I always hear from people how Organic Chemistry was the first class that they actually had to study and work hard.
But what if I already have had to study my ass off to get an A in the general chemistry classes? Will I now have study Organic 40 hours per week?
O - Chem is all about memorization.
At some schools, they make it exceptionally difficult as it is one of the last "weed out" courses for the "pre-professional" programs.
At a party with the head of the university's chemistry dept. he said with glee "looks like a lot of people will not be going to medical school after today"
I did better in Organic. It all depends on how much effort you put into it and how much you study.I studied for a week for each organic test and I got an A. As opposed to in Chem 1 and 2 I barely studied I got a B and a C.
I did better in ochem too. I studied about 90 min average a day. It's no mystery class, put the time in and you'll get an A. And it is far from being all about memorization. If you try and memorize everything, you will fail. You need to understand what you're doing.
Organic just might have been my easiest and most enjoyable class in all of college. Just pay attention, study a little, and you should be fine, especially if you got an A in general chem. P. Chem is another matter.
you never know you may have a knack for O-chem. Or maybe the Ochem teacher is easier to pass ya know?
The reason people find O-Chem hard is because many who take it are bio majors who are used to memorizing. If you are a chem/physics major it should be easier because you are already used to application/applying concepts.
P-Chem is way harder.
Its tough, I went to one of the schools where it was a weed out class. I didn't get an A, but its certainly not impossible even if chem isn't your thing. I just wasn't willing to put in the time required.
grinding it out wrote:
I always hear from people how Organic Chemistry was the first class that they actually had to study and work hard.
But what if I already have had to study my ass off to get an A in the general chemistry classes? Will I now have study Organic 40 hours per week?
.
Hell no. Quit school now and start slangin rock. Only way to make a living in chemistry these days.
This reminds me of the comparison tests for sequences and series in Calc III. If you really worked your ass off and didn't get an A in General Chem, then you probably wouldn't get an A in Organic. If you got an A in General, either by working your ass off or not, that doesn't really offer any conclusive evidence about how you'll do in Organic.
Ha, whatever. PChem rocks.
I'd say the difference between Gen Chem and OChem is the math, if the trouble you had with Gen Chem was knowing what formula to use and all that then don't worry about OChem, because Ochem is generally all conceptual in nature. It really comes down to having an intuition for how things react and that's pretty much what you learn in OChem in my opinon.
I hope that helps.
Sagarin wrote:
Organic just might have been my easiest and most enjoyable class in all of college. Just pay attention, study a little, and you should be fine, especially if you got an A in general chem. P. Chem is another matter.
Interesting. I was one of the few who just "got it" too. It all made sense to me. Classmate used to knock on my door with questions. Yes, there is memorization, but there is memorization in just about every class, especially in the sciences. I think that paying attention to, and understanding the nomenclature was a big help.
Guppy wrote:
I'm a Biology-Chemistry double major. Did you not take chemistry in high school? If you did and you still had to study hard for Gen Chem I, you probably have a learning disability. If your high school education did not include anything related to chemistry than I can understand having to study I guess, but honestly, Gen Chem I is probably the easiest science class any science major will ever take. Gen Chem II should not be that hard either, unless you have a terrible professor (mine was the worst of any I've had). I got an A in Gen Chem I without studying really at all, and I got a B in Gen Chem II, though I didn't study that much since I was a freshman and still wasn't used to having to study for anything. I took O-chem the next year and tried to pull the same shit. Got a low C on the first test, studied hard after that and got A's on everything else, but it wasn't enough to bring me to an A in the class. Studied hard from the get go in O-chem II and got an A, though I worked hard in that class going every time, doing all study guide problems, almost all problems in the back of the chapters, etc. I like to think I'm a fairly intelligent guy, but I'm definitely not a genius or anything. If you go to class, read the book, and study, you should do alright.
Depending on the prof, O-chem can be almost no memorization or nothing but. My prof taught almost nothing but mechanism, so it was more like problem solving figuring out where to put partial charges, what was the nucleophile in your reactants and where it would attack, where electrons would go, etc. I loved it. The other prof on the other hand would just have his students memorize dozens of reactions without explaining to them what was actually happening in the reaction. I don't understand how constitutes as teaching, but whatever.
O-chem gets hyped up because of all the pre-meds who take it. My experience has been that 50-75% of pre-meds are quite stupid; they just have good work ethic and will go the extra mile for an additional point on a problem set. I enjoyed O-chem a lot, and though it did require a decent amount of work, it is by no means the most difficult class I've taken. Comparative Physiology and a Functional/Evolutionary Vertebrate Anatomy class I took were probably my two hardest. P-chem is easily the hardest Chemistry class.
Don't worry about it though. Part of the college experience is (or at least should be) learning how to learn and how to think and gaining better study habits. O-chem is a good class because it's a bit of a slap in the face for students who aren't used to studying. Any fairly intelligent person with some work ethic should be able to pull of a B.
Good luck.
Gen Chem I is used as a weed out in some places. Granted that I was an engineering major and didn't give a rat's ass about chemistry, but I found the class pretty hard and generally scored around the class average of low 60's. This may depend on the school you're attending.
mile high mofo wrote:
O - Chem is all about memorization.
You were doing it wrong then.
I found Organic slightly easier than Gen Chem. So I wouldn't say just because you found Gen Chem difficult that organic will be impossible. Also I doubt you really studied that hard. It was just more than you are use to studying. Just wait until upper levels or grad school, then you'll know what studying actually feels like.
grinding it out wrote:
I always hear from people how Organic Chemistry was the first class that they actually had to study and work hard.
But what if I already have had to study my ass off to get an A in the general chemistry classes? Will I now have study Organic 40 hours per week?
Everybody has to work hard to get As. Go for it and see.
i got an A in OChem at one of the top pre-med programs in the nation, and i didn't even really work very hard. the next semester i barely pulled C's in a bunch of intro English Lit classes trying to add a minor. i think everybody has it backwards, humanities majors are a lot tougher than the "hard" sciences.
engr physics is much harder than och
The thing that made the intro science classes hard at my school was that there were 400 or more students in a class. So let's say 250/400 people were smart and the rest are just goofing off. That still makes it tough. Not everybody can get an A. In fact, for many it would have been smarter and cheaper to take the intro classes at a community college.
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