Anxiety and sensory overload: A perspective on how chemistry undergraduate students perceive their time in the lab

For many chemistry students, laboratory-based practical sessions are considered ‘high-value’ and the reason they embark on a chemistry degree, but even these students often feel overwhelmed by lab-based chemistry. This article aims to reflect on the author’s experiences of undergraduate students suffering increased sensory overload and anxiety across several chemistry undergraduate teaching laboratories and suggestions for how we as lab educators can improve the lab experience for all students. Suggestions include improved course design and creating a learning environment conducive to lab learning, not lab anxiety. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .