Injured Veteran; Sidelined; What should I self-study?

[philosophical91]

Hello everybody. Here is a quick bio: after high school I joined the military, and subsequently had some pretty devastating injuries. Over the past 5 years since, I have had to take numerous semesters off for the surgeries I required. During that time I was unable to ambulate, so I had decided to teach myself math amongst other subjects - and was successfully able to self-study up to calculus III.

Well, once again I am sidelined for this semester - but I have been fortunate enough to be able to shadow some pretty amazing doctors at the Cleveland Clinic while I was ambulatory, which has given me the motivation to self study for the prerequisite medical classes.

My line of thinking is that if I self study now, then my familiarity with the subjects will enable me to load up on classes in order to get the heck out of undergrad!! My plan of attack is to hammer away at chemistry and physics as they seem to be the most troublesome. However, I was wanting any advice that this kind community might be able to offer on:

1) Areas that might be cause of concern in General Chem/ (or Organic when I get to it) or Physics that I should pay close attention to
2) Any general consensus of areas that students struggle with
3) Recommended reading materials/books that you have found to be helpful - as of now I just send my wife to the library to get as many books as possible on the subjects and I just read away.
4) Any websites/other resources that will help provide info, and also practice problems
5) Any additional advice

Thanks a bunch, and best of luck to everybody!

-Joe

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[costales]

Have you seen this free ebook by OpenStax College (actually Rice U.)
http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/college-physics

 

[Goro]

First off, many thanks for your service to our country!

Bets thing to do will be take practice tests to see what you're weak/strong in.

1) Areas that might be cause of concern in General Chem/ (or Organic when I get to it) or Physics that I should pay close attention to

Organic Chemistry is the great weeding subject for pre-meds.
2) Any general consensus of areas that students struggle with
Khan Academy!
4) Any websites/other resources that will help provide info, and also practice problems

Are you or will you be physically able to engage in physician tasks?

 

[RoadNurse33]

Carnegie Mellon has online classes at their Open Learning Institute in Gen Bio/Chem/Physics as well as Biochem.

http://oli.cmu.edu/

Thank you for serving our country; I wish you a speedy, and full recovery.

 

[anon01]

Thank you for your service, you are an inspiration.

I'm not sure how well received this will be here, but if I was self-studying for the pre-req courses, I would probably start with MCAT prep books. Kaplan/Princeton Review/Exam Krackers lay out the topics of each subject very well and even have practice problems in the chapters. If you are a strong self-learner, this might be a good way to prep for classes and self-study for the MCAT simultaneously.

Whatever you choose to do, best of luck to you

I just want to add: The MCAT books will not go in depth like a textbook will, so keep in mind how detailed you want your self-study to be