Organic Chem, when does it get difficult?

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xprodigy92

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I'm about 6 weeks through organic chemistry, I was wondering when it starts to get difficult. So far I've pulled off an 87.3 on my first test and averaged an 85 on all of my quizzes. This is without an type of curve by the way. We already covered the following topics:
Lewis structures, hybridization, all the review stuff
Alkanes
Stereochemistry
pH, Acids and Bases
Alkyl Halides and Substitution Reactions


What is left to be covered is
Alkenes
Alkyl Halides and Elimination reactions
Alkynes
Oxidation and Reduction
Benzene and Aromatic Compounds
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Mass Spectrometry and Infrared Spectroscopy
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xprodigy92 said:
I'm about 6 weeks through organic chemistry, I was wondering when it starts to get difficult. So far I've pulled off an 87.3 on my first test and averaged an 85 on all of my quizzes. This is without an type of curve by the way. We already covered the following topics:
Lewis structures, hybridization, all the review stuff
Alkanes
Stereochemistry
pH, Acids and Bases
Alkyl Halides and Substitution Reactions


What is left to be covered is
Alkenes
Alkyl Halides and Elimination reactions
Alkynes
Oxidation and Reduction
Benzene and Aromatic Compounds
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Mass Spectrometry and Infrared Spectroscopy
Click to expand...

Honestly, if you really get your fundamentals down (and I mean like do problems and really sit down and think about the answer), Organic Chem is easy for the rest of the semester.

It's all about applying basic fundamentals over and over again. Logic can answer the vast majority of the questions.
 
It Doesnt.

It just requires work. Seems like you have got it under control. Keep it up
 
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I thought second semester in Organic Chemistry was a little bit more challenging than first semester. Right now, you're laying the foundation for the myriad reactions you'll be learning later. Resonance, acidities, etc. will play a major factor in most of the reactions that you'll learn later. My hardest time with it was just remembering all of the different rules to apply in order to get the right product (and even then, there's usually an intramolecular reaction that I miss!). But if you get all the stuff you're learning now perfectly, all the stuff later shouldn't be super difficult. I think it'll be more challenging than what you're doing now, but it's not overwhelmingly difficult.
 
Well if its without a curve then you have a B/B+ so far which is average. IMO, spectroscopy is easy and oxidation/reduction equations are hard.
 
i've been just following this schedule:
Since I have quizzes/tests every friday

Saturday, off
Sunday, I read the material for the week
Monday, I read the material again
Tuesday I read the material again and do the sample problems
Wednesday, thursday, I read my notes, do all the problems
Friday, study until the test

Will this work in P-Chem and Biochem?
 
xprodigy92 said:
i've been just following this schedule:
Since I have quizzes/tests every friday

Saturday, off
Sunday, I read the material for the week
Monday, I read the material again
Tuesday I read the material again and do the sample problems
Wednesday, thursday, I read my notes, do all the problems
Friday, study until the test

Will this work in P-Chem and Biochem?
Click to expand...

Biochem is all memorization, little to no actual "logic".
 
chiapet874 said:
Biochem is all memorization, little to no actual "logic".
Click to expand...

You can memorize and be successful in biochem or you can use logic as well. It depends on the nature of your biochem class as well.
 
Studly said:
You can memorize and be successful in biochem or you can use logic as well. It depends on the nature of your biochem class as well.
Click to expand...

Bah I remember I had to memorize how to make all the amino acids and purines/pyrimidines... :shudders:
 
when you dont study
 
chiapet874 said:
Honestly, if you really get your fundamentals down (and I mean like do problems and really sit down and think about the answer), Organic Chem is easy for the rest of the semester.

It's all about applying basic fundamentals over and over again. Logic can answer the vast majority of the questions.
Click to expand...

This.
 
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I've heard Orgo 2 is a challenge compared to Orgo1.
I'm taking Orgo 1 now and I'm at a 92.6, but that's with a 12 point E.C. I managed to get all right.
I feel Sub and Elim reactions involving chair and bicyclic structures are pretty difficult, but other than that, it's just a lot of practice which isn't really a downer.
 
if it is so easy why do you not have a 99 average?
 
Organic I can be a breeze if you got the fundamentals down.
Organic II however...:scared:

Actually Ochem II isn't too bad either, it's harder but still manageable if you can memorize reagents and develop a good intuition from Ochem I. At least that was the case for me.
 
I think the hardest part of ochem isn't the individual chapters themselves but the final exam, where you have to remember and differentiate lots of similar looking reactions and reagents.

Overall, ochem is hyped up to be harder than it really is; It is time consuming and memorization intensive.

That being said, an 87.5 test score means that it wasn't exactly easy. What was the class average?
 
Ochem never really gets hard.

The only annoying part for me was NMR, IR, and mass spec.

It's actually more fun than Gchem and Physics.
 
chiapet874 said:
Biochem is all memorization, little to no actual "logic".
Click to expand...

chiapet874 said:
Bah I remember I had to memorize how to make all the amino acids and purines/pyrimidines... :shudders:
Click to expand...

I so feel you. My biochem teacher was intense, but amazing & ended up becomming a letter writer for me. But some of the material..:beat:
Morsetlis said:
Ochem never really gets hard.

The only annoying part for me was NMR, IR, and mass spec.

It's actually more fun than Gchem and Physics.
Click to expand...

Same here - hated that unit, it seemed so detached at first..but got better in the lab.
 
chiapet874 said:
Honestly, if you really get your fundamentals down (and I mean like do problems and really sit down and think about the answer), Organic Chem is easy for the rest of the semester.

It's all about applying basic fundamentals over and over again. Logic can answer the vast majority of the questions.
Click to expand...

Celerity said:
It Doesnt.

It just requires work. Seems like you have got it under control. Keep it up
Click to expand...


Morsetlis said:
Ochem never really gets hard.

The only annoying part for me was NMR, IR, and mass spec.

It's actually more fun than Gchem and Physics.
Click to expand...

👍
 
Morsetlis said:
Ochem never really gets hard.

The only annoying part for me was NMR, IR, and mass spec.

It's actually more fun than Gchem and Physics.
Click to expand...

Those things were pretty fun for me though. Spectroscopy is the epitome of a great puzzle game. But I second that it's a lot more fun than Gchem and Physics.
 
^ Hell yeah. It's like "I can tell you what molecule that is just by reading lines and peaks."
 
Why do people continue to discuss this? A class is exactly as hard as the individual professor chooses to make it. An anthropology course was one of the most difficult I took, not because of inherent complexities in the field of anthro, but because the professor liked to make long tests with ambiguous questions that were graded hard.

Does your professor give you a good idea of how the material will be tested? Are exams cumulative or divided into units? Are grades curved? Are your classmates, on average, a competitive bunch, or are you in a community college? Are you tested on the basic principles, or does your professor tease you with exceptions and conundrums that still befuddle the many PhD's in the field?

Yes, I am bitter because I had a tough time of it when I took o-chem... but I also think generalizations drawn from one individual person's experience with a class cannot be applied to another person taking an entirely different class.
 
BHaus9 said:
I also think generalizations drawn from one individual person's experience with a class cannot be applied to another person taking an entirely different class.
Click to expand...
👍

And LOL @ the people saying 87.5 on a test isn't good. You people are soft in the head.
 
Nothing is hard if you put the effort into it.
 
I thought ochem wasn't too bad.

Your still not getting A's on your quiz/tests so its not too easy for you.
 
I had an intense O. chem professor. In later exams, we'd get mass spec, IR, UV/Vis, and NMR data. We would be asked to derive the structure, and diagram the steps for synthesis from a remote base compound. What sucked was that if you derived the wrong structure from data, you got the whole question wrong even if you synthesized the "wrong" molecule correctly. So we all spent a lot of time learning how to interpret the data.
 
Chrome19 said:
This is a relative statement. Novel independent research is HARD, no matter how much effort you put into it.
Click to expand...

It depends on the system ultimately. I've been in research for about 10 years now, and I've seen well-designed systems and poorly designed systems. With well-designed systems, research is a goddamn pleasure; it practically does itself. In poorly designed systems, you want to blow your goddamn brain out.
 
Depends how you study. I thought NMR was the first hellish nightmare I encountered. **** haunted my dreams.

2nd semester I actually sat down, did some problems and realized it wasn't that bad.
 
notbobtrustme said:
It depends on the system ultimately. I've been in research for about 10 years now, and I've seen well-designed systems and poorly designed systems. With well-designed systems, research is a goddamn pleasure; it practically does itself. In poorly designed systems, you want to blow your goddamn brain out.
Click to expand...

Even well-designed systems can be a lot of trouble, especially on a technical front. I have developed a research project from nearly the ground up, and while the methodology is now routine, it's still quite technical and I wouldn't call it easy. Some systems are just harder than others, in my experience--think patch clamp.

Regardless, I still think blazing a new trail is generally hard work, both from an intellectual and "labor" point of view, and sometimes luck may be needed.

Classes were much easier in my world, and I love research and will continue to do it. What's your research area? I work in an enzymology/biophysics lab.
 
Frazier said:
You are a pre-med and have a mid-B grade in the class; ergo, it has already gotten "difficult".

The tricky part arises as the semester progresses and you have a progressively lengthy list of organogarbage to keep properly organized in your organostoring cranium...

Then, when you are completely filled with the organofilth, you'll be over-organo-joyed to find that even at this point of seemingly-super-saturation, you are only half-way there (and while the half-life of the useless organoknowledge that you have already memorized is long since past), you now have a whole new semester of organopancakes to scarf down on: enter Organic Chemistry II.
Click to expand...
+1

The overconfidence is going to kill you in this class.
 
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.. All of my friends had already taken organic chemistry and told me how hard it was going to be, and I pulled off a 99.1% the first exam and a 95% the second exam and the only reason I didn't get 100% on both of them was because I made stupid mistakes on both questions that didn't really have anything to do with me not knowing what to do. Organic chemistry is a little more work than gen chem, but the stuff actually has a point.
 
I think organic chemistry is hard right from the beginning. I'm currently taking it and I've needed to study really hard/do a lot of practice problems to keep up with the class.
 
JohnnyRomanes said:
^ Hell yeah. It's like "I can tell you what molecule that is just by reading lines and peaks."
Click to expand...

Until your 100th plasmid prep.

But hey I got to use mass spec to do serochemistry analysis on blood drawn from patients on missionary trips... that was kinda cool!
 
It gets hard when you are looking at a problem asking for a mechanism to go from #1 to #2 and having no idea where to start. Then you skip it and come back and still have no idea where to start. And then you start moving electrons and pushing arrows, drawing all over the sides of the test space. Look at it and have an epiphany and erase all of it, narrowly finishing the problem in the final minutes. And still not having it 100% correct. Then finding out that no one in the class got the problem totally correct. That is when it gets hard! ( I hate that sinking feeling when I am intimidated by a problem).

It'll most likely get harder in ochem II.

Like an above poster has mentioned, it's all really relative to the professor. They can make it as easy or as hard as they like.
 
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