Morning.
As a fellow MBLG student, I too understand your apprehension. From what I've heard, it does take the full 4 hours to complete and as much as you and I (and many others might I add) hate the labs, we must take responsibility for our learning and understand what in God's name is happening. Go on Blackboard and to the Skills test information tab - this will give you a nice briefing of what to expect in the skills test. Read over the WHOLE manual and do the discussion questions as well as the pre-work; make sure you understand almost every single bit. I cannot stress the importance of stuffing EVERYTHING into your lab book since it will be allowed into the test (I just took anything I could find and stuffed it into ~70 pages and counting - ie. I did most of the calculations questions and rewrote them in my book. I am not messing around - this is how serious this is).
No one knows for sure but we MUST consider the worst case scenario. Prepare for absolutely anything they can throw at you! Check out the learning outcomes as well as the "What will be asked in the skills test" questions at the very beginning sections of the lab manual - hopefully this will give you some direction. Learn to construct standard curves, use formulae in excel, use a spectrophotometer, how to dispense certain volumes with certain pipettes, how to read absorbance spectrums - the difference between photometric mode and spectrum mode. Here is a link that will help you with spectrophotometer usage:
http://www.shimadzu.com/an/spectro/uv/uv1800/uv2.html
(Courtesy of Danny Liu, our wonderful Leader, of course).
Keep calm, the solution is here.
(Feel free to contact me via Private messaging. Group discussion always fosters more learning
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