For First-Year Ph.D. Students

Not Voodoo Home / Notes on Special Topics / Comments?

Theory and Philosophy

1. Recordkeeping Notes, for help keeping track of information, experimental data and ideas in preparation for writing your thesis.
2. Literature Notes, for an overview on synthetic organic resources.
3. Desert Island Textbooks; Desert Island Reviews and Reference Books
4. Anatomy of a reaction: a general roadmap.
5. The Tour of Collective Wisdom for opinions from the synthetic organic chemistry community.
6. A Day in the Life of Successful Graduate Student or Post-doctoral Researcher.

In the Laboratory

1. How to wash your glassware
2. What do you need to start experiments?: Bench Essentials
3. Reagent Notes, for perspective on all the different chemicals in the lab.
4. Desert Island tools, tables, charts, and graphs.
5. Running a reaction the first time through, and safely leaving the lab without ruining your experimental results.
6. Try to avoid Rookie Mistakes.
7. Magic Formulas
8. Always and Never: Basic practical tips for laboratory.
9. Rules of Thumb: Numerical guidelines for experimental success.
10. How To carry out laboratory procedures.