I will meet with each of the 4 groups once per week for 2 hours. From past experience, it is wise for you to join one cohort and stick with its schedule for the whole term to keep with the right pace/lecture material covered. If you cannot make your scheduled day for good reason, you must e-mail me ahead of time so somebody else can take your spot. On these occasions, I will allow you to attend another time slot that week. It is most important that you keep on your scheduled date and not deviate as it will cause chaos for the other students. In that case, you will lose your spot in my class.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED!

If you’re interested, send me an email at tsangt@interchange.ubc.ca
1) Name
2) What year you are in (1st, 2nd etc.)

Once I have you registered, I will e-mail all of you with timely updates regarding confirmed lesson times and location. I will try my best to accomodate as many people as possible as I understand everyone has different timetables.

SESSIONS WILL START hopefully in THE 2nd Week of school depending on how fast you guys respond to me. The winter version of CHEM 233 moves at a somewhat slower pace than what you encounter taking it in the summer -which is a good thing - but sometimes the slowness becomes ineffecient in terms of teaching and students unlucky enough to get the bad profs will find that they are behind when finals come. The winter session also spends much more time (1st week and a half usually) on review at the beginning which I find kinda pointless cause most of that stuff isn't tested anyway on the 1st midterm. My sessions will actually put you ahead of the class a little bit every week in terms of material understanding so when you spend time in class learning, you're actually catching on and you're not wasting your time with your professor. Pre-reading before class has been proven to significantly increase comprehension and course performance. However, most students can't find time to do this. This is where my lessons come in handy. My past group of students I worked with were always on the ball.

There are about 1300 students taking the winter course 5 sections combined. My spots will fill up fast because many people are serious about doing well in this course. This is a very unique opportunity for all of you CHEM 233 students. No other generation of CHEM 233 students have gotten a chance to reap the benefits of such a program and learn from someone who is extremely confident with CHEM 233 over an extensive period of time.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT TREVOR

Trevor Tsang most recently graduated with a Master of Management from the Sauder School of Business 2009. Last year, he graduated with a Bachelor in Science in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of British Columbia. Just recently, he was accepted into UBC Medical School and will start his 1st year studies in the Vancouver-Fraser Medical Program on UBC campus. He lived in Burnaby his whole life and still lives with his family (it’s time to move out, but it’s amazing the amount of time and money you save living at home). He attended Notre Dame Regional Secondary high school in Vancouver where being smart and hardworking was not “cool” back in the day. He has discovered a love for business, managing people and optimizing processes after completing his business program. For the past years, he has been working as a research assistant in UBC's Life Science Centre aiding in the search for potential cancer drugs using high-throughput screening microscopes and yeast models.

In his spare time, Trevor enjoys reading non-fiction/business books, photography and style. He also enjoys kung-fu, running, biking and hiking. Trevor has also been the President of the UBC Cancer Association last term, a student-run organization on campus that raises awareness on cancer and holds fundraisers including our successful and annual “Cuts for Cancer” event. The club takes donations of hair 10 inches or longer and sends them off to Angel Hair for Kids in Ontario, a company that makes wigs for cancer patients suffering from hair loss as a result of chemotherapy. If you are interested in helping out to organize, joining the UBC Cancer Association or donating please visit our new website http://www.cutsforcancer.net/