<p>So I was talking with a junior at UCSD that stated, “The best advice I could give you is to change your major. If you want to get in do Med school, just take up Philosophy or something and your life will be that much less stressful.” Also, he stated that everybody cheats. Said that there was no way to do well without cheating. He said that you won’t make it unless you get in touch with somebody that has already gone through it all and get all their work (labs, old tests, etc.). He said that while he was a freshman, he actually did the labs himself which were about three pages long and received “Cs” on them. His friends got in touch with other kids and basically copied their old labs which were something like ten pages long and got “As.” He said that one must resort do doing so because the Professor don’t really tell you how to write lab reports. They just make you do the lab and say, “Now, write a lab report.” So I’m wondering, what is it really like being a Biochemistry/ Chemistry major and whether there is any truth in what this guy says.</p>
<p>Well … that’s a lot of stuff to cover, but I think you were talking to a pretty bitter student right there. </p>
<p>So a little bit about me: I was a chem/biochem major and graduated in 2006, and again in 2007 with my MS from the same department. I TAed for 12 quarters, and had plenty of opportunity to observe the layout of the major. The major was perfect for me – it was really interesting, I had lots of friends, the professors were generally really good and approachable, and never once did I even contemplate switching to another major.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Not everybody cheats. Most people don’t. Cheaters will exist at every school, and you’ll have professors who care and those who don’t. As a TA, one of my favorite activities during exam proctoring was playing “find the cheater” with the other TAs. Suffice it to say, I got really good at it. One of my victims got kicked out and transferred to Emory with a very ugly blemish on his academic record. It’s not worth it.</p></li>
<li><p>The lab your friend’s referring to is Chem 6BL. Back in the days when Ian Ball taught it, labs NEVER CHANGED and the undergrad graders adhered to a strict grading rubric that stressed unnecessary topics. So as the quarters would pass, it became a tradition that old [graded] labs kept being passed down from class to class. Those who had no upperclassman friends were definitely deprived. But Ian Ball’s since left, and I haven’t heard how the new person is faring. I managed to set the curve in my class of 300 people, but I admit that I had old labs that helped me get there. That class was poorly designed from the beginning. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>So in my time as a chem/biochem major, I had a number of really really smart friends in my class – none of whom cheated. They just studied a lot, worked hard (all had research labs taking up 20+ hours a week outside of classes), and still managed to have fun. Just thinking of a few, here’s where they are right now:</p>
<ul>
<li>UCSF MD/PhD</li>
<li>UCSF PhD, biomedical sciences</li>
<li>UCSF Pharmacy (x4)</li>
<li>UCSD MD</li>
<li>UCSD Pharmacy (x3)</li>
<li>BU MD/PhD</li>
<li>UCD MD</li>
<li>UCD PhD, chemistry</li>
<li>NY College of Medicine MD</li>
<li>MIT PhD, chemistry (x2)</li>
<li>Harvard PhD, biology</li>
<li>Caltech PhD, biology (x2)</li>
<li>Columbia PhD, pharmacology (me!)</li>
</ul>
<p>"one of my favorite activities during exam proctoring was playing “find the cheater”</p>
<p>“I managed to set the curve in my class of 300 people, but I admit that I had old labs that helped me get there.”</p>
<p>Too bad your classmates didn’t have someone to help them, “find the cheater.”</p>
<p>I don’t think they needed to – I might even be generous when I estimate about 75% of all Chem 6BL students have access to old labs. Ian Ball used to leave the graded labs outside his office, so if you were sitting outside and waiting for office hours, there was nothing to stop students from rifling through the graded labs of quarters past. (Other profs prevent this by mandating that students return the reports after viewing them.)</p>
<p>The passing-on of lab reports in Chem 6BL is one of those unfortunate traditions that persist due to a) student connections, b) the unchallenged truth that those with lab reports have a portion of the answer key, and c) total apathy on the part of the professor to enforce any sort of no-copying rules. </p>
<p>Example of the latter: When I was a grader, I noticed that two girls had identical introductions and conclusions, with the only changes being to insert their appropriate calculations results. Otherwise, it was word-for-word, paragraph-for-paragraph. I looked them up on facebook and saw that they both lived in the same suite in Warren. When I took it to Ian Ball, expecting him to give them both zeros on the report, he just shrugged and told me to subtract ten points for each section they copied each other. He did nothing else.</p>
<p>With 6BL, the ones who denounce the sharing of labs are usually the ones who weren’t privy to such handouts. When students would ask for advice in Chem 6BL (I was a 6B TA), I only had two comments: to score old labs and to study old exams. They’re all sad truths, but they’re all truths.</p>
<p>“With 6BL, the ones who denounce the sharing of labs are usually the ones who weren’t privy to such handouts.” </p>
<p>I’m one of those people… Still got an A without them, though… It just took much, much longer to do so…</p>
<p>Ah, thanks so much. This gives me much renewed hope for UCSD and being a Biochemistry/ Chemistry major.</p>