Reflection On Pre-AP Chemistry

I stared blankly at the paper that had been returned to me. The first quiz of the year, and I had failed it. Although I was disappointed, I wasn’t shocked. I had suspected that I wouldn’t do too well because I barely understood the new material. It was the beginning of my Sophomore year in High school, and I immediately despised my new Pre-AP Chemistry class. I found the concepts we began to learn very frustrating, and completely confusing. I considered switching to the on level class, as many of the other students had done, but I hesitated, not willing to give up just yet. Even though learning Dimensional Analysis and the names of different lab equipment was seemingly useless and a bore to me, as the year went on I learned how wrong I was,

I began to pay closer attention in class, and frequently asked the teacher questions. In the next unit, I learned how to name chemicals based on their formulas, and how to write the formulas just by looking at the name. I practiced vigorously, determined to get a better grade, but I began to realize that I actually enjoyed doing it. When I took the quiz on naming chemicals, I was overjoyed (and a little surprised) to see that i got an A. I looked at the paper with pride, and from then on, I realized that I would enjoy learning about chemistry. But to my despair, in Autumn, Dimensional Analysis returned. However, this time we used it for stoichiometry, using it to determine the amount of moles or grams of an element or formula. After using dimensional analysis in a way that made sense to me, I began to like it. It was surprisingly interesting, and even a little fun to use it so that I could find out the amount of chemical used up in a reaction. When we began doing lab experiments, I quickly discovered that testing a hypothesis and then analyzing the results was my favorite thing to do, and I became a perfectionist when writing my lab reports. Pre-AP Chemistry soon began my favorite class, rather than my least favorite as it had been during the beginning of the year, and I began to look forward to learning chemistry. At the end of the year, I was proud to receive an A for the second