Can someone explain to me why organic chem. is so hard. I obviously have not taken the class yet. I'm just curious what makes it so much harder than other science classes. Also is this the hardest of the med. school requirements?
Thanks
Thanks
Originally posted by scienceriot
I absolutely adore Orgo- I TA for it now- but I can't deny the contorted looks of pain on my students' faces as they struggle through the Pinacol vs. the McLafferty rearrangements...
I like Ochem because of the problem solving. Cmot, if you have no idea what this class is- mainly, you do 1.mechanisms as described above by Ham, 2.syntheses (where you try to figure out how to theoretically make a large organic molecule with certain reagents that do certain things: ie, POCl2 will put in a double bond adjacent to a carbonyl group- that's the only useful thing it does, and you have to memorize that along with many, many other reagents with very specific jobs), and 3.spectroscopy (where you try to identify unknown molecules based on different spectrographs).
I admit it does blow the first time you see a spec or a step-by-step mechanism: it looks really weird, you've never really seen anything like it in other Chem classes, and Orgo has an incredibly immense vernacular to learn. You really will be speaking a different language by the end of it. However, you must become one with the benzene: don't be so daunted, and you will find yourself having as much fun doing synths as you would doing the Cryptoquip in the Sunday paper. Stay confident: as a TA, I feel that one of students' biggest downfalls is a negative, "this is not doable" attitude going into the class.
Originally posted by HamOnWholeWheat
Basically, the class consists of the teacher showing slides of reaction mechanism which can be likened to putting "electron A" in "slot B" causing "carbocation C" to form which is nucleophilically attacked by "nitrile D", but this only works in conditions of 10% strong acid in the presence of phospho-peroxy-whogivesaratsass.
Originally posted by CD
Dr. Octopus-- WE DID cover bio molecules. In fact we spent several weeks there at the end covering lipids, carbos, proteins etc. It was my least favorite part of the class. Our prof also said that she usually has someone who gets 70/70 of the questions on that test right. No one did this year. The best was 66/70 which is still in the 100% tile. I guess it helps that the classes are VERY small usually around 8-15 students. This last year there were only four of us! I just wondered what was really representative of the test.