I suspect your problem is that you do not understand the fundamental material, so you are struggling to pick out the important information from the pre-lab.
Listen, this might be slightly harsh but I hope it's helpful. In my experience, there are two factors that often trip students up in organic chemistry:
1) Students let organic chemistry scare them and
2) Students accept mediocrity.
Let's look at #1 for a second. Going into orgo, everyone knows that it's going to be real tough. The older pre-meds warn you that orgo is a weeder course. People build up an aura of malevolence around the entire class. That builds a defeatist attitude. Even before sitting in your first lecture, you've already accepted in your heart of hearts that you're going to fail. And then you make the prophecy true. Before looking at study methods and Anki flashcards and spinning twice counterclockwise on the night of a waxing gibbous moon, make sure your mindset is in the right place. That means deciding you're going to DESTROY organic chemistry. That means walking into lecture everyday knowing that you have the ability to master the material. That means deciding, you know what, forget the other students and how "hard" orgo allegedly is; I know I can do this.
Which takes us to #2 (hehehe). What do I mean, "students accept mediocrity"? A lot of times, students study completely wrong. They open the textbook and see a big complicated mechanism, and their brain just kind of goes
. They try to memorize the mechanism but it's in one ear and out the other. Rinse and repeat with new mechanisms. The student thinks, "Oh well, I studied tonight." Well sure, the student studied but did they really get anything out of banging their head against mechanisms for a couple hours? That's mediocre studying. It's a waste of your time.
I recommend focusing on identifying patterns. There are certain patterns in organic chemistry. Once you start to see these patterns, it makes it much easier to solve problems you've never seen before (think nucleophiles attacking the carbon in a carbonyl, acids make electrophiles more electrophilic, bases make nucleophiles more nucleophilic, & etc). Now, that doesn't mean you don't need to memorize mechanisms. You absolutely MUST memorize certain mechanisms. However, you should also draw connections between the different mechanisms you're taught in the class. These connections make memorizing the mechanisms much easier. And you will start to develop an instinct for how to approach problems. Even if you can't see the final solution when you first see a difficult problem, you will at least be able to see the beginning of the solution. Sometimes, that's enough to work your way slowly to a complete solution.
Also, doing well in organic chemistry is all about PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. And again, you can't be too nice to yourself while practicing. Do not accept mediocrity. Sometimes, people look at a practice problem and make a weak attempt to solve it. Then, they check the correct answer and think "That makes sense." Well duh it makes sense. It's the right answer! To do well, you need to be able to produce the right answer yourself from scratch. That means working out practice problems in full. It means looking at your wrong answers and understanding where you went wrong. It means looking at your right answers and understanding where you went right. If there's a certain kind of problem you keep on getting wrong, you need to keep doing that kind of problem until you can reliably get it right.
All of this is to say--doing well in lecture is not completely divorced from doing well in lab. If you're completely missing the point in lecture, you'll miss the point of lab. If you don't understand the WHY behind an assigned lab, you're going to take forever to write the pre-lab because you can't identify what's important. And because you're taking so long to write the pre-lab, you don't have time to study. So, my advice is this--go back to Week 1 of the material and work your way forward. It's still early in the semester so this is feasible. Make sure you understand the basics backwards, forwards, and sideways. I think that will help you with both lecture and lab. I wish you the best of luck.
