I have a tip that might be very important for you. First of all have you volunteered for doctors, worked at a clinic, or shadowed doctors? If you haven't you really need to focus your EC attention on that and rack up the hours. Research is nice to have. If you have one or two research positions, get a decent LOR, and can make them sound good you're set. Getting published or working serious grants as an undergrad is something I overzealously chased around like no other as an undergrad and really it came back to bite me in the butt because it never happened.
I talked to a bunch of professors that were impressed me with and wanted me on board for research, but played games with me, and wouldnt follow up or even be direct about why because I wasn't a graduate student and didn't have as much experience as grad students. As an undergrad you're the bottom of the uni tier and mostly get sent to do grunt work while priority for publications is given to grad students, unless you have a special relationship with the professor and are very assertive or you find a unique opportunity.
In the last quarter of my undergraduate I finally got a chance with research that would allow me to get published after chasing it for 3 years at my uni (i'm a transfer from a CC) and it didn't turn out because even with my work there were a lot of factors that interfered with it getting published and this probably happens a lot. First of all publications can take a very long time and there's a lot of politics that goes on between professors, who they know, department drama, and having to change things around depending on where it's submitted, as well as coordinate others working on the publication (very frustrating at times!!), and then there's the time you have to spend changing your part around to fit everything else. What I'm getting at is publication can be very time-consuming and demanding and eventually I had to cut it off because I was totally unable to give it my best effort because college on its own takes a lot of time, and it was nearly impossible to find a good way to balance publishing and classes, which brings me to your comment about organic chemistry.
Do not be afraid not to neglect research and ECs for a few quarters of school, there have been times where I had to severely scale back my hours in research, internships, and volunteering because I wouldn't be able to do well in school if I kept them up. Those people I worked with weren't the happiest, but they understood that I needed to look out for my grades. If you failed organic chemistry (I can relate because I had to withdraw from it the first time around), you should focus the majority of time on your classes and be very conservative about other responsibilities you take on until you get the hang of things or a less intensive load. Count on e.c.s taking away valuable time you need at times, and depending on how much time you're at the uni you can always add research. I'd start volunteering sooner than later though if I were because I found out how much volunteering I needed to do on the day I graduated and that was one of the most horrific experiences ever. I got it done, but don't leave things hanging to the last possible moment.
