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7310933 No.7310933 [Reply] [Original]

To anyone who had taken it, how is organic chemistry? I probably going to take it sooner or later.

>> No.7310947

>>7310933
meh

>> No.7311132

>>7310933
FUN

remember, think like an electron.

>> No.7311139

>>7311132
Fuck what's that acronym stand for I can't remember

>> No.7311296

>>7311139
F= friends who do stuff together
U= you and me
N= anywhere and anytime at all down here in the deep blue sea

>> No.7311302
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7311302

>>7310933
Chemist here, it's a skill, and you need to keep practicing while you study or you'll get wrecked at the exam

>> No.7311533 [DELETED] 

>>7311296
More like F is for fire that burns down the whole town, U is for uranium bombs, N is for no survivors...

>> No.7311562

>>7310933
It's very fun once you know it, and necessary info for doing any biochemistry stuff. Learning it is usually extremely painful. Most biology people I know would say organic chemistry 1 & 2 are some of the hardest classes they've had to take as undergrads. That's probably because they're often the highest level chemistry classes that are usually required.

Make sure you study, even if you can get by not studying and doing okay in the past, this usually isn't possible with O. chem. It's common to hear of people having to take it again 2 or 3 times until they pass.
Learn your functional groups, watch Kahn Academy videos, get a model kit, study types of reactions/reagents, and you might be ok. Godspeed.

>> No.7311584
File: 75 KB, 817x515, Reaction Interconversion Map - Chapters 10 to 13.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7311584

>tfw C in O. Chem I and II

Maybe I should make my knowledge useful and OD in homebrew meth.

>> No.7311613

>>7311296
>>7311533
fucking idiots

>> No.7311618

>>7310933
>tfw never scored below 90 on an organic exam/test in my 2 years at uni so far

>> No.7311644

Do you recommend studying chemistry over the summer on my own? I'm doing pre-reqs for medical school next fall and I can't fuck up my GPA so I'm worried about taking accelerated classes.

>> No.7311755

>>7311562
>Most biology people I know would say organic chemistry 1 & 2 are some of the hardest classes they've had to take as undergrads.

While this is true, it is not because of the level of sophistication of the material, but rather the volume of material. By far the most intellectually challenging class I took as an undergrad was General Relativity, but the pace of the course was much, much slower than the organic chemistry class I took, so even though the relativity material was much more difficult, the course was actually much easier than organic.

>> No.7311787

>>7311562
to be honest, a model kit is absolutely useless for the average bio major who will only use it once for comformations and then never touch it again.

>>7311584
you're an idiot

>>7311613
>he took ochem for 2 years

>>7311644
yes, although you need a lot of motivation and a good book. i recommend Wade

>> No.7311841

>>7311296
10/10

>> No.7311886

>chem major here

I thought orgo was pretty easy. I was never a huge fan of it though. Not enough math and it's pretty fucking boring imo. I'm more of a fan of pchem and inorganic chemistry.

What I enjoyed the most was seeing all of the bio majors and non-chem major pre-meds get rekt by exams. If you just practice a lot and take the time to really understand what's going on with all of the mechanisms you should be fine.

>> No.7311972

>C+ in orgo 1
>B- in orgo 2

doesn't matter, I got into a phd program anyway.

>> No.7312430

>>7310933

>hell for people who can not think, problem solve or reason spacially
>heaven for everyone who can

Organic is basically a weed out in the biological sciences to get rid of people who can only memorize and regurgitate as many other classes within the soft sciences can be passed through such brute force methods.

>> No.7312813

>>7311886
>pchem

sadist

>>7310933

taking orgo now. biology major, by the way. its the most difficult class i have taken. you absolutely can not cram and hope to pass an exam. you literally need to study. A LOT. theres just so many reactions. so many. you have to memorize them all. starting material, reagent(s), and product(s). and the reaction mechanism. holy shit the mechanism. thats the tough part.

stereochemistry will come early on... and it might hit you like a brick. i learned from the stereochem chapter that i suck at spatial reasoning. it took a LOT of work to reach the point where i could handle rotating molecules in my head.

lab is awesome though. youll have fun there.

>> No.7312817

>>7312430
>organic
>not memorization and regurgitation
HAHAHAHAHA

>> No.7312818

Bio major here, I'm going to be taking Organic Chem 1 in the fall. I have never taken a chemistry class before.

Help

>> No.7312829

>>7312818
You have to study, there is no way around it. There are rules yes, but there are lots of them and lots of exceptions.

I took it senior year as a math/phy major and got wrecked (made out with a C). Don't skip lectures, do your practice problems, and you should be okay. But you do have to work at it.

>> No.7312832

>>7312829

No prob with that. I'm pretty good at math despite never having a real math class since 9th grade so that part won't be bad. I understand basic shit and all that, but what separates Inorganic from Organic Chem? Presence of Carbon or something?

>> No.7312836

>>7312832
Organic chem is the first class where you start to understand why certain reactions take place (as opposed to gen chem when you basically assume the reactions to place).

You have to learn why electrons move certain places, why molecules are stable in certain conformations, and it is basically entirely qualitative.

>> No.7312841

>>7312836

Oh, okay. So it's about ionic charges and why shit happens.. Cool.

I was taking Inorganic but I dropped it because my teacher works for fucking Monsanto. Also they changed it to a god damned hybrid course at the last minute even though I signed up for a traditional course.

>> No.7312851

LOVED IT. A's in both semesters. Also, I've been tutoring it for the past year, and will continue to do so for the next year. And unlike what people said in this thread, it is NOT memorization. You have to know some basics, but once you have grasped the fundamentals then you can honestly figure out most of it on your own. My advice is to review basic atomic orbital theory, and possibly check out some of the videos on Khan Academy about it.

>> No.7312872
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7312872

>>7311584
More like this.

>> No.7312999

>>7312818
You should not have been permitted to register. Standard prerequisite is two semesters of intro/gen chem at the undergrad level.

Unless this is organic chemistry for nursing majors or other such bullshit, in which case enjoy earning your A+ while sleeping through lecture.

>> No.7313008

I liked organic chem. The trick is definitely to try to understand why each reaction happens and how different functional groups interact. If you try to memorize, it'll be a lot harder. Most of my studying was doing practice problems and checking solutions until I had a firm grasp on each reaction.

>> No.7313323

>>7311755
>Too much volume

Yup. My class did an entire O-chem text book in a single semester for O-chem I. O-chem II was suppose to be the exact same textbook but with more detail. This is much easier for those taking Ochem II but cramming in all that stuff from Ochem I into a single semester was fucking stupid.

>> No.7313336

>>7312818

Wow. That will be one hell of a learning curve. If you actually mean that you have virtually zero knowledge of chemistry, you should start at least going through Khan Academy videos on chemistry, or something similar.

>> No.7313920

>>7312813
>memorizing reactions
>liking pchem = sadist
>sterochemistry is challenging

yup, you're a bio major alright. enjoy your Shit job prospects

>> No.7313927

>>7312841
This is bait

>> No.7313945

Organic chemistry is great. You can do so much with it, and the rewards for teaching yourself are priceless.

>> No.7313966
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7313966

>mfw finished OChem II with a 103%

>> No.7314031

>>7310933
I took an honors version of it with a professor who's a massive fucking troll. He teaches it at the graduate level. In a normal class, you'll be fine if you can memorize trivial names and trivial reactions. If it's a good class, reaction mechanisms and orbital theory will be used very, very frequently.

>> No.7314040

>>7313920
i lol'd. so many people like this in my ochem I & II classes, bringing their stupid note cards to cram 30 minutes before the exam.

>> No.7314130

Well, shit. I'm regretting my decision to start taking ochem over the summer now.

>> No.7314702

>>7311296
>>7311533
F is for frolicking through all the flowers
U is for Ukulele
N is for nose picking, sharing gum and sand licking here with my best buddy~

>> No.7316782

Where should somebody with no knowledge of chemistry start? I've been reading through a lot of the stuff on erowid and I'm completely lost, I have Olympian willpower and a will to learn, just reccomend me a good book.

>> No.7316789

>>7316782
Nevermind, just checked the sticky.

>> No.7316793

>>7314040
I'm so glad I'm in the UK, no shitty plebs from other majors contaminating my classes.

>> No.7317287

>>7312841
My school started mixing gen chem and orgo just last school year. There was some complaints because second semester everyone's grades were a lot lower than first semester. And for some weird reason the students in the year above us (who were taking plain old orgo) had a bunch of ridiculous drama. It was on an anonymous forum the class is supposed to use for discussion.

>> No.7317329

I took it for engineering, take it at a community college or be prepared to throw hours of time at it at a university. It's doable though like anything

>> No.7318288

>>7312818
If you have no prior chem knowledge then you are fucked. I did chem all throughout high school and 1st year of uni, and even now organic chem is doing my head in. Not only is the fundamentals boring as fuck but is so important to understand as a prereq for more difficult stuff.

I think I might even enjoy quantum mechanics more than organic chem.

>> No.7318292

>>7318288
>not being good at both
what a pleb