How many hours a day did you/do you spend studying O-Chem I?

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Toadesque

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I dunno what's going on with me. I feel like I'm studying enough and that I understand the material but when I take the exam I don't do well. I messed up on the first exam bc I over studied mechanisms (he barely put any on the exam) and I ended up getting a C. I'm just hoping for a B in the class now.

Anyone have any advice? I have another exam on this coming Thursday and the chapter on preparation of Alkynes just hit me like a ton of bricks. There's sooooo many things to memorize all of a sudden and knowing how to use them. Remember I'm talking about O-Chem I not II 🙂
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I just go over what we're going over in class the day before. So I try to go 1-2 hours a day.
 
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Toadesque said:
I dunno what's going on with me. I feel like I'm studying enough and that I understand the material but when I take the exam I don't do well. I messed up on the first exam bc I over studied mechanisms (he barely put any on the exam) and I ended up getting a C. I'm just hoping for a B in the class now.

Anyone have any advice? I have another exam on this coming Thursday and the chapter on preparation of Alkynes just hit me like a ton of bricks. There's sooooo many things to memorize all of a sudden and knowing how to use them. Remember I'm talking about O-Chem I not II 🙂
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I didn't study everyday, but I probably put in 4-7 hours a week on average. At least 1-2 hours a week going over names or stereochemistry or whatever we were doing at the time and 3-4 hours during the weekend going thru practice problems and doing any assigned work in the class + studying for quizzes/exams.
 
agirl said:
I didnt struggle much with o-chem as I did with general chem II. I guess its a lot, but in general its much more fun than general chem II. I have heard several people held the same opinion.
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What is so hard about Chem 2? I have not taken this class, so I was just wondering?

How struggling is Chem 2 compared to Chem 1?
 
J DUB said:
I just paid attention and studied a couple of days before the test for maybe 3-4 hrs....

Ochem, some people get it and some dont! I got it and enjoyed it!! 🙂
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Same here. Loved orgo, and didn't have to study much. Same with biochem. Inorganic though....studied my ass off for some of the tests, same with physics. Guess thats why my PS score was low haha.
 
I find it strange that your professor didn't put many mechanisms on your exam--that seems to be a major part of orgo.

I just made sure I didn't get behind in the material. Going over mechanisms and nomenclature with study groups once a week really helped, as well.
 
Tatertots said:
Organic Chemistry As a Second Language!
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Yeah I think this would have helped but there's only a few weeks left in the semester now, don't see a point in buying it. Will definitely get it for O-Chem II though!

MexicanDr said:
What is so hard about Chem 2? I have not taken this class, so I was just wondering?

How struggling is Chem 2 compared to Chem 1?
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Gen Chem II is definitely tougher but it really just depends on your professor. I got a C+ in Gen Chem I but an A in Gen Chem II. 😕

NeuroLove said:
I find it strange that your professor didn't put many mechanisms on your exam--that seems to be a major part of orgo.

I just made sure I didn't get behind in the material. Going over mechanisms and nomenclature with study groups once a week really helped, as well.
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I dunno I guess he just wanted to ease us into them but I didn't like what he did. Before the exam he told us we would have to know for certain 4-5 different mechanisms because they would ALL be on the exam. He only put one of them.
 
I took orgo over the summer, so I can't really suggest number of hours becuase I was obviously in a far more condensed time frame, but I can suggest some strategies. If you feel like you understand the material but still don't do well on exams, try 'testing' yourself with problems from the book or flash cards (my gen chem professor strongly recommended flash cards to all of us going on to orgo...turned out to be really good advice, for me at least). Also, if you feel you're studying the wrong material, that might be something to talk to the professor about, or a student who has already taken the class.

The other thing that I found helped me in orgo was making audio recordings of my notes. This way, I could 'study' while doing something else--I'm not sure what difference listening to my notes in the background while I did things around the house/drove to class on exam day made, but I know people who swear this helps. The real difference it made for me was in actually making the recording. Reading my notes aloud once, but having to think about the best way to coherently re-present them to myself, seemed to make concepts stick better in my head than my ordinary method of just reading my notes to myself again and again did. I guess in essence I was teaching my notes to myself by making the 'lectures' and teaching material is considered an effective tool for internalizing it...
 
I survived Orgo I by working problems EVERY DAY. I would say at least an hour or 2 every day. My teacher recommended (and I found to be extremely helpful) doing every single problem from the chapter in the textbook. In my book, each chapter had somewhere around 70 problems. It's a lot, but if you can do all of them, you can do anything!

You can study and read the concepts all you want, but being able to solve problems is what counts. Also, if you don't have a study partner, get one. That helps a ton too, to have someone right there to bounce things off if you don't quite get a concept. I also found models to be really useful when we got to chirality.

Good luck!
 
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For Organic I studies not just for an A, but to have the highest grade I possibly could. I studied tried to spend about 40-50% of my time at home studying Organic. So maybe 4 hrs a day on average. I really loved it to the point where I'm excited about reviewing it for the MCAT.
 
Yeah, I've never even cracked my OChem book and make solids grades on all the exams. I'm pretty sure I'll sink an A. I just went to every class, took good notes, and did the exam practice reviews. From there its not too bad.
 
For me, pre-reading AND note-taking was important, that way in lecture I already felt like I knew what was going on and could just note what the prof stressed especially. I didn't feel I really had to study that much as long as I took notes before class. O Chem II was a different animal; that class, I had to study almost constantly with notecards and everything.
 
1-2 hrs/day and more before taking an exam. Work lots of problems and understand what is happening with the electrons.

Also get organic chemistry as a second language by David Klein for ochem 1 and 2. It is a FANTASTIC supplement that really helped me get an A in both.
 
I studied maybe an hour a day on average for both orgo I+II, and then I would ramp that up to maybe 3-4 hours a day a few days before each test.
 
Organic chemistry doesn't depend so much on memorization (like biochem) as it does having some sort of deeper understanding of how molecules interact. Once you understand what electrons "want" to do and get a feel for different functional groups, etc., organic becomes (relatively) simple. Of course, this doesn't happen overnight. I generally studied 2 hours per day and eventually things started to click. Spend a good chunk of your time with practice questions rather than reading the book over and over.
 
ochem I was an easy class. Just understand the concepts and the rest is cake. plus you dont need to know everything because there are multiple ways to do everything. I'd like to say i studied about 10 hours/week, that included writing up lab reports.
 
JonSwan said:
Organic chemistry doesn't depend so much on memorization (like biochem) as it does having some sort of deeper understanding of how molecules interact. Once you understand what electrons "want" to do and get a feel for different functional groups, etc., organic becomes (relatively) simple. Of course, this doesn't happen overnight. I generally studied 2 hours per day and eventually things started to click. Spend a good chunk of your time with practice questions rather than reading the book over and over.
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Yeah I think that's about right. The people who see O Chem, especially first semester, as a class about rote memorization are really making things harder for themselves.
 
I never went to class. The night before the test I would stay up all night and memorize everything after I photocopied all the notes from some girl. With the old exams, perfect notes and a little Red Bull I didn't have any problems getting an A. I'll admit though that I had an "easier" teacher.

However, while that seemed very efficient at the time, I realized I forgot EVERYTHING when I had to study for the MCAT. I honestly had to relearn what a ketone was.

Organic was much easier than all the upper level science classes I'm taking this year to finish my major IMO. You may find this odd, but enjoy it while you can.
 
Depends on the professor.
First time taking O-chem, got a C in lec studied 3-4 hours 5 days a week Hated the class. Tried to memorize everything in 8 weeks over the summer did NOT work for me. Fast forward 3 years, retaking with a different professor who EXPLAINS in so much detail that I enjoy the material now. I study a lot but not enough to burn out.
 
Orgo 1 is less memorization and more concept based. Orgo 1 will not really have many reactions for you to learn, but will present you with basic concepts. I found Orgo 1 easier because you could just read through the chapter and understand the material, whereas orgo 2 required rote memorization of reactions.

Orgo 1 maybe had 30 reactions

Orgo 2 had probably 300 reactions
 
Organic chem is one of the easier classes I've taken when it came time to take the tests. I can't think of another class where I had that kind of confidence and authority of the material. I can't think of a single exam throughout both semesters where I got hung up on a problem. Sure, there were small mistakes and what not, but I can't remember a single exam that had a question where I was totally stumped, even on our 8-12 step synthesis problems.

Now, with that said, I also can't think of a class that I studied more for, and spent more time doing practice problems for. It wasn't memorizing either. You need to understand why things happen the way they do, and once you get that down, the class becomes cake.
 
Thx for all the advice.

I just hope I can do well on this next exam. I'm so tired of not being the one who gets one of the highest grades in the class 🙁.
 
Toadesque said:
I dunno what's going on with me. I feel like I'm studying enough and that I understand the material but when I take the exam I don't do well. I messed up on the first exam bc I over studied mechanisms (he barely put any on the exam) and I ended up getting a C. I'm just hoping for a B in the class now.

Anyone have any advice? I have another exam on this coming Thursday and the chapter on preparation of Alkynes just hit me like a ton of bricks. There's sooooo many things to memorize all of a sudden and knowing how to use them. Remember I'm talking about O-Chem I not II 🙂
Click to expand...
I have an ochem I exam on thursday as well 😎. I spend 2-3 hours a day working problems.
 
I find it so interesting that some people struggled with gen chem and found orgo to be easy. With gen chem, I walked through that no problem. Studied maybe 2-3 hours the night of the test and that was it, easy A in both 1 and 2.

Orgo, on the other hand, has been a nightmare. I'm re-taking it. To be successful, you should probably devote 1-3 hours/lecture studying and really nailing what you learned that day in lecture IF orgo is something you don't understand well. I did the opposite.. barely paid attention in lecture, studied for a few days before the lecture and wound up doing poorly. Then it snowballed and really started to hit me as things began building upon themselves.
 
I found chem II significantly harder than orgo, but not because of the material; it was all in how the tests were set up.

Chem II tests were 20 multiple choice questions in 50 minutes, and they all involved calculations. Even with a solid understanding of the material, you were pressed for time, and with only 20 questions, it was very easy to lose that A.

Orgo tests, on the other hand, were all written. And as others have stated, understanding how molecules "behave" is key because it allows you to figure out otherwise completely foreign problems. This, coupled with a written test, meant that partial credit was generally the worst you could do (if you studied appropriately).
 
4-5 hours the week before a test.. i do better if I just relax instead of freaking out about everything like most other premeds
 
Toadesque said:
Thx for all the advice.

I just hope I can do well on this next exam. I'm so tired of not being the one who gets one of the highest grades in the class 🙁.
Click to expand...

Don't set yourself up for depression man, roll with the punches.
 
i did about 6 hours a day after lecture....but that's because i took it over the summer.

my best guess is just study like 2 hours a day and you will be straight.
 
deleted.
MexicanDr said:
What is so hard about Chem 2? I have not taken this class, so I was just wondering?

How struggling is Chem 2 compared to Chem 1?
Click to expand...
 
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