Lab Partners

Shitty lab partner stories? I've been really lucky to have cooperative and good-humored lab partners up until this point, but now I'm having problems in chem.
>Have three partners (more than needed for the lab experiment)
>Lab tables are designed to split us up, but we have to work together anyway
>Personally very attentive to detail, cautious about gathering data
>People on the other side of the table just want to barrel ahead in the assignment and get out early
>They end up doing most of the work, and doing it wrong
>I'm only able to get reliable measurements on half the trials
>When I point out that they don't have any methodology, they bitch at me for "not paying attention"
>Being attentive to the variables and measurement techniques is "not paying attention"
>I get fed up and decide that I'll do the whole thing next time, and they can just deal with me being slower

Utterly bizarre, I've never had lab partners before who wanted to rush through everything. It is Gen Chem 1 though. Physics >>> shit >>> Gen chem

That's a lot of people in early chem. There's a lot of people there just taking the class because they need it and have no interest in chemistry whatsoever. Once you get to O Chem though I'm sure you'll have mostly serious people.

>There's a lot of people there just taking the class because they need it and have no interest in chemistry whatsoever
I'm one of those. I guess I'm just surprised because I've gotten used to taking courses that are past the pleb filter.

Ochem can be even worse cause all the bio majors gotta take it. Quantitative analysis is the shit though. Good lab partners all around.

Four person group in gen chem? Weird, we were limited to two-person groups. I did almost all of my labs with an aerospace major that was probably smarter than me. Did 1/3 of my phys labs with him too. Worst lab was titration with a burette, where we went overboard at the end twice in a fucking row.

To contribute another story of stupidity, in a copper lab we were warned that a student last quarter did not wash their hands and asked an instructor the next day if that could be related to throwing up after heading home and eating a sandwich.

Nothing too significant happened ever in front of me.

>good lab partners
>quant
I don't know, man when I took it I got paired up with an Asian premed-fag (minoring in chem I think) who had no interest in working in anything relevant to chemistry/analysis. He sucked dick as a partner, wouldn't communicate, didn't pay attention to anything, etc, etc.

O-Chem is the worst. I came in from a weird angle because I was a math major that did like three years of chem research before changing to Chemistry and taking anything over gen chem.

I think everyone I met had pretty shit lab skills, it's like they didn't even think about what they were doing. Thankfully didn't do much partner work, but these kids were pretty shit, most of them were premed / dent / pre-pharm fags that didn't give one shit about what they were doing.

> Adding water to acid
> Cross contaminating pure reagents
> Not washing glassware before experiment
> Pouring acetone down the drain
> Not writing down data in notebook / doing prelab calculations

I breezed through orgo, quant nearly killed me. Of course I had a shit professor who spoke broken English and constantly contradicted the textbook in favor of "his method"

Adding water to acid / vice versa does not matter. You can see a video of it by codyslab on youtube, just can't be a dick and realize that one of the two has to be rate limiting and control the rate of reaction.

Also in chemistry classes my lab partners always were plebs so I made them my " beaker bitches" they just washed the glass I wanted and fetched me equipment.

Chem Eng labs are good because you don't need partners because you are using massive equipment controller by a computer or a couple valves you can control by yourself!

On the other hand, the design projects we get are nearly impossible with a shitty group if you don't do it all, which gets annoying when you spend 200 hrs or so making simulators to then write papers around 100 pages. Also final course " plant design" is a group project where you need to design a chemical plant and people fail without a solid group, hence why I have my group made ( it's second semester next year)

Tell that to my PI who got a shit ton of face in his face when he tried to quench an acid. Thank God he was wearing a face shield because he just got done with an acid bath.

I was an edgy shit back in Freshman Physics. Because I was too cool to come to class, all I'd do was show up for labs and tests. For whatever reason, I thought I'd be that cool kid who was high every lab. I guess I just didn't want to come off as too much of a nerd because I was fucking up the entire class's curve. I'm sure I was annoying as fuck to my lab group because even though I'd come in high as fuck, I'd still get everything done easily.

Only time I ever had a shitty partner in chem was on my very first lab in general chem. She had absolutely no idea what she was doing, didn't take proper notes/observations, didn't do the pre lab and bitched the entire time about wanting to leave. Thankfully the lab was just a review of titration, so I just did everything myself and she copied my data. All my other partners have been pretty great so far.

Was likely due to one of the many other possible causes - superheated liquid, pouring too fast, etc. If he used the same process reversing the water/base and the acid, same thing probably would have happened.

>53 pages physics lab report
>partner contributed 3 pages
>it includes presentation page and the source page
>discarded all of them because they were full of shit
I'm starting electrical engineering next year. Anyone have good advice on what a decent partner should look like? I've found that women tend to be more responsible but I doubt I'll find any women in EE.

Big fat guys who don't talk much.

I...Oh you won't believe who was my last lab partner who fucked me over.

Forrealsies? All my best partners were big fat quiet guys. Maybe I was just lucky in getting partners that were genuinely interested in the subject.

Had a senior circuits class where we built circuits and did some coding. Was supposed to be groups of 2-3.
My partner dropped the course after about 3 weeks so I ended up doing everything by myself. I prefer it that way. I wirked faster than the other groups and went around helping them after I was done. Got an easy a.

You rang?

I've had good luck for the most part. But I did flat out withdraw from Bio101 because I got stuck with a shitty lab group.

Played the slacker-wrangling game for the first couple of weeks, trying to get the four of us working on our group project. Nobody's contributing shit, I've done all of the preliminary research by myself. About 12 hours before our formal project summary is due, I'm pulling teeth over email trying to get some kind of input from them. Only person to reply says she wants to change our topic.

I gave it about twenty minutes' thought, then wished them luck and withdrew from the class. Didn't need it anyway, ended up settling on EE.

>group projects

>mfw group project is assigned
>mfw me and one other person in the group of 4 are the only people who understand the material
>mfw he's terrible at communication outside of class
Why is the first year of bio riddled with idiots?

I blame it on the premeds that were "good" at science in high school and people that never needed to study before

4 person groups have a fucked up dynamic anyway, even if the people in it aren't useless. Two is ideal, three is pushing it... at four it's hard to strike a workload balance- at least one person ends up with nothing to do.

idk if this counts
>intro to chem
>First semester
>Black girl
>Starts dancing with other black girls
>knocks 6mol HCL from my 300mL beaker
>Gets all in up her hair
>10 seconds of her yelling
>Hand starts to get itchu
>I convince her to wash our hands together
>She works fast food
>Only washes hands for 5 seconds
>Her scalp starts itching
>see a bit of steam
>Acid is reacting with her weave
>Everyone is evacuated from the lab
>She gets in emergency shower
>She starts screaming!
>She never comes back to clas

Why are physics labs much more chill and relaxed than chem labs?

Chem has a lot of stuff that can ruin your day?

>Asian
>shitty communicator
>won't pay attention
>med student

Yep, that sounds like every fucking Asian Doctor I've ever met.

On the subject of groups in general, in one of my programming courses we had a group final to write Pong in C. Class was divided into five-person groups. One of the members of my group never responded - I asked the instructor if he had ended up in a different group and got no response. I took the initiative to divide the project into four parts. Upon receiving general "okays" I completed a working draft of my part in a couple of hours. Two weeks remained from this point.

Let's call the other three group members: Uninterested, Confused, Smarty. Smarty responds by rewriting my C as C++ that does not compile as C. I emphasize that it does not compile, and he says oh. Confused questions how to continue on his part. Uninterested is nowhere to be seen for the rest of the project. As far as I recall, Smarty takes initiative to ignore the functional outline of his part that he had agreed to and take his own approach. Confused gets a quarter into his implementation before giving up.

Spent more time hacking what was given to me together than filling in the missing blanks. Got it to compile the night before. Was embarrassed by the final product and didn't show up to presentation. Got an A.

Moral of the story is, undergrad group projects are always garbage. It's just a way to carry lazy students through and improve course passing rate. One or two people put 3x the work into a product that ends up significantly below what they are capable of, and everyone else gets a free ride.

You don't have to constantly be on the rush to weigh your shit.

>physics
>labs

pick one

Topfucking kek

I'm ~90% certain they are in the right and you're just slow and trying desperately to justify being slow.

The final year group project is an extremely important aspect of your professional education because you have to deal with retarded people everywhere and in every career.

The lessons are
>Be more social and network so you don't end up working with retarded people.
>Learn how to manage retards to force them to contribute without hold their hand.

If you can't do either of these you don't really deserve a good mark anyway.

>be in physics lab
>chillin, doing some RC educational bullshit
>look over at the door
>some fuckin thin, orange mist is coming from under the door
>tell my group
>we tell the instructor
>we evacuate and tell the chem lab to do the same

Later

>Find out it was some high mole bromine liquid that spilled in a fridge
>physics lab smelled like sour chlorine for weeks
>tfw the gas was actually dangerous
>tfw they removed the fridge
>tfw physics lab was never chill again

UTS?

>lab partner died before second lab session
Didn't know the guy enough to care desu

Because Physics labs use mundane objects.

>was
I bet you still are edgy you little stoner shit

Yeah I'll give you the edge, but I don't smoke much at all anymore, so jokes on you buddy.

listen, hospitals charge your insurance companies for 'doctor consultations.' these gooks don't want to have anything to do with americans. they just want to collect a fat paycheck and look up procedures all day with out having to think or apply themselves. I can not fucking wait till they get automated out of a job.

Can confirm, I was (still am) a big fat guy who didn't talk much, but damn it if I didn't know my shit.

The story of all my labs is
"Out of my way let me do this, you fool!"

I told the long version of this here before so the short version was

I literally had a such a high quality data set that the teacher accused me of cheating. I then took out the stack of manuals and proceeded to show her how to properly calibrate the equipment, which was why my data was so accurate compared to everyone including hers.

Another time I missed a lab meeting only to find near the end of the long project that they had omitted a critical step, next two days was me redoing everything so I wouldn't fail because some idiot didn't add a key ingredient in an earlier stage.

The part that drives me nuts is I'm not the smartest, I just work hard, take my time and do things right, which blows everyone else away despite the fact I am often only using high school level concepts.

>be me
>slow as fuck
>hate working with people because I prefer working alone and taking my time
>mind goes blank when trying to talk to other people
>group members hate me because they think I am leeching
>drop the class before getting a W

Did it three times. Twice in Physics I.

I was with you up until >>drop the class before getting a W

I work twice as hard in my spare time to make up for being mute and useless in class.

>codyslab
That guy is a fucking idiot

>> Pouring acetone down the drain
mathematician here, where are you supposed to pour the acetone?

>> Not washing glassware before experiment
don't you do this at the end so that when you start it is clean and you won't have little drops of water in there to mess with your measurements?

>Acetone
You put it in a evaporating dish and let it evaporate.

You wash the glassware before since the people who used it last most likely did a shit job cleaning them.

There is a waste jar, because acetone ruins plastic pipes or something like that.

You clean glassware typically with acetone since it dries very fast and it is nonreactive. Organic chemists use it as their "water" because water might react with what they are trying to synthesize.

>be me
>don't know shit what is going on in lab
>still do decent on the test with Bs
>majority of the class with Cs or Ds

Fucking normies. enjoy your social hour lab garbage. I'll be too busy doing the Chemistry 101 algebra and memorization that this garbage subject is known for. Now excuse me as I solve differential equation problems during my free time for fun.

>The part that drives me nuts is I'm not the smartest, I just work hard, take my time and do things right
>Another time I missed a lab meeting

lmoa

>had big anxiety issues in university, no friends and poor at dealing with people
>get to a second year biochem course
>have to do labwork, we now have to pick a mandatory partner that will last the whole course
>fuck
>everyone partners up, I'm left alone. Get put with this older guy who seems to have some kind of palsy and can't use one side of his body properly but is otherwise a decent sort
>do the labs
>it's really fucking awkward, I'm awkward as fuck in any situation and he's not particularly charismatic or anything, I end up doing a lot of the work and feeling anxious about whether it seems like I'm helping too much or not enough
>somehow manage to get through everything, but the guy really doesn't seem to like me or get involved with the work much, probably because of me
>the final project of the course is some thing where you have to formulate a hypothesis, do an experiment, then take the thing elsewhere to a more accurate machine for an assay
>do it, take it there, the guy doesn't come with me
>the lab instructor I'm going with starts talking about she feels bad for ME, because my partner has no enthusiasm and doesn't do anything
>she wasn't being sarcastic or anything, even though it was almost certainly my fault he ended up that way
>mfw

I didn't bother to correct her. Never saw that guy again after that course either, no idea what happened to him. Ended up flunking out a year later myself due to the aforementioned issues, but damn, that schadenfreude though.

>proud of getting Bs
user, it looks like YOU'RE the Normie.

>Bs in first quarter undergrad courses
>other people are normies because i'm ahead in one subject
what did you even write? i didn't know it was possible for a brainlet to fail to get an A in chem101. way to go.

>giving a shit about getting a good grade in Chemistry.

What's next? You're gonna tell me Pre-Med is hard work?

I didn't feel like memorizing key terms definitions, so I always got 20 points off due to not knowing the definition of a term. I was essentially locked at a B due to those missing points. Did the rest great, though. I was too busy looking at paint dry to give a shit about "muh memorization"

Not at my school (very large and well known engineering school). Everyone in chemistry, biology, biochemistry, chemical engineering, pre-med (not a major, but a few classes to take), and a bunch of other majors I can't think of all need to take O-chem. It took until junior year for most people to drop out of the sciences.

Oh interesting, I was a math major too. I took O-chem for shits and giggles (I wanted to learn all about drug chemistry) and loved it. O-chem lab kind of sucked, but I didn't like most of my labs.

In my O-chem lab we just put it in the liquid waste container. It made a veritable jeffery out of all the chemicals used. Good thing that stuff didn't explode.

it only proves how hard to it is to flank in current education system, you literally have to die in order to do that

hoyl shit just reading this post made me want to kym

Are labs for a grade? Do they affect your GPA?

Lab is like 25% of your overall Grade in chem

Pouring acetone down the drain is where it's at senpai. Or taking it home and setting fire to toilets. Dumping the cleaning fluid down the sinks was fun too. Everyone's bubbles.

It was for a secondary exam worth 10% of my grade in another class as the other professor changed the schedule shortly after starting the other class. It was cleared with all parties involved 43 days in advanced in writing, including my lab partners.

I didn't miss the class because on some failing on my part, I missed it because a college professor couldn't find a simple scheduling conflict till after the class started.

I have had perfect attendance my whole life if such external factors are accounted for. And yes I happened to never to get sick or injured on a work/school day.

Funny enough when I did a synthesis project with my orgo professor I had to add water to HCl, albeit these were on microscale levels

>Helmholtz coils
>hysteresis loops
>ultrasounds
>mundane

umm okay sweetie ;)

I got the full range of orgo lab partners both semesters, and honestly a good partner can make a world of a difference:
>Orgo 1 partner was a Vietnamese immigrant
>Language barrier really messed up communication between us
>Would constantly fuck up procedures due to this
>Thought I was a fucking idiot who can't science but my lab instructor (who would be my lab instructor for orgo 2 as well) was encouraging
>One time I spilled an organic solvent (which by some miracle didn't land on me) coming off reflux because she didn't properly clamp the round bottom flask to the condenser
>mfw she says "user you should have lets me take it off"
>End up getting an okay lab grade since lab instructor was the "nice" (read: easy) one and I would mention all the procedural errors our dumb asses would do in my reports
(Cont.)

Flash forward to orgo 2:
>Orgo 1 partner didn't pass so my risk of getting maimed in lab had already fallen
>Have to choose partner first day of lab, my friends are in the other sections
>Stacie sitting next to me has the same thoughts, it was either me or one of the creepy Indian dudes who are in every orgo class
>Awkwardly turns to me and asks to be partners
>Turns out to be a competent partner who was very organized unlike my sorry ass sophomore year
>Mfw my lab grade shoots up from previous semester, end up getting an entire letter grade higher in orgo 2 compared to orgo 1, and I got to do independent study with lab instructor later
I never worked with a male partner in chemistry since we have a high female to male ratio in the biology major, but females were pretty hit or miss in the lower levels.

What basic shit does a brainlet need to know to not royally fuck up an ochem lab? I'm hopefully taking it for the first time ever in September and I'd rather not fuck someone's shit up because I didn't know basic procedure

>Organic chemists use it as their "water" because water might react with what they are trying to synthesize.
They use it because it dissolves many organic things, you faggot.

Don't plug in heat baskets before you need them.

That's what he was implying retard.

No, it's not.

Acetone is just the cheapest organic solvent.

Honestly orgo labs aren't that tricky, my lab instructor compared it to cooking with a recipe book. Just communicate what you're doing with your partner(s) and you will be fine, most of my issues in orgo 1 lab just came from not being able to effectively communicate

I'm doing biomed at uni in UK, just about to start third year but last semester I snapped a microscope slide because this stupid sket didn't bother cleaning the oil off the 100x. She then reported me not to our lecturers or Tech's but to fucking high up uni admin Wankers, for 'damaging equipment'. I had to go and fucking demonstrate how to set up, do Koehler illumination and identify some cells to prove I'm not a complete fuckwit despite having achieved firsts consistently throughout the year. She later got struck off the accredited course for squirting e.coli at someone and had to resit the entire year

More fucktards transferred to my uni in second year. I had to teach this girl who was doing fucking microbiology to use a microscope because she was too busy sucking dick to pay attention or understand the 7 step guide next to her

>She later got struck off the accredited course for squirting e.coli at someone...
She...what the fuck?

>be me
>group of 4
>big Japanese guy, me, and 2 sort of smart but generally responsible
>big fat guy never says a word all semester, never does any work, never helps us at all
>he just sits there multiplying big numbers together by hand like an autist
>assign him a portion of our end of year presentation for the lab
>never shows up again
I'd personally avoid big fat guys who don't say much desu senpai

>being proud of not learning the lingo of a field
>not being a brainlet

That shit isn't even something you have to memorize, it should be picked up quickly enough through practice

>I'm too good to learn general chemistry definitions
You're going to make it really far man

>solving ODE
>difficult

select one

Physics 1 lab partner was a fucking tard. Literally couldn't do basic math.

There was a question like:

The volume of a cube with edge length 6cm = ____ cm^3

He wrote "6" because he said the ^3 carried over to the right side already.

I didn't say I was proud. I said I didn't give a shit. Being proud would mean that I gave some shit, but I didn't. Why should I give a shit about learning the lingo about some undergrad course that I won't ever have to take ever again? It's like taking Philosophy 101. Completely meaningless. I could understand if I were a chemical engineer or my field was Chemistry related, but I am not. Of course, I would learn the lingo and everything within my field because what I learn within my field would be used daily in my career. In a Chemistry 101 course? Why would I give a shit? I am a computer engineer major. If you can tell me why it would be important to me to learn the lingo for a Chemistry class and what job fields those would entail then I will open up my chemistry book and learn the lingo right now. Heck, I still have the notes, so I can open those up, too.

I remember that post. Do you have any more stories?

Never ruin an apology with an excuse faggot

I can't even process the logic behind this.

The volume of a cube with side length 6 cm is (6cm)^3

Well, some people don't even deal with units and what they mean. Not many people remember elementary Math and when one goes through their undergrad Math, they do not even deal with units and their meaning. Professors just assume that people should know what cm^3 or how much is a meter, etc. Truth is that when people go into their Chemistry and Physics courses, some people are dealing with units that intertwine with numbers.