How can I prepare for Organic Chemistry?

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TigerLilies said:
I will be a sophomore in the fall and will be taking Organic Chemistry I. How can I prepare beforehand for it?

Thanks.

I found the book entitled "Pushing Electrons", by Daniel Weeks to be a great help in understanding what is happening during reactions. It is more of a workbook, and can be completed in a weekend. It starts with very basic stuff and increases in complexity as you work through the material.

racerx
 
I don't see how you can prepare for it beforehand unless you want to go read your OChem textbook right now before school starts...All I can say is make sure you have good study skills and prepare to memorize lots of mechanisms and reactions (its nothing like general chemistry).

Other than that, just enjoy the rest of your summer and panic once you get to class! J/K!! 😉
 
I know that you are worrying, because you heard how hard it is going to be. Yeah I heard the samething. However, the best thing you can do is don't stress over it so much and relax, then go into the school year and kick ass. Organic Chem is not something that you could really teach yourself ahead of time, especially not in a period of 1 month.
 
nothing you can really do. refresh yourself on pH and pKa from gen chem. prepare yourself to study long hours.
 
amen best advice here...and I was an orgo TA for 2 years.
 
I've heard that the book Organic Chemistry as a Second Language by David
Klein is a good read before Orgo. I ordered it to read before the next semester starts. Oh, how I'm glad I'm done with general chem, however.
 
I recommend mastering the material as you go along.. too many people slack off at one point or another during the quarter then try to catch up right before the midterm(s).

O chem to me was like a huge ladder. If you miss the basics of certain concepts, those concepts will build into something else, and soon you are just trying to memorize reactions just to pass the test.

What you NEED to do is master the material and understand the reactions completely with mechanisms, etc. That way when your professor throws some whacked out reactions on the test, you can deal with it.


If you don't master the material, you will be missing some rungs on your ladder and be stuck at the bottom while the rest of the class moves on up by building on the basics.
 
If your instructor provides problem sets make sure that you do them and that you really spend time thinking about the problems and try your best to solve them without looking at the solutions beforehand. You do have to memorize certain things but memorization alone likely won't be sufficient to do really well.
 
I would review acid/base chemistry as well as the basic IUPAC naming/properties of alkanes/alkenes/alkynes/aromatic/carbonyl/esters/ethers/alcohols...and relax b/c it isn't that bad if you don't let yourself fall behind...just keep on top of the work and you'll be fine.
 
Swenis said:
I've heard that the book Organic Chemistry as a Second Language by David
Klein is a good read before Orgo. I ordered it to read before the next semester starts. Oh, how I'm glad I'm done with general chem, however.


I used this book and it's VERY good. 👍 👍 👍
 
Megboo said:
Bumping this up for Psychout.....


Thanks, Megboo, however, I'm more interested in resources to supplement the Organic text while I am in class.
 
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