This unit was definitely not as bad as what the other reviews make it out to be. Definitely not good for an elective, but HD able with fair effort. I had never done chemistry in highschool, only did CHEM1003 before this, and still most lectures were understandable straight away. Proteins and organic chemistry were the hardest topics, especially organic chem. That being said, after I studied them for a while it was fine. Just make sure to have a good notes/study system and try not to fall behind because there are topic quizzes along the way (not too hard quizzes but require study). I thought the exam was great, mostly easy questions, anyone who paid attention and did some study could get 80+ easily. Some lecturers weren’t great but it wasn’t so detrimental.

More difficult than I anticipated but not impossible. Loved the lipids lectures, the instructor was clear on what she wanted us to know. Lots n lots of content. Workshop questions were extremely helpful.

Hard but not impossible. It really annoys me how 70% of the content isn't even assessed in the exam. The exam is a mixture of super easy MCQs and highly specific SAQs. The practice exam and workshop questions are a great indication of the MCQ section. SAQs require some thinking, but most of them were fair. Except the one on proteins. Seriously, why the hell was THAT the SAQ??? Such an unfair question. I wish it was on enzyme kinetics instead. Objectively the protein lecturer was not good. Unpassionate and doesn't explain things well. Please get Liz Quail to replace him.

The online quizes and the labs are pretty easy to get around a 90% on. However, make no mistake, this unit is the worest I have taken to date. Announcements are constantly uploaded with incorrect information. Many of the lecturers have 0 enthusiasim and the final exam was completely unreasonable. The difficulty didn't match that of the practice exam. Topics that were discussed for whole lectures weren't assesed but some subtopics that were taught once for a few seconds were assesed. They lecturers also did't seem to know what will be assesed. For example, we were told to memorise the 1 letter codes for the amino acids multiple times, but they were not assesed in the final exam, quizess, were not even brought up in the workshops. In fact, they were never even mentioned again despite the fact we were told to memorise them multiple times. There were also many inconsistancies with the exam content taught and the content assessed. For enzyme energy diagrams, we used different terminology. But also for other things. For exampe, the lecturer went out of her way to state that amino acids are ALWAYS in terms of D or L, but then the exam presented them as S and R. I performed well in this unit, but as a result of stress and hard work, not because the teaching was good. And the fact that instructions was constantly misleading and that content was taught poorly (except for in carbohydrates) made the unit 10 times more difficult and time consuming than it really is. Overall, i would avoid this unit.

Ignore every single one of these reviews. Hard work still pays off in this unit. Most people in my cohort were averaging 80-98% before the exam. If you understand the tests, workshop questions and practice exam then you’ll be fine. No major surprises in the final exam either. Didn’t enjoy Charlie or Zoya’s lack of enthusiasm, but Liz, Alice, and Peter were all brilliant lecturers. Wouldn’t recommend this unit as an elective, but it was pretty interesting.

This unit is seriously the worst unit I have ever taken. The content is ridiculously hard and filled to the brim. You will dedicate an insanely disproportional amount of time on this one unit compared to others with little return on time investment. This unit will definitely be mentioned in some "notes"

Its an interesting unit but messy. Labs can be confusing and easily don't work as planned, but demonstrators are helpful and know their stuff. For the lectures, there is too much to learn in little time for this unit. BTW, If you don't know organic chem quite well, lecturer Gavin will turn you off right at the very start. He had no enthusiasm and would rather be in his research lab. So many academics give lectures, nearly a million of them . But seriously there are too many people involved. On the bright side, lecturers Liz, Peter and Thomas are great teachers and their humour and enthusiasm keep you going , Alice is good too! Gavin, on the other hand was the worst. CHARLIE, OMG, Charlie... I didn't know they could stack sh..t that high( he's about 220 cm tall).

The reviews for this unit make some good points but are really unhelpful to anyone taking this unit in the future... This unit is well organized and covers some fundamental biochemistry concepts. Regardless of that, I really can't say that I enjoyed this unit at all. There are 7 lecture topics: (1) organic chemistry, (2) carbohydrates, (3) lipids, (4) amino acids, (5) proteins, (6) nucleic acids, and (7) cell function. Most of the topics have one-attempt quizzes which are tricky but not too hard. But they do not consolidate your learning at all, and the exam questions are more like the workshop questions (i.e. 10x harder than the quizzes)! The only topic that I actually enjoyed was carbohydrates. Lipids was okay except lecture 3 which was near to impossible to understand. The rest was really hard and the reason I stayed motivated was based on stress and not interest in the content itself. I'm not afraid of content heavy units that require hours of dedication, but they honestly expect too much of you in this unit. My advice to anyone taking this unit: focus mostly on topics 2-6 (1 will make more sense when you revisit it), memorize the characteristics of all the amino acids (I promise you that it is worth it), and memorize the answers to all the workshop questions. If you dedicate 2-3 hours of revision over the weekend you can achieve a LOT. Wile this unit was so stressful, but I made it worse by constantly thinking I was going to fail the exam. With dedicated study, it is definitely still possible to get a distinction in this unit!

The theory component of this unit ruined it for me. The content is so hard already and more than half of the lecturers either don't know how to teach or just don't want to be there. Pre-lab quizzes - Way too much prerequisite reading, but you get 2 attempts which is nice. Labs - Demonstrators are really kind and helpful. No complaints. Post-lab assignments - laborious but hard to not score at least 90%. Online quizzes - Actually not that bad, and relatively easy to score above 70% in. Very few students are able to accumulate all 50/50 marks, so come exam time it is really difficult to get a HD.

Horrible core unit- please do NOT do this unit as an elective! I normally enjoy chemistry but I HATED this unit. The organic section only lasted 2-3 weeks, but it felt like an entire semester. The lecturer just rambled on about how 'we should remember this' or this 'might've been covered in high school' (it wasn't). He talks too much about chemical properties instead of how to actually solve questions. The workshop questions are hard, but if you have an organic textbook they are definitely possible. I would give this unit less than 1 star if I could.