orgo... it's a struggle. advice?

[Kneecoal]

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well kids, i read through kaplan twice, and now i'm up to #70 in destroyer and still getting 8-9/10 wrong. i just can't seem to get the material to stick! and my test is only a month away!

does anyone have any advice??

 

[192LT192]

did you just read through kaplan or did you take notes on it? for me, material sticks much better when i write things down, even if i end up writing down the same line thats in the book. do you have Organic Chem as a 2nd Language? i used these books for both semesters of orgo when i was taking it and they helped me understand things a lot better. it explains why things are happening so theres much less memorizing and lots and lots more understanding. theyre not dat books but if you dont understand orgo, maybe the destroyer isnt where to start. maybe only do destroyer after? thats just the way i work...
Good luck! 🙂

 

[HowAboutDAT]

I'm not sure if you use Kaplan's flashcards, but you might want to consider making your own. Like the post above stated, it forces you to write each individual reaction which will hopefully help with your memory. Also, http://www.chem.ucalgary.ca/courses/...h/Carey.html#1 is a great website that nicely sums up each chapter in o-chem. There are reaction drills at then end of each chapter which can serve as a good measure of your understanding of the topic.

 

[MTD52]

Practice practice practice. The process of converting information to memory is through repetition. My test is now in about 3 weeks, and my best score is 22 right out of 30. However, that's from a starting point of 10 out of 30 right the first time I took it. And that was only from 1 day of practice problems. All I did was keep going through Destroyer and practicing.

 

[wwdaffodils]

I also agree with the Organic as a 2nd language books. They're great for understanding the material, and they're pretty quick reads too- you could probably get through each book in a day or so.

And for reactions, I photocopied the destroyer roadmaps, used whiteout to get rid of the products, and then re-photocopied those sheets to make blank worksheets with only reagents. They're great if you can't get material to stick; you fill in the worksheet enough times and eventually it becomes second nature.

 

[teethmagnet]

when you study do you write stuff down or do you only read it?
for me i basically use 50 sheets of scrap paper everyday i study
write the rxn's down for orgo, throw out the paper, nexy day do it again
alsooo if you understand the mechanisms you'll understand why you get those products!!

 

[nze82]

well kids, i read through kaplan twice, and now i'm up to #70 in destroyer and still getting 8-9/10 wrong. i just can't seem to get the material to stick! and my test is only a month away!

does anyone have any advice??

you're scoring 8/10, when you do destroyer and you're still unhappy?! I don't think that's a bad score. Anyways, here how I studied for O-chem. First I wrote all the reactions for all different classes of compounds. Example:

Alkanes
******
A-Synthesis>
1.
2.
3.
4.
.
.
.
B-Reactions>
1.
2.
3.
4.
.
.
.

Personally, organizing the reactions in the above fashion helped me a lot. After I made a list of all the reactions, every day I started writing down the reactions for 3-4 of the classes. I believe there are 12 major classes of organic compounds. So, I managed to review all the reactions, in less than a week. I can't emphasize this enough, you can't learn O-chem by reading the book; YOU MUST WRITE/DRAW THE REACTIONS OVER AND OVER AGAIN, until you know them all. After spending 2/3 week reviewing all the reactions I moved on to destroyer. I did 30 problems at the time. It took me ~ a week to finish the O-chem section. Then I went through it again, this time paying particular attention to questions I missed the first time (which I marked). Also, the road maps in destroyer helped me tremendously.

NOTE: Keep in mind that KAPLAN alone doesn't provide you with all the reactions you need to know for O-Chem. What's in KAPLAN is only a fraction of what you need to know. So, I suggest you go back to some of your text books to learn about some of the additional reactions.

Good Luck👍

 

[Kneecoal]

thanks for the replies so far everyone. i've highlighted, made some notes and some flashcards, but i guess i should be doing more. i've also been using this website (printed out) as a type of road map thing: Organic Chemistry Reagents - could someone verify its usefulness? someone had put it up on a previous thread weeks ago.

and nze, that was 8/10 wrong. not 8/10 correct. 🙁

if anyone else has any more words of wisdom, they're very welcome.

 

[Extirpator]

I also agree with the Organic as a 2nd language books. They're great for understanding the material, and they're pretty quick reads too- you could probably get through each book in a day or so.

And for reactions, I photocopied the destroyer roadmaps, used whiteout to get rid of the products, and then re-photocopied those sheets to make blank worksheets with only reagents. They're great if you can't get material to stick; you fill in the worksheet enough times and eventually it becomes second nature.

Don't know why I haven't thought to do this yet. You may have just raised my orgo score a couple points 😀 Thanks a bunch for the tip!

 

[nze82]

thanks for the replies so far everyone. i've highlighted, made some notes and some flashcards, but i guess i should be doing more. i've also been using this website (printed out) as a type of road map thing: Organic Chemistry Reagents - could someone verify its usefulness? someone had put it up on a previous thread weeks ago.

and nze, that was 8/10 wrong. not 8/10 correct. 🙁
Oh! OK. My bad...

if anyone else has any more words of wisdom, they're very welcome.

Well, again, no matter how many flashcards/printouts you make, I personally think it's a very difficult task to learn O-chem just by staring at something someone else wrote. You MUST write down the reactions for yourself many times. Use the website you posted as a reference, and then try to rewrite all the info yourself over and over again.