Feeling discouraged... Am I just not cut out for this?

[aerd]

Organic chemistry is killing me. I'm so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of studying I have to do every night just to finish the practice problems my professor assigns. I'm doing well in every other class. Bio is easy, I got an A in both freshman chem classes. I have a 4.0 (I'm a sophomore). But if I'm struggling this much in ochem, is that a good predictor of how much I'll struggle in med school?

I can't even think of another career I'd want to pursue, but this is just so discouraging right now. I don't know if I'm cut out for this much stress for the next 6 years. Can anyone please give me some advice? I really need it.

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[Kochanie]

No it isn't, freshman year is easier, college is meant to get harder and then you adapt. Keep at it, you're doing great.

 

[Lucca]

Do not let any one class dictate your ability to do well in something. Academics are only one part of being a physician, you have a 4.0 and are clearly "good at school" - whatever that means. Maybe you could study more efficiently? Go to your profs office hours and see if they have any insight.

 

[Ophthoseidon]

Ochem is tough for many premedical students. Just work through practice problems and try to understand the processes of the mechanisms. Memorizing them will get you nowhere. Just remember, negatives go after positives . Even if you dont do the greatest though, you ca still get it. I wouldn't be too worried about the difficulty just yet, you have a 4.0!

 

[Euxox]

Have you had any exams or quizzes yet? If so, how did you do?

You shouldn't feel discouraged because you have to study a lot for Orgo. I took junior and senior level engineering classes that were much more difficult conceptually than Orgo, but I had to study much more for Orgo than I ever did for an engineering class. Orgo is 50% concepts and 50% rote memorization, which is what makes it such a time sink.

If you are spending an absurdly amount of time on Orgo study (>30 hours a week), then there might be a problem. Your university probably has some sort of tutor/mentor program with upperclass students who did well in the course. You should seek it out if you think you need help.

 

[amazing tekkers]

What do the problems ask? I'm guessing you should be around alkanes/stereochemistry rn if you're in I,

 

[aerd]

The unit I'm working on includes HNMR and CNMR, stereochemistry, and alkanes. I got a D on the first test, but honestly, I barely studied because I thought what we covered in class was all that would be on the test... I was VERY wrong. I can drop that test though and the next 3 exams will count. I spend about 15-20 hours a week studying. The HNMR and CNMR problems and the alkane mechanisms are what I'm mostly struggling with now.

 

[amazing tekkers]

I initially struggled with IR and HNMR as well, I went to office hours every chance I had in order to get the issue cleared up. I also referred to the textbook and youtube videos which solidified the information. As for stereochemistry, it can be confusing at first, but it's pretty simple once you understand the basics. I'd recommend Ochem as a 2nd language which is a text supplement, it presents material well, and honestly, it made the class simple.

 

[Hospitalized]

Practice, practice, practice. Analyze the lecture slides and compare them to the test to infer what style you need to practice to do well on the exams. Also, get 2-3 people to study with. It really helps to have others there to bounce ideas off of and challenge you to think in different ways. My group makes different styles of problems for each other and it has been working very well.

 

[Zelda840]

Ochem is tough for many premedical students. Just work through practice problems and try to understand the processes of the mechanisms. Memorizing them will get you nowhere.

1000 times this. I flew through so many classes getting A's due to just having a very good short term memory, but you absolutely can not fall back on this for organic. I couldn't, anyway. Let it humble you and light a fire under you, but don't let it completely shake your confidence. I put more effort into organic than any other classes before or after it and I still barely scraped by with B's. The good news is that the little bit of organic that is on the mcat is pretty basic.

 

[Conflagration]

http://www.khanacademy.org/science/organic-chemistry

^ I wish I knew about that when I took Orgo I.

I got curved up to a C, but those videos helped me out so much. I'm definitely more auditory than anything, though.

Orgo's rude no matter when you take it; and it certainly doesn't indicate whether or not you can handle medical school. Just buck up, find what works, and do it!

Good luck!

 

[Microglia]

Organic chemistry is killing me. I'm so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of studying I have to do every night just to finish the practice problems my professor assigns. I'm doing well in every other class. Bio is easy, I got an A in both freshman chem classes. I have a 4.0 (I'm a sophomore). But if I'm struggling this much in ochem, is that a good predictor of how much I'll struggle in med school?

I can't even think of another career I'd want to pursue, but this is just so discouraging right now. I don't know if I'm cut out for this much stress for the next 6 years. Can anyone please give me some advice? I really need it.

I'm finding the most compassionate students here seem to be those who struggled every now and then in undergrad and in life. If it all came too easy, you'd miss the opportunity to learn from the challenge. You'll be knocked on your derrière repeatedly on this path. Those who achieve greatness share one simple thing: they never stopped putting one foot in front of the other.

 

[musicalfeet]

I think HNMR and the spectroscopy is really "out of the left field" for me. For our curriculum, it was lumped in 2nd semester. Organic has a really high "learning" curve (so it felt to me anyway). Learning the language took forever, but once you get the ball rolling it'll start coming. I guarantee it. Keep practicing at it and it will come. It is a lot of work, sure, but as you learn the concepts and why things work and the "world" of ochem, it'll all fall into place for you. It didn't start falling into place until I started covering additional reactions past the SN1/SN2/E1/E2. (Like..epoxides and various other reactions, but not carbonyls or anything yet).

No lie though, spectroscopy hit me like a sack of bricks and was so different from what I was used to, that I struggled pretty hard with that too. I begged my professor to hurry up and get back to reactions .

 

[Zelda840]

Total opposite experience for me. No problems with nomenclature, NMR or stereochemistry. The mechanisms and multistep synthesis problems are what kept me struggling.

 

[mimelim]

#1 Take a step back. Ochem is not medical school. It is not medicine. It is not being a doctor. Your performance in that one class has nothing to do with you being a good doctor or being able to get there.

#2 This is the time to figure out what went wrong the first test. This is NOT about studying more. This is about studying smarter. If you can do well in all your other classes, you need to figure out how to study. THAT is what undergrad is all about.

#3 It has been a long time, almost a decade since I took Ochem. Listen to the other posters in this thread. There is plenty to go off of. Do not neglect problem solving. Practice, practice, practice.

 

[AspiringERMD]

Total opposite experience for me. No problems with nomenclature, NMR or stereochemistry. The mechanisms and multistep synthesis problems are what kept me struggling.

+1. I loved nomenclature (except for one section toward the end), spectroscopy, and stereochemistry. I was kind of "meh" at mechanisms (got a lot better ultimately). But memorizing reactions and doing multistep syntheses was not my thing. I somehow wound up with As both semesters (just barely, for orgo 1), but I don't think I've ever felt so much like a class was damn near impossible.

 

[Afford]

I definitely did not have a 4.0 by sophomore year and I turned out fine. When I took my first test in orgo, I think I got a 58 or 68, but it was below average and I was fresh out of high school, so I did not expect that. What I did was figure out how to study and did much better on the remaining tests. Just remember to study smart, not hard. Figure out how the professor tests material and study how to answer those questions.

 

[aegistitan]

I'm in Organic chemistry right now too, when we were doing 13C NMR this was my thought process:

First of all know what 13 CNMR does... it measures difference in alignment between two energy states. As a result, carbons in same chemical environment resonate at same frequency [SYMMETRY]. 13C NMR is key for analyzing the symmetry of the molecule when comparing to other specs...

1. Look at the number of peaks, number of peaks tells you about how many types of carbons. Compare the types of carbons to the mass spectrometry chemical composition to see symmetry [chemically identical carbons give same signal]. Make sure you recognize whether or not rotation makes an axis of symmetry (single bonds rotate). Be careful to see if there is any conjugation -- DMF is the classic example with 3 peaks in 13C NMR at room temperature, but two peaks at 150 degrees C
2. Look at the ranges:
200+: ketone, aldehyde (190ish)
200 - 150: unsaturated carbons next to O, C=O
- note even if a carbon is not double bonded to O directly, it can still be unsaturated, ex. C=C-O, the C next to O will appear in this range
- acid derivatives: carboxylic acid, ester, amide
150 - 100: unsaturated carbons, C=C, aromatic rings [note symmetry]
100 - 50: saturated carbons next to O, C-O
- note the 50 - 100 guideline is rough, C-O can appear at 45
50 - 100: saturated carbons, Me —- methyl groups will be here

You should also know:
More deshielded = more downfield = higher ppm —-> stronger frequency of radio wave needed to change alignment
Large chemical shift = downfield = high frequency of radio waves (shorter waves) = deshielded
small ppm = upfield = low frequency (longer waves) = shielded

You should also know that C13 NMR is not quantitative, integral does not equal the number of atoms

The key to those spectroscopy problems is being able to analyze multiple specs together and use data from them to piece together the molecule.

Right now we're on acid/base... anybody have any tips for that, it seems as though it's a lot to absorb especially with all the pKas