Grisham is such an unfair intro chem professor. He tries to trick his students on tests with random trivia facts (he does this to make sure you go to lectures, but I never missed a class and STILL got tricked up on some of them). His tests are actually pretty tough, I know the averages for our class was always low. If possible, I'd take it with someone else. Grisham just isn't good at explaining stuff and he goes way too fast for you to take notes. Also, mastering chem is a b*tch
Grade Distribution
39 Reviews
Grisham in hindsight wasn't that hard of a professor. He is the best lecturer because he actually reads off slides that the book provides. His quizzes can be "hard" because while they include like 9 or so common sense questions related to the chapter, there are some tricky questions where you had to be following his lecture and following current events. Know your historical information for his class, as it will show up on each quiz, and the final. Also, pay attention to the current events articles he posts up. His class otherwise is a pretty attainable A.
Best lecturer. If you put in the right effort you'll do fine. Do questions in the back of the chapters, understand the material/concepts and then the quizzes will be a lot easier.
AVOID AT ALL COSTS.
Grisham obviously really enjoys teaching the material and is very enthusiastic. He mainly reads off the powerpoint slides but the slides are very thorough. We had Chemistry in Your World questions that were a bit out there on quizzes and the final, but nothing too bad.
AVOID HIM
AVOID. you will regret takng it with grisham. in high school i took gen chem, ap chem, and orgo, and retook this class waiving my credits because i thought it would be an easy A but i was wrong! people who have never taken chemistry before does well in his quizzes, while people who have studied and know the material gets tripped up by the tiny details of the quiz. if you HAVE to take it with him, put away your laptop and just write down his notes, and pay attention to the chem in your world slides (there were these types of questions on 3 of the 5 quizzes we took). remember to bring your iclicker, and actually study every slide and do a lot of the problems. but if you want a fair grade, take any other professor besides grisham
grisham is the hardest of the 3 (metcalf, bryant, grisham). he has trick questions on the quizzes that nobody can get right. if you want to take the chem1400 series, take it with metcalf. he's the easiest of the 3 professors.
Beware, the quizzes are not fair, there are many random questions about historical figures. Grisham likes to assign extra readings called "Chemistry in Your World."
Grisham always went off on a tangent about Nobel Prize winners, and better yet, expected you to know that on his quizzes as opposed to actual chemistry. Also, practice problems/homework were not up to par with the questions on the quizzes.