Trouble in Lab

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Does anyone on here find that they have difficulties with labs? I did fine in Anatomy and Biodiversity, but Chemistry and Bio Principles were not so good... particularly Chemistry. I seem to have trouble following the instructions in the lab manual for some reason. Perhaps I'm getting too hung up on the details and being exact? The time limit also stresses me out. i can't seem to do the calculations without a lot of help and the conceptual questions confuse me. I wonder if this is aspie related? Everyone else I work with seems to do just fine. I have to rely heavily on my partner and it makes me feel really stupid. Any suggestions would be really appreciated...

Yes, I have very similar problems. I have such bad short term memory, so following directions is hard when I am required to multi-task. This is often the case in a lab environment. I go to a large university (UIC), so there are two classes in a huge room. This comes out to about 60 students and two instructors shouting numbers and clanking things. I just cannot hear myself think. I have over-perceptive hearing which is usually so mild that it really doesn't affect me much in other areas of my life, just in lab. Sometimes I find myself writing down someone else's data, just because I heard him as I was about to record my own data. Conceptual or thinking-type questions are the worst. I just can't concentrate with all those people around. When I'm by myself in peace and quiet, those same questions are just so much easier.

I understand concepts fine and I can breeze through tests, but labs are definitely hard. My therapist suggested that I should ask the university for a calmer room, but I don't want to feel even more singled out than I already am, so I guess I'll just have to deal.

I had a similar problem with following the lab instructions. Whenever I had difficulty, I asked the TAs for help and they were all very nice about that. Also, I had a lab partner who was already familiar with the labs, so that helped quite a bit.

No advice but I had the same problem with intro to bio...........luckily I'm majoring in bio-psychology which has no labs!

I did really well in chemistry labs because being perfectionist and detail-oriented was a big advantage, and we always had plenty of time.

Physics labs are a pain because nothing ever works quite right and the results are so...fuzzy. I like physics better than chem in the classroom because it's neat and tidy and mathematically elegant, but everything goes to Hell when you try to do experiments with undergrad lab equipment.

Yeah it often depends entirely on how the lab manual is written. One of the lab techs in my college wrote the organic and inorganic chemistry lab manuals and I can understand every word he has written and I do exceptionally well in those labs. It was a different lab tech that wrote the physical chem lab manual and it might as well be written in Chinese because I can't make any sense of it. I didn't do well in general chem in first year because it was the physical chemist that wrote the manual and he'd force us to stay until we had done the calculations which made things tricky for me because I cant do calculations until I fully understand the concepts and I couldnt gain that understanding from the lab manual alone. Things got 10 times easier in 2nd year cuz I started organic chem and inorganic chem labs which I seem to be naturally good at.

You just explained me exactly. I have no problem on tests. With labs I think I would do so much better in peace and quiet with more time to think. I struggle to keep up everyone else...which only goes to stressing out more and making it worse. Ugh.

I just asked for advice from a doctor with AS (her screen name is meow101) and she mentioned that you might have an easier time if you pick a lab table on the end or somewhat isolated from the middle, where all the commotion tends to happen. The only other thing I can say is you just need to know the material many times better than anyone else. If you prepare as much as an NT student would, you would still be lost. If I'm really feeling ambitious, I'll answer all the questions I can before I even walk in the door. Copious preparation helps. I usually do prelabs even when they're not required.

I'm good at chemistry (fast and accurate titrations, managing 50 things at once), but in our lab there is an unofficial rule that we have to finish our 3 hour practical in half that time. So we have to "borrow" other peoples results, duplicate titration results, and sometimes leave the experiments half finished and sneak out the door, then download results, or work backwards from expected results.

My advice for lab is spend half an hour before each lab, writing out your own stepwise set of instructions, a table of what results you need, and a formula to plug the said data into. If you label your data precisely (say, T for titration mean), and then write the formula in terms of your own labelled data, you can't really go wrong. That;s how I manage Chemistry labs.

This is what I did and it works.

The whole "algorithmic" thing is the only way I can operate, otherwise I get confused and annoyed.

Amen to this - I swear one day I'll snap and just turn off the heater in the fly lab and murder all those flies with their gosh-darn variable life cycles.

... Not really - But man oh man am I tempted to do that some days... Flies... Grrrrrr

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As for the lab worries, I had major issues in gen chem lab working with an unfamiliar partner within a restrictive timeframe. Just come into the lab prepared enough to handle all of it on your own and then, even if you have a nightmare partner, you can feel ready to take charge and manage the practical lab component without too much hassle or stress.

Also, if there is a written lab report component due at the end of class, maybe you can work on and complete most of that (other than the results section) ahead of time, before you come in to lab? The time limit stressed me out so badly and doing it ahead of time helped me a) be familiar with the lab and b) feel less time pressure since I already had most of the writing done - I just left gaps in the tables/paragraphs to fill in the numbers/data after I'd collected it. I could take my time on the actual experimental part instead of having to rush through the more delicate parts of the experiment in order to get started on writing the darn thing.

Long story short: If you do most of the written lab report before the actual lab period you can kinda kill 2 stress-birds with one stone.... if that makes any sense.

I never thought of that...genius. I hate when I have to do in lab reports, they are always so bad.

I had an instructor who suggested I write the instructions in the form of a flowchart. All those nice big clear shapes and arrows really helped me see how the individual steps fell into a sequence as well as how they fit into the "big picture" of the lab assignment.

I know exactly what you mean. On top of all this, I hate it when the instructions are handed out during the lab as opposed to being given to us earlier. I can't read the instructions at all with all that chaos going on around me. The letters on the pages turn into hieroglyphics.

When I was at the big public uni, there was a class that I wanted so badly to take, and I finally got into it, and after 6 weeks I had to drop it because I could not handle the chaos of 50+ people in my lab. It just made me sick at heart to drop it, because I loved the material and I would become so engrossed in the lectures that they felt about 15 minutes long instead of over an hour. It was such a shame. If I resume my college career, it will be online (at a legitimate brick and mortar uni). They offer a similar class, but the labs are done outdoors by oneself.

I think the general trend in this thread is you just need to be so much more prepared than the average student. Practicals can be hard, but I've always managed, even though I'm a bit slow.