Organic Chemistry: How Hard Is it?

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I read my book (Wade's Organic Chemistry), and I'm doing well. It is seriously one of the best text books I own, in that it is superbly written and useful. I agree with the poster above that learning o-chem feels a LOT like learning a language.

You wouldn't try to cram 4 wks of language classes would you? So don't do that for o-chem ;) ... and you should be fine. The fun thing about o-chem is that it's NOT mostly memorization (which was what biochem totally consisted of, for me)... if you understand basic concepts real well (electronegativity, other periodic trends, etc.), and can do electron pushing well, everything else is derivative and simple.

I try to learn most of the mechanisms instead of simply memorizing them just because I find it tends to stay in my mind better... although there are some like ozonolysis, etc. where parts of the mech are just too convoluted and I don't bother to memorize them. But for the simpler cases, I definitely advocate knowing the mechs... it ends up paying off.
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i think orgo is as hard as the teacher wants to make it. Alot of my orgo test i came out thinking "MAN he could have made that SOOOOO much harder".
 
Ochem is not that hard. I do really well in the reaction stuff (Sn, Elimination, Alkene mechanisms) but i have a lot of trouble visualizing 3-D rings (ie benzene rings in chair and boat comformations). I am not a very big visual learner and i am too stubborn to buy a molecule kit.
 
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I teach O-Chem for an MCAT prep course company. After taking the courses, I feel like the worst part about it is professors that can't teach well and textbooks that are really confusing. Don't get me wrong, the text books are accurate, but they lack in getting students to grasp the initial parts of a difficult concept. As much as I hate to say it, Wikipedia is usually very accurate for upper lever subjects and the language used in it is very easy to follow. If you can't figure something out, Wikipedia can save your ass.

But, I'm sure people here will disagree with me!
 
badasshairday said:
O man, no wonder you say O-Chem is crazy killer. Are you majoring in Chem? Good luck with that, my roomate back in the day was taking it. It's pretty difficult. Just try to do a crazy amount of problems. The biggest difference I remember was that you guys have a bunch of CRAZY mechanisms.
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No, I'm just a visiting student that got screwed by the Dept. Of Chemistry. I signed up for 3A, but they put me in 112A instead. But hey, these monster mechanisms are fun.
Lab writeups on the other hand downright suck.
 
A lot of it depends on the teacher. Make sure to do your research and pick a good teacher. Sadly that is not always an option and you get stuck up the creek without a paddle. In that case try to figure out how the teacher tests and figure out what is going on with electrons and protons. This will make it a lot easier to remember.
 
Arc said:
No, I'm just a visiting student that got screwed by the Dept. Of Chemistry. I signed up for 3A, but they put me in 112A instead. But hey, these monster mechanisms are fun.
Lab writeups on the other hand downright suck.
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That's cool. Where you visiting from?
 
Orgo is really not that difficult. You just have to be able to put the steps together to understand the whole picture. If you don't get a concept, you're in trouble. If you don't remember the reagents, etc., you are also in trouble. I think it is difficult because it requires understanding how things work and memorizing. Sooner or later, it catches up to you. Just try to stay on top of things and you'll be fine. That requires more studying for some people than others. Mostly, I focused nailing down the concepts in class and then memorizing the reactions/conditions/reagents/products before the tests. It worked well for me, but if the prof does a lot of synthesis and nomenclature, then you may have a lot more studying to do.
 
badasshairday said:
That's cool. Where you visiting from?
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Las Positas in Livermore. I live close enough that I don't have to get an apartment if I end up transferring to Cal.
 
WHY THE HECK DO PEOPLE CALL IT ORGO!!!!?????? I dont get Where the heck that extra O comes from???? On the west coast we dont call it orgo



...........We say Organic Chemistry or O-Chem. As you should.
 
there's a book by a fellow named David Klein, I think its called Organic Chem as a Second Language, which I found very helpful.

If you learn and somewhat understand the basics, then you'll do fine. I believe that since lots of the material builds upon prior concepts, it is quite important not to get stuck early on.

Good Luck.
 
secure said:
there's a book by a fellow named David Klein, I think its called Organic Chem as a Second Language, which I found very helpful.

If you learn and somewhat understand the basics, then you'll do fine. I believe that since lots of the material builds upon prior concepts, it is quite important not to get stuck early on.

Good Luck.
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The green book? It's great. The only thing I didn't like about it is that he called most, if not all, of the mechanisms by different names so it was difficult to find them without paging through the book.
 
Clayton, Greeves, Organic Chemistry text book is great book. No fancy pictures, no font twenty writing and no supper think glossy pages. Just two thousand thin pages of small font writing with enough info to ace a bunch of orgo classes, year after year.

That said, my prof for my first orgo class started the course by showing us the structures to half a dozen illegal drugs: the likes of cocane and heroin. The objective was that after his course, we were all able write down the forward and reverse synthesis for each of the drugs. I guess its one way to get the class rolling. The class did amazing, there were always those that failed, but most did spectacular for orgo standards. For the next two years, till my year graduated, me and my classmates pretty much occupied every position for TA for orgo courses, formally and informally. The department was very impressed by the class, and hired most to be paid TAs and others to the non-paid study help sessions to teach other orgo students.

Keep your objective of orgo to be a synthesis/reverse synthesis master, and know how to break and make every organic compound. If you play this as a study game at a study session, it could get you very good at orgo. And it really is a game, where you have a bunch of tools like THF that do nifty things and you just have to figure out what each of those tools would do to your given compound and which one to choose.
 
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secure said:
there's a book by a fellow named David Klein, I think its called Organic Chem as a Second Language, which I found very helpful.

If you learn and somewhat understand the basics, then you'll do fine. I believe that since lots of the material builds upon prior concepts, it is quite important not to get stuck early on.

Good Luck.
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See...there is something wrong w/ my experience w/ ochem (I posted earlier in teh thread too). I have so many help books for it, including that one & I think it's the most confusing book I've ever picked up.

I've also read Organic chem 1 for Dummies twice....which I guess didn't help either...
 
is insanely hard. However, I would expect at least a B+ if you work hard.
+pity+

good luck and practice practice practice!
 
signature16 said:
What makes Organic Chemistry so difficult that studious and smart people literally fail and basically can't apply to med school? Is it the combination of the hard classes that tend to all fall in the same semester? Is OChem just that hard?

Somebody who doesn't consider themselves an absolute chem genius, please tell me about your Ochem experience.


Assuming most medical school applicants have a 3.4+ GPA, it really scares me that people who get As are getting Ds and Fs in Ochem.


Right now I have a 3.6 GPA, which I would like to boost to 3.7 by the time I apply to ensure at least one US med school acceptance. I am academically dedicated and I consider myself slightly smarter than my average classmate at UCSD.

Should I be expecting some Cs or possibly worse:eek:?
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Don't believe the hype. O Chem is not that hard. The trick is you have to put the work into it. If you do that, you'll never have a problem, while the people who don't work at it systematically get crushed and go on to complain about how hard it is.

The way I learned O Chem was pretty basic, I did every problem in the book. I had the McMurry text and there were generally 45-50 problems per chapter. Buy the solutions manual that works everything out stepwise so you'll know what you did. That may seem like a lot of work, but it's really not and it will pay dividends for you on the tests.

Other than that, memorize reaction templates so you can use them for synthesis.

Again, not a hard subject, just a subject that requires a lot of work.
 
O chem is like a vacation compared to environmental chem. :barf:
 
Old Grunt said:
The way I learned O Chem was pretty basic, I did every problem in the book. I had the McMurry text and there were generally 45-50 problems per chapter. Buy the solutions manual that works everything out stepwise so you'll know what you did. That may seem like a lot of work, but it's really not and it will pay dividends for you on the tests.
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McMurry is a great text, that's what I have, too. I've seen some other textbooks, and it's impossible to understand anything. The fact that he color-codes all the atoms that move in the reaction also helps with understanding mechanisms.
 
BigMDT said:
WHY THE HECK DO PEOPLE CALL IT ORGO!!!!?????? I dont get Where the heck that extra O comes from???? On the west coast we dont call it orgo



...........We say Organic Chemistry or O-Chem. As you should.
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Yes, it is O-chem. Orgo sounds so bleh.
 
Ugh- orgo. Lets blame Duke University. Their students call it orgo-- at least they did when my friend went.

BigMDT said:
WHY THE HECK DO PEOPLE CALL IT ORGO!!!!?????? I dont get Where the heck that extra O comes from???? On the west coast we dont call it orgo



...........We say Organic Chemistry or O-Chem. As you should.
Click to expand...
 
Ochem is hard, I am not going to deny it. But if you put a lot of time into it, you will succeed. I am a premed majoring in economics and I did well in both Ochem 1 and 2. Given that I don't have as much of a science background as many other premeds in the class, I can assure you that succeeding in ochem is possible if you put a lot of time into it.
 
robocop1998 said:
Ochem is hard, I am not going to deny it. But if you put a lot of time into it, you will succeed. I am a premed majoring in economics and I did well in both Ochem 1 and 2. Given that I don't have as much of a science background as many other premeds in the class, I can assure you that succeeding in ochem is possible if you put a lot of time into it.
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Just an FYI, most of the pre-med courses really aren't any easier for science majors than non-science majors because by the time science majors take these courses they've only (primarily) been exposed to many of the same GE courses as everyone else. Not really an important point though. :)
 
jochi1543 said:
McMurry is a great text, that's what I have, too. I've seen some other textbooks, and it's impossible to understand anything. The fact that he color-codes all the atoms that move in the reaction also helps with understanding mechanisms.
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Yeah, that was one textbook I actually thought did a great job of clarifying things and making concepts easy. I also like the solutions manual and the loads of problems.

Like I said, that's how I learned Organic.
 
Old Grunt said:
Yeah, that was one textbook I actually thought did a great job of clarifying things and making concepts easy. I also like the solutions manual and the loads of problems.

Like I said, that's how I learned Organic.
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LOL, I'm such a cheeseball, I found his e-mail address, and I'm gonna shoot him an e-mail saying how great his textbook is.:laugh:
 
After taking my ochem 1 final today, i realized i like it a lot. For me the problem was with the teacher. He explained everything very well but the exams consited of completely random questions that contained too much trivia. He made us do all the problems in the book, which i had not problem doing, but his tests had nothing to do with the problems in the book. I like the material but he makes me hate it after each test. The thing that i like so far is the stereochemistry of reactions but I hate the nucleophilic substitution of epoxides.
 
haha... I agree.

Call me a huge nerd..... but I really liked orgo, uh I mean organic chemistry. I thought the matierial was v. interesting... & mechanisms were sort of like puzzles.
 
jochi1543 said:
LOL, I'm such a cheeseball, I found his e-mail address, and I'm gonna shoot him an e-mail saying how great his textbook is.:laugh:
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I am sure he'd appreciate it. I am pretty sure McMurry, in addition to writing great textbooks, is a pretty famous organic chemist (well, as famous as an organic chemist can be). I know his name is on at least one reaction.

Famous or not, I dig his textbook.

Whose the cheesball now?

That and a great teacher made me love the material. Funny how a good teacher can make the most mudane subject come alive while a bad teacher can make the most exciting subject boring.
 
BigMDT said:
WHY THE HECK DO PEOPLE CALL IT ORGO!!!!?????? I dont get Where the heck that extra O comes from???? On the west coast we dont call it orgo



...........We say Organic Chemistry or O-Chem. As you should.
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If Jeopardy referred to it as orgo, then I say it is a correct nickname :)
 
Omyss said:
wtf enviro chem is a bird cours where i go to school
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Yeah, that's what I was told at the time I registered....turns out, at my school, it's not a bird course. It's definitely in the top 3 hardest classes I've taken. I somehow have a borderline A+ average, but I'm afraid that this might change after the final. :barf:
 
ARoseIsARose said:
is insanely hard. However, I would expect at least a B+ if you work hard.
+pity+

good luck and practice practice practice!
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It isn't insane per se, but throw a bunch of overzealous premeds that make the curve sky high, and yeah..it gets ugly fast.
 
one thing i noticed is that people who loved physics and found it interesting and easy found organic to be hard and boring (and vice versa).
 
Here is what I did for Ochem 1.... I HIGHLY recommend this for all ladies out there:

I sat in the back of my very first lecture...... and waited till some kid in the front row asked a very difficult chem question of the prof... one that I couldn't even grasp (something about quantum blah blah), and then I relocated him in the dining hall in a "form fitting top" and asked him to be my study buddy with a big smile.......

It worked....... A's in both ochems!:biglove:
 
Ahahaha, an update: the god of Organic Chemistry himself responded to me!

I suspect that your success is due entirely to your own hard work,
but thanks for writing and giving some credit to the text. Good luck.
John McM
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:laugh:


I sense a budding romance.:love::lol:
 
I didn't think this class was nearly as difficult as people made it out to be. Granted it took time and a lot of work but the material itself wasn't too difficult. The approach I took was to spend my time understanding the fundmentals. Everything else falls into place once you've done that. You'll realize that you won't have to spend mass amounts of time memorizing every reaction.
 
i studied my a$$ off for organic I, and I took it during a summer semester when the class was small and I wasn't juggling a million other courses/activities, etc. i had plenty of time to get to know (bother) the prof and my other classmates.

Org II and the lab weren't so bad once I had orgo I under my belt.
 
Check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393924084

I had the Bruice book (http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemi...d_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196978859&sr=8-3) when I was taking organic, and while it is comprehensive in its treatment of the subject, it didn't seem to me to emphasize comprehension, whereas the book linked to above did. There are some drawbacks, however: It almost requires a completely sequential reading with commensurate completion of the in-chapter problems. Essentially, it requires a *lot* of extra time, but I went through it while studying for the MCAT and felt that it really enhanced my understanding. It does not serve as a very good reference, since it's more of a dialogue than a real compartmentalized topics. It also uses difficult examples to illustrate certain concepts, which is great for understanding the subject, but is probably unnecessarily advanced for the kinds of things you'll see on the MCAT.

Anyway, if you're an ochem nerd, or become an ochem nerd while taking the class (as I did), then you'll love this book.
 
I have the bruice book and I think is really great. It places great emphasis on the general concepts of organic chemistry in a hollistic point of view.
 
egarcia said:
I have the bruice book and I think is really great. It places great emphasis on the general concepts of organic chemistry in a hollistic point of view.
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It is a good book. Don't get me wrong. And I think it's an excellent reference. The two books seem to complement each other well.
 
My organic I is a nightmare.

Some teachers at my school are easy, mine is not at all.

All of our reactions are borderline pretty much. And dear GOD the stereochemistry...:(
 
Organic Chemistry by Maitland Jones is the single greatest textbook I have every used. I recommend it to anyone who has a poor teacher.
 
ochem aint too bad. it really depends on school/professor. overall, most of the processes are really straight forward and logical (sn1/2, E1/2, pi additions, etc.).

spectroscopy is also really straight forward (unless you have to memorize chemical shifts which would really suck)

some of the rxn mechs are straight memorization (ozonation, the one with dimethyl sulfur).

overall i did well. study hard and understand instead of memorize.


edit: btw, im finding biochemistry way harder...
 
paranoid_eyes said:
ochem aint too bad. it really depends on school/professor. overall, most of the processes are really straight forward and logical (sn1/2, E1/2, pi additions, etc.).

spectroscopy is also really straight forward (unless you have to memorize chemical shifts which would really suck)

some of the rxn mechs are straight memorization (ozonation, the one with dimethyl sulfur).

overall i did well. study hard and understand instead of memorize.


edit: btw, im finding biochemistry way harder...
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I do have to memorize those... in 2 days, along with 9 different alkene reactions and mechanisms.

We were given it all on Tuesday this week. Our test was Thursday. Given more than 2 days on a week other than the week before finals (6 tests this week alone), it might not be so hard.
 
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