organic chemistry

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dasubline

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Just yesterday I started studying for the o-chem section. I did alright in my o-chem classes (made a B in both), yet the both my professors were not very good. Anyways, so bottom line, is my background in o-chem sucks,I learned not very much and got away with B's in class from memorizing, and I absolutely hate the material. I am trying to look through kaplan bb for the o-chem section, and all the reactions, concepts, and stuff is just not going thru. I have destroyer and that is no help for me since I have no clue whats going on. Any advice, should I just sit my a** down and memorize 7 pages of reactions and try to understand some of the concepts??? I just hate the material...don't know what to do, everytime I look at it, I just want to quit...🙁
 
In reality, O-chem is really nothing but memorization of the reactions. So, I suggest you sit down and memorize them regardless of your dislike for the topic.
 
I was in a similar situation, but I only had O-chem 1. We had covered Sn1, Sn2, E1, E2 the last 3 days of class (Not to mention I had no idea what spectroscopy was or what many of the functional groups were)! I only had a few weeks to study so I was the most nervous about this section. I read through the Kaplan section and took notes over everything and reviewed. I then moved on to destroyer. Since I had limited time I did not even attempt to do the problems, since most are a bit ridiculous. I just looked at the right answer in the back and read why all the others were wrong. The biggest thing that helped with the reactions was that I made a flash-card for each individual reaction for the destroyer roadmaps. I ended up with an 18 in this section, which isn't great, but if I had a few more weeks I think I could have gotten a 20. The funny thing is I really couldn't explain most reactions to you, but after doing a lot of practice tests (kaplan/topscore) I was almost able to just guess which one looked right, even though I didn't really "know" what I was doing. GOOD LUCK!
 
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