First Lab was Chaos - advice?

Maybe talk to your lecture professor about possibly fitting into the lab they teach? If not, you could try to stick with this one for the semester. Sometimes the first lab is crazy because there isn't a routine yet.

You can tell your prof about the situation. Or, if you don't mind, you can ask if it's possible for you to join his lab session to get a better grasp of things even if it is not your assigned lab. I had students do that in my AP class.

Ugh, that sucks. Lab is already exciting enough without such disarray.

I would wait another week or two just to establish a baseline of how your instructor works. It could be that she doesn't have her routine down yet/is new/etc. If things don't clear up after that, maybe talk to her and ask if she might change the way she schedules things in lab, e.g., "I'm having a hard time keeping up with your lecture while everyone is talking and working. Do you think we could have the lecture first and go over everything before we all start working?" "I feel like I'm not able to get everything done on time because I spend a lot of lab waiting for your initials. Can I just meet you when I think I'm done and go over everything once?"

If things don't get better after making some specific requests to her, then let your professor know what's going on. You're right, you shouldn't be at a disadvantage because your lab is insane every week.

I feel your pain; my A & P II lab was taught by a woman who had just passed the class herself last semester, and she was noooooot on top of it at all. I got through with a great lab group and by teaching myself. It sucked, but I learned the material!

Thanks for the input. Now that I've had a few days to de-stress, I feel a little better. I'm HOPING she gets her act together and re-evaluates her process. It must have been horrible for her, too, being pulled in a million different directions. It was disappointing because it has the potential to be so interesting, but not in that environment - I don't even know what we were supposed to learn/take away from that lab. Anyway, hope next week is smoother!

Hang in there and come prepared. I remember I walked out of my first college chemistry lab because I was so confused and embarrassed by my mistakes. Definitely talk to your instructors. Sugguest they write instructions on the board or make a handout? You can also talk to your school directly. They normally have a place that deals with student learning needs. If your instructors won't teach in a coherant fashion perhaps they can do something.

No offense but you sound like you want to be spoon fed the answers and instructions, Most of my labs were always like this I think it's a way for the teacher to weed out people who arent serious.

If you want to be successful in the lab portion manage your time extremely well and by that I mean take as many pictures as you can so that if your teacher won't/can't answer your questions you can look it up later.

By the end of my micro/anatomy lab at least 30% of my classmates dropped out.

Complain to your professor. If that doesn't work, go to your Dean.

You are paying for a class, the least they can do is have someone competent running the laboratory.