What Is Your Least Favorite Prereq?

Definitely gen chem. Had a crotchety old man for the entire year. Passed the class but found out the guy was my fathers chem professor 20 years prior. He was the reason my dad went into business rather than pharmacy! (yes,coolstorybro)

Gem Chem for me as well. English was a close second just because a recall my professor being incredibly boring.

QofQuimica said:

Which pre-health prereq is or was your least favorite?

For me, I found gen chem the most boring, but bio was my least favorite overall. Too much memorization.

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It's all about the teacher. I am taking biochem right now. I stopped attending class weeks ago because it was so useless. I figured out where the teacher gets her questions from and I study them.

The English composition course that some programs dictate. I AP'd out of all the English requirements way back when. I would not have minded taking something upper level and interesting. But no. I had to take one last low-hanging english composition course. After making a 5 on the AP way back when. And after making a T on the WS on the MCAT. I wanted to kill myself in that class. Not so much the writing. Having to read and critique classmates' work. Egads.

Gen chem was lame, and it's hard to get a good prof for that class since it's an intro course. I really enjoyed all my other prereqs though.

Physics 1 was the bane of my existence.. I still don't know anything about the wood block on the plane

It was a close one between Ochem and Physics. At least you can use logic and every day experience to reason out a Physics problem, but with Ochem...I think they made it all up. Where do they come with things like backside attacks? I took Ochem I and II last summer and the subject still boggles my mind today. On the bright side of things, the lab is a lot more fun than the G-chem and Physics labs.

Biology. Teacher was an idiot. Seriously.

Second-semester biology. Kingdom, phylum, fungi, chordata blahblahblah.

Thank goodness for o-chem that semester!

physics. I worked so hard on that class and scraped a B. physics is SO counter-intuitive to me.

catswym said:

physics. I worked so hard on that class and scraped a B. physics is SO counter-intuitive to me.

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Agreed... I think the problem with physics is that it is usually taught by socially awkward physicists who really don't understand how to communicate with the rest of the world and who feel simplifying or analogizing the material would violate its purity.

OChem II. I liked the first semester but hated the second. Memorizing reaction after reaction after reaction. Plus I had a garbage teacher. I actually liked all my other pre-reqs, even physics.

I wasn't too fond of organic chemistry at the time I took it. Part of it probably had to do with my starting level of comfort with chemistry, but I feel that a lot of it had to do with the quality of instruction, which could have been better. That, and I kept on wondering to myself when I would ever need to know how to synthesize some random molecule from hydrocarbons of four carbons or less.

I suspect this is similar to what some might feel in physics.

Well, I voted 'other' because the worst prereq had nothing to do with the material (bio) and everything to do with a crappy prof. Just a godawful teacher.

princessFEEDme said:

It was a close one between Ochem and Physics. At least you can use logic and every day experience to reason out a Physics problem, but with Ochem...I think they made it all up. Where do they come with things like backside attacks? I took Ochem I and II last summer and the subject still boggles my mind today. On the bright side of things, the lab is a lot more fun than the G-chem and Physics labs.

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I actually liked physics because I could draw a diagram (I am a very visual learner) and if you studied enough you could usually figure out the most common equations for each type of problem. But o chem....forget it. I didn't understand most of it and still don't. It was the most demoralizing experience of my academic career.

The o chem labs were painful. Very long with lots of steps. Also, if your product didn't turn out as expected, my instructor would make you start over from the beginning. Lab ended up running over the 3 hours it was scheduled for on many occasions.

QofQuimica said:

Which pre-health prereq is or was your least favorite?

For me, I found gen chem the most boring, but bio was my least favorite overall. Too much memorization.

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Orgo - nothing made sense, most of the concepts did not apply to anything that is taught in medical school and for some reason, our professor had to curve it so that only the top 20% of the class received A or A- to make it a premed "weed out" class. He could have easily made the class straighforward and tested us based on memorizing the reactions, but then everyone who studied would have scored 90%.

I disagree with some of the comments that are on here about physics. I think physics is very helpful in certain subjects that are being taught in medical school such as physiology (helps with understanding blood pressure, renal acid base balance, and ion flow in nerve conduction) and pathology.

For me it was physics. My undergrad major was in foreign languages, and I had no experiences with sciences. I had an amazing physics I professor which made the semester tolerable, but he went back to teaching "real" physics and I had a real dud 2nd semester. Everything I know about 2nd semester, I taught myself while studying for MCAT. I loved biology and organic chemistry though.

I found stats boring... Loved all the rest though.

The fact that physics is dominating, even dominating orgo, is surprising. I would say physics is more useful to the student doctor than orgo. I guess I'm wrong, though.

QofQuimica said:

bio was my least favorite overall.

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Biology was my least favorite too. Shark rectal gland? That's "don't care" times two.

I also wasn't hot on physics.

I liked organic chemistry so much that I considered pursuing it for graduate school instead of medicine. Then I remembered that I already have a grad degree that's not going to get me any jobs!

My undergraduate degree is in physics - I really enjoy the subject.

Least enjoyable was probably freshman chemistry - professors were terrible and only got through about 30% of the syllabus each semester. I'm a little worried about what preparing for the MCAT is going to be like.

Pons Asinorum said:

The fact that physics is dominating, even dominating orgo, is surprising. I would say physics is more useful to the student doctor than orgo.

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I agree that physics may be infinitely more useful than organic, and i can see how it applies to physiological processes in the body, BUT that being said, it was still my least favorite class. I really think a lot of it has to do with the professor. I had an amazing physics 1 professor and an awful physics 2 professor. He made me want to curse the universe. I never understood a single thing he said and he spent most of the class time to calculus deriving formula (in a non-calculus physics class). Ask him any question, and another chalkboard full of formula was the answer.
I also had a really good general bio teacher (tough, but fair...good prep for other class), an above average organic chem teacher (2 different ones, both both really knowledgeable in how to teach organic), and average general chemistry instructors.( Our UG did common exams for gen chem, so every instructor taught the exact same material and gave the exact same exam. In fact, it really didn't matter which section you showed up to, because all the info was the exact same).

My point is I really think it depends on the professor, and it seems that physics instructors have the most difficulty in teaching the basics to people who haven't studies physics for many years.

felixthekat said:

My point is I really think it depends on the professor, and it seems that physics instructors have the most difficulty in teaching the basics to people who haven't studies physics for many years.

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I will absolutely agree with that.

ShyRem said:

Biology. Teacher was an idiot. Seriously.

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Plus one!

Organic chemistry drove me batty. The prof I had didn't do a set % for As/Bs/etc. Wherever there was the first large point break between students, that was the A/B line. 1 person got an A in my organic 1 class. I was unfortunate enough to have an actual organic chemist in the class retaking the basic premed stuff for a med school app. He rarely missed anything, thus his point scores were way above and beyond anyone else.

I worked myself to near death for an A in organic 2. The whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth whenever I even think about the subject. :-(

Gender Studies. The lady I had as a prof really was a subjective kind of grader. If she liked you you did well, otherwise forget it.

QofQuimica said:

Which pre-health prereq is or was your least favorite?

For me, I found gen chem the most boring, but bio was my least favorite overall. Too much memorization.

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Interesting, being a medicinal chemist requires a lot of O-chem which in turn is a lot of memorization. What was the difference in memorization that made one better than the other? I'm just curious. Course content can count for a lot.

QofQuimica said:

My organic class was very mechanistic and had little memorization. I might have felt differently if the whole thing was about memorizing reagents and reactions like it apparently is for some people.

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I'm with you Q! I hated chemistry 10+ years ago and did not do so well, and now I find it fascinating because there is a logic to it that is beautiful. I had little to memorize at the university where I took it most recently.

For me, worst is bio by far. I am not a big fan of brainless memorization or trivia.

Pons Asinorum said:

I will absolutely agree with that.

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and maybe physics is not as straightforward as bio or orgo. It's harder to get by in physics if you do not think a little and try to understand what's going on.

Physics I (mechanics) was the worst, except for the lab portion. The rest of the series was fine.

I liked ochem better than genchem, b/c it had less numbers. I'd rather sort out electron shells, synthetic reactions, and stereochemistry than calculate thermodynamic equations. I was also really pisssed when my MCAT had 3 questions that required I know the name of different laws based on the description (boyles law, charles law, etc...). I never cared about the names, but knew the concepts really well.