o chem & biochem concurrently?

[LivestockDoc]

Has anyone tried to take 1st semester O Chem and Biochem at the same time? I realize that O Chem is a pre-req for Biochem, but I'm wondering if anyone has gotten special permission to do them both together, and how did that work out?

Or, for those of you that have taken Biochem, did you feel that you wouldn't have done well had you not had O Chem prior to it?

Thanks!

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[VeganChick]

Haven taken Biochem, I definitely feel that not having O-Chem first would be a big disadvantage. There were many times in class that were like an "aha!" moment as concepts we learned in O-Chem and Bio classes all came together.

 

[Optimistic 13]

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[IvyLynx]

I'll be the oddball and say that I would have been fine taking Biochem after 1st semester Orgo, as opposed to after 2nd semester. I only remember the first couple weeks being orgo-dependent, and that was all stuff from Orgo 1. After that my teacher would be, "you should have learned this in micro"...or genetics...or physics (?!!)...none of which I had taken yet, of course.

 

[Meggie1985]

Aside from whether or not it's possible to learn biochem without having learned the concepts from o-chem, I think it's important also to consider the difficulty of these classes. At my school, it would be pure insanity to take them both at the same time, because both require massive, massive amounts of studying. If those are the ONLY two classes you are taking, then MAYBE.

Then again, I go to a huge university with professors more interested in their research than teaching. Therefore students have to take a lot of ownership for learning the material on their own. A lot of students take ochem at a local community college for this reason; I stuck it out here, and have to say that it was the most tramatic six months of my life. Biochem wasn't so bad.

Still, I wouldn't do it (biochm+ochem concurrently). No way. Absolutely not.

Good luck to you!

 

[DVMorBust]

I'm taking 2nd semester O-chem along with biochem this semester, and I'm not having too much trouble with it. Granted, Organic just kind of clicks with me (SO MUCH more so than gen chem ever did), so conceptually speaking I make a lot of connections without having been taught them specifically.

I'd be very wary of taking it before ANY organic if the professor teaching it is very mechanism-intensive. My professor is ... not so much, he teaches it more like a biology class. It's still a tough course, but I'm also taking Genetics this semester and that's helping far more than the 2nd-semester Organic.

I guess my point is...try to find out what the professor's focus is, and go from there?

 

[LivestockDoc]

Thanks everybody!

I really didn't want to take these courses concurrently, but was thinking that I might have to because I wanted to apply this summer, and I misinterpreted the CSU website to say that all grades had to be reported by July 15th of the year you APPLY, when in fact it states the grades have to be in by that date before you ENROLL.

Jeez, I've been stuffing my head so full of vet school info these past few months that I can't even read properly anymore! Heaven help me when I take the GRE this January!

 

[CurrySpice]

My friend is in the accelerated PSU/Jefferson Hospital program this year, and as a freshman in college she is taking BioChem and Orgo 1 (as well as 3 other classes) and she said it's really hard, but doable. I know she studies a lot and she's not pulling the As as easily as she used to, but it's manageable for her even while maintaining some semblance of a social life.

 

[soxbox]

You can do it if I did it I had been out of school for 5 years, applied to vet school, and needed to do 4 prereqs that year... So in the fall I took organic chem and biochem at the same time (while working a full time job and part time on the weekends)... and then in the spring did Orgo 2 and genetics... I think having had organic chem beforehand would maybe have helped a little bit in the very beginning of biochem... but overall I did not have much trouble. The biggest problem was the time commitment of both classes... especially those 5 hour orgo labs (not sure if it is different if you dont take night classes)?

I found out I had got into CSU in January just when I had started Organic 2 when I realized that CSU did not require the second class (not sure if that has changed)... but since all the other schools I applied to still required Orgo2, I stuck it out...

If you can spread the 2 out, it would probably be beneficial... but if not, no worries... like I said, I got through it and I am far from a good student

 

[sumstorm]

I would not have been willing to take them at the same time, but I personally found that my biochem was more dependent on 1st year chem, molecular biology, and my other biology courses. I found biochem far easier than ochem