1st day back from the break and my most dreaded midsem result got handed back. Normally I wouldn’t be so happy with an 80% (leftover biomed WAM farming perfectionism), but since this is the inorganic midsem we’re talking about, I was elated. Many people have noticed that their marks were boosted and I definitely though I only got 60% maximum too, so scaling probably saved the day. Last year’s midsem for this unit was apparently even more insane with the top mark being 34/40 (with no one’s results being scaled up)
Billzene's catalytic isomerisation to benzene (aka Bill's Uni Journal Take 2)
7 days later
Exam timetables are out, luckily I don't have a repeat of the midsem situation with phys chem and inorg chem on the same day. What's better is that all my exams are in the afternoon, which is tailored to a night owl like me.
I'm most worried about inorg chem because my in sem grades are the lowest for that subject due to the difficult midsem we sat (and strict marking in the lab component). In addition, I heard from past students that the final will be absolutely cooked and practice materials are not very indicative of the actual exam. Sounds like the situation with CHM1022 when I did it.
Luckily, none of the chem exams are hurdles and for med chem + phys chem, since the in-sem assessments are worth 60% of the total grade, as long as I get above 83% in sem, I pass the unit. MTH1020 will not be an issue at all since Dan will allow a cheat sheet, effectively making it open book.
Week 1 Monday: phys chem
Week 2 Wednesday: med chem
Week 3 Monday: inorg chem
Week 3 Wednesday: calculus (MTH1020)
From here, my study plan would be to grind for phys chem during SWOTVAC, grind for med chem right after phys chem, grind for inorg intermittently between phys and med chem (due to overlaps in content), and YOLO MTH1020
11 days later
End of week 9, have 2 assignments due at the end of next week at the exact same time (4:30pm Week 10 Friday). One of them is the radiopharmaceutical assignment on PET imaging for med chem, already finished half of that worksheet, will get help from TAs on the other half.
The comp chem assignment is the hard one, I chose kinetics of RAFT polymerisation as my topic and the results are really easy to analyse since it’s a lot of Excel spamming and plenty of literature is available online. Katya has been super helpful as well. I’m still a bit apprehensive about the assignment, since Katya published many papers on this exact topic herself which means I probably can’t get away with any inaccuracies in my report, everything must be spot on.
I survived 2 weeks of Schlenk line labs in inorg without blowing something up, so I’ll take that as an W. The other day in the lab, the final colour of the product was different for everyone in the lab group despite everyone supposedly following the same method. I had an orange extract, other people have black or bright yellow ones
24 days later
Well and truly into SWOTVAC, have phys chem on Monday afternoon, not pumped at all. Thermo which will be worth 50% of the exam should go pretty well.
Finally figured out how to fiddle around differential equations to survive kinetics, I hope Alison goes easy on us for those because there's no way I'm passing that section of the exam if she throws in competing 2nd order reactions or subsequent 1st and 2nd order reactions. Should get some pity marks for writing a few rate laws that make some remote sense/identifying molecularity/plugging + chugging, but in the worst case scenario that I get 0 on that section, it's only 30% of the exam.
Pretty confident about solid-liquid-gas equilibrium even though I haven't formally revised it. It's the part of the unit that makes the most sense for some reason.
While I haven't really been thinking of my other exams in detail, a brief overview of the med chem content revealed that it's a watered-down version of my biomed units I've taken before, so I'll use part of the gap between phys chem and med chem finals to study for inorg instead. Inorg is scary, I don't even know what's examinable in the organometallics part because there are so many required readings. Luckily I don't need a high score to pass that unit (30% on exam to pass atm, 11% on exam to pass if I get 100% on the last lab report). MTH1020 isn't too optimistic either with only a day's rest between inorg and the MTH1020 exam. I'll aim to pick up all the complex number marks, half of the vector marks, 80% of functions/calculus marks and I'll forget about limits.
Got last assessments marks back for phys and med chem, already passed these units as the exam isn’t a hurdle. Still need 31% to pass inorg, but that should be lower once the last lab report is marked
SWOTVAC pre-exam update: finally going to finish studying for phys chem in a few hours, watched weeks 4-7 lectures of med chem, still have weeks 8, 10-12 to go. Haven't touched inorg, will start studying for that directly after I finish studying for med chem which should take another 2 days after phys chem. Organometallics will end me on the exam.
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First exam done, bullshitted so many questions on phys chem it’s not even funny. Answer fails a sanity check? Still an answer. All questions were of the hard variety and some extended beyond the difficulty of what we covered in sem
9 days later
One more week until I’m free. Med chem exam today went so smoothly, should bag a 90+, maybe even the mid 90s with scaling. Watched all inorg lectures already, only need 16/120 to pass the unit but still want to aim high to save my WAM. MTH1020 has the scary hurdled exam and my mock exam performance varies from 59% to 89% for some reason. Should be better once I have my cheat sheet sorted
5 days later
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Last chem final done, only MTH1020 left. Inorg didn't throw too many revolting questions at us in the final, contrary to its reputation. Maybe because all the revolting stuff got moved to the midsem
Predicted scores (conservative):
Phys chem: 75
Med chem: 90
Inorg chem: 78
Exam season's over, MTH1020 exam was mostly what I expected.
I will start writing unit reviews for the units I've taken this semester. Will publish these on the new forum
13 days later
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Sem 1 chem unit prizes were published a few days ago and I didn't win a single one, gotta take the L when you're handed them.
However, I took a W with timetabling since I managed to secure the perfect sem 2 timetable within 12 hours of Allocate reopening.
Looking forward to taking some more Ws on result day which is less than a week from now
6 days later
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Results are out, so happy that I’m on a 90+ WAM again although it’s technically overkill for teaching school admissions. They definitely scaled up exam for phys chem given how revolting it was. MTH1020 exam got scaled up too because I didn’t do some questions properly and apparently still got the marks. Will be dropping unit reviews later today, but first, I need to catch up on sleep
CHM3911 (phys chem): 87
CHM3930 (med chem): 96
CHM3941 (inorg chem): 87
MTH1020 (calculus): 92
WAM: 90.286, GPA: 4.000
4 months later
Long overdue update after all my exams. This semester my work life balance is much better cuz I was essentially taking 3 organic units, and SCI1000 took no effort. The exams all went really well, so I'm expecting mid to high 90s for all 3 units. Unit reviews are coming right up, will post them when results are released so that I can provide comments on exam scaling.
I've applied for MTeach in early October and sat the new MTest which is Monash's version of the CASPER. Still haven't received an offer though. I heard people are starting to get MTeach offers (probably those who applied early), hopefully that means I'll get it soon.
Definitely will be updating more regularly next year. MTeach looks pretty exciting (especially placements).
Been made a conditional offer to MTeach accelerated mode at Monash, with the only condition being successful graduation of BSci with a WAM of at least 60. Already have that in the bag according to my calculations.
Plans for rest of summer break:
-Get better at driving
-Don’t overeat on Christmas/New Year and Chinese New Year holidays
-Cook everyday
-Sit the LANTITE
13 days later
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Grades got handed back, but I won’t be updating unit reviews until tomorrow because I had to take one of my cats to the vet. She got an abscess while fighting a possum.
CHM2942 (biological chem): 96
CHM2962 (food chem): 96
CHM3922 (3rd year organic chem): 96 + unit prize
SCI1000 (useless compulsory unit): PGO (pass on pass/fail only scale)
Pretty happy to close off undergrad. Will be hounding Monash Connect chatbot for course completion for the next few days
a month later
Exciting stuff Bill! Well done on your results 
Is the plan to still do the MTeach at Monash?
a month later
Billzene
Congratulations on your results!
I'm interested in how CHM3922 went. I'm planning my course map and everyone I've spoken to in lvl. 2 chem units has said they'll definitely be taking adv. inorganic instead, but I'm kinda contemplating adv. organic (I enjoyed the organic section in CHM2911 and thought the experiments were fun despite the lack of grandiose colouration like in inorganic haha)
Also, have you heard of anyone taking CHM3980 (the overseas research project)?
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Daryl Thanks! CHM3922 is probably my favourite CHM unit (tied with CHM3930), I'm writing a unit review for it at the moment. What I can tell you is that it will be very similar to CHM2911 in content and the lecturers you get explain everything in a crystal clear, no rote learning manner. The labs are criminally easy because they're all worksheets (no full reports), you don't get assessed on quality of results and there's a lab quiz worth 40% of each report that's so easy. You literally just watch the lab video, copy down the transcript ad verbatim then control + F for the quiz (which was on lab techniques as opposed to theory). The midsem was really easy with only 1 trick question, but it was on Monday of week 5 examining weeks 1-4 so you can't afford to be behind in the 1st 4 weeks of the unit. The final was very reasonable since it was very similar to the mock exam they give you. The mock was slightly harder than the actual thing, nonetheless it was very indicative and I'd suggest going through worked solutions very carefully even more so than for mock exams in other CHM units.
BTW CHM3941 was the worst CHM unit I've taken and I've taken 10 CHM units, so I'd proceed with caution if I were you or your mates. It would destroy any love of inorganic chem you may have cultivated in CHM2911. The midsem had so many typos that prohibited simplified assumptions, which meant you can't do the questions in the allocated 50 min. There were so many questions with ambiguous wording as well. In the end, about half the cohort failed the midsem with 40% scores even after scaling was applied. I was gossiping with a 2nd year doing a research project in Dave's lab and he admitted to him that he f*cked up when writing the midsem for us and that it won't happen in 2024. Phil's lecture block on organometallics (last 4 weeks) was a trainwreck. His section used to be 6 weeks long a few years ago and he still made us learn 6 weeks of content in 4 weeks. That would've been ok, but he waffles so much during his lectures and assigns many intimidating readings that you don't know what's examinable and you only end up going through 3 weeks of actual content with him due to his tangents. His lecture notes were uninformative. This meant you had to study the other 3 weeks of lecture content by yourself (he had Zoom recordings from 2021). He also didn't pace the lectures very well, with the first 3 weeks being slow and repetitive, while you're bombarded by info in the last week when he realised he can't finish teaching everything in time. The final was mostly reasonable, except there was a heavy focus on stuff he got us to essentially teach ourselves. Also my lab reports were marked really harshly with minimal feedback, but I suspect that's just cuz my TA was strict. Due to all these shenanigans, the top mark in CHM3941 this year was apparently 91, so it's definitely not very WAM friendly
Full CHM3941 review: https://discussion.atarnotes.com/d/8233-monash-university-subject-reviews-thread-20/3
Consider yourselves warned from CHM3941
As for CHM3980, everyone who went enjoyed it, but I was too broke to do it
I'm glad to hear Adv. Organic has a good rep! Just last night, I spoke to someone who took the unit last semester as well, and he had a good impression of the unit too.
This leaves me feeling pretty optimistic for this year as I've picked CHM3930 and CHM3922 for the science half of my double : )
I'll pass the warning along to my friends boarding the Adv. Inorganic train XD. There's already a strong discussion going about picking between materials chem and sustainable chem.
Thanks loads for your detailed review of the units (and for the link to the CHM3941 breakdown)!
Quick last question: which countries did they take CHM3980 in?