I think the comments above make a lot of sense, but I just wanted to chime in to say that college gen chem is usually tedious, but gen chem as a whole isn't necessarily so. I was also bored through much of college gen chem, for a few reasons. Homework questions were usually repetitive and required a ton of math, usually with really ugly numbers. If you understood something right away, you still had to work through variations of the same question over and over. If you didn't understand something, this repetitive approach was unlikely to help. Labs were long and often weren't introduced well, so we'd spend three hours working through a procedure without knowing what it was for.
That's why I was so blown away when I started to study gen chem for the MCAT. Sure, the material is the same, but when you study on your own (or in an MCAT class, etc.) your time is free to make connections between concepts rather than mindlessly finish assignments. Things like how periodic trends relate to acidity, how kinetics differ from equilibrium, and how reactivity/stability basically dictates all aspects of chemistry are so cool when you're free to think about them. And when you study MCAT gen chem along with orgo, biochem, etc., you get to see how these subjects are so closely intertwined, which was DEFINITELY not emphasized in my own college gen chem courses.
Anyway, good question! I love gen chem, but admit that it's often taught in a way that bores students to death, which is really a shame. But I'm always curious to hear others' input on this as well. Good luck to y'all!
