Bad judgement call this Semester...

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Yes, yes, I should have known better but I made a dumb mistake this semester. Having done well in my other prereqs I figured I’d be able to pull off a semester with G2 and O1 together.


So this semester I am actually enrolled for P2, G2, and O1. Well needless to say my plate is overflowing. I am doing well in P2 and G2 but am rather struggling in O1.


The bottom line is that instead of risking a C or worse grade at the end of the semester, how bad would it reflect on my application if I withdrew from O1? Of course at this point in the semester it will show up as a W.


Thanks.

2

IMO, far better to take the “W” than a C or worse. Ochem is the pre-req that is probably looked at the most by adcoms, as it is generally considered to be even more of a “weed out” class than gen chem.


Frankly, I’m surprised your school lets you take Gchem 2 and Ochem 1 at the same time. At my school, the vast majority of the gchem background needed for Ochem was covered in the last quarter of gchem, and all three gchem courses were pre-reqs for ochem.

3

I have to agree that your best option would be to withdraw from OChem. I can well remember my advisor telling me that A’s are plusses, B’s are neutral, and C’s are negatives when it comes to your med school application.

  • Quote:
Frankly, I'm surprised your school lets you take Gchem 2 and Ochem 1 at the same time. At my school, the vast majority of the gchem background needed for Ochem was covered in the last quarter of gchem, and all three gchem courses were pre-reqs for ochem.



This was the same at the school I attended. I can't imagine tackling organic without first completing general chem.

Best of luck!
4
  • Emergency! Said:


Frankly, I'm surprised your school lets you take Gchem 2 and Ochem 1 at the same time. At my school, the vast majority of the gchem background needed for Ochem was covered in the last quarter of gchem, and all three gchem courses were pre-reqs for ochem.



Actually my school doesn't .... they tried stopping me but I argued my way into it - talk about shooting oneself in the foot!

Does that make me a worse marksman than Cheney?
5

I find myself in a similar situation: 11 credit hours for 3 classes plus a 40+ hour/week job and family commitments. Fortunately, I have an A in two classes and am barely hanging on to a B in chem II.


The material isn’t that difficult…it’s getting the time to actually retain the material rather than just work from short-term rote memory.


Definitely not taking three classes and two labs in the near future.


I’ve gone back and forth on withdrawing from chem II, but I still have to chunk through it no matter what. At the age of 40, I’m a “rush” (not logical I admit) to get everything (including residency) completed by the time I’m 50.


I guess I’ll see how tonight’s exam goes before making any other decisions.

6

Dazed,


From the last several of your posts I think it important for you to consider this: SLOW down and go by the numbers. I think Dr Renard may have shared this pearl with you (or possibly another): It is easy to feel the burning NEED to get in yesterday but a hasty preparation where you try to cram too much in will lead to poor grades and ultimate failure to matriculate.


One of the biggest mistakes I notice often is students doing part one of something in the summer and the second in the fall. Take your big heavy sciences part I in the fall and part II in the spring, use the short summer for stand alone stuff. MOST schools will schedule the same professor to teach O Chem I and II in the fall and spring REALLY ADDING to the continuity.


Since this has come up in at least two threads… I think it time to repeat “the general rules of Organic Chemistry”:


The general rules of Organic Chemistry:

  1. Organic Chemistry trips a higher proportion of pre-med students up than any other of the pre-requisites, I have heard it called “the gatekeeper to medical school” (I am not entirely sure why?). It might be because it is a lot like learning a foreign language (or so I have been told), one has to learn the nouns then verbs and how to make sentences, rules of syntax etc like a language and is TIME intensive.

  2. However you did in Gen Chem… FORGET it Organic Chemistry is a horse of a different color. Many who sailed in gen chem struggle in O chem, many who struggle in Gen chem SAIL through O chem (ME) O Chem involves comparatively little math, if you have a visual orientation you will find it easy.

  3. Organic Chemistry is THE PROTOTYPE of a CUMULATIVE hard science, the things you learn the first week of O Chem I, you will see and use on the O Chem II final 10 months later. It was once explained to me (and I saw PLENTY of supporting evidence as I went along) what you get on your first exam is likely what you will get for the course (unless you buckle down and learn what you missed)! I aced the first and on the O Chem II final the highest grade was 196/200, the second highest was 194/200 (MINE) the next was 184/200…

  4. The key to success in O Chem is repetition, repetition and more repetition. We used “Wade’s Organic Chemistry fifth edition” which came with a “solutions manual” (a VERY good one I might add), while assigned only a representative sample of questions for the class, I can confidently say that I worked EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM in the book, I pushed the electrons around. (I was very paranoid considering the effort it took in gen chem and worked to midnight on the first (and most subsequent) nights.

  5. Try, if you can, to work ahead of the lecture, I found that if I had already worked through material, when I heard it in lecture it was often a little bit of a different look, I caught myself often going, “Ain’t that some s__t, COOL, I got it!”

  6. While generally allowed, I would advise to take the lab sections WHILE you take the didactic portion, it is so full of minutia to remember, it might be tough to pull it out of your butt later. Also, it is best to do I and II consecutivly (by the same professor). There were some transfers in our section for II, and they were off balance from the very beginning.

  7. If you have planned your path well, you should be able to take a lighter load with O Chem, (while at KU O Chem and lab together were worth 6 credits per semester, it demanded a considerably more than 6 credits worth of time) I actually saved Western Civilization and took a “History of Christianity” to fill out a full time schedule.


    Richard



7

This is kind of an old thread… sorry for the resurrection, but I have a related question.


I did quite well my first quarter of Orgo. Now I am in quarter two, and feel like I am crashing and burning. Synthesis problems are hurting me. I’m having a mental block with the whole retrosynthetic analysis thing. We are also using the Wade book which doesn’t have that many of the “make this compound from alcohols of 2 carbons or fewer” type problems that my professor is favoring on quizzes…


Does anybody have any resources/study suggestions for mastering the second half of organic? The huge pile of reactions is overwhelming, and I have to use up most of my studying time to get down which reagents (Jones, Lindlar’s, PCC, etc) and mechanisms are for what - leaving me little time for the higher-level questions of how it all fits together.


Thanks…

8

slb,


It’s been ages since I took my organic chemistry. I did it over the summer, so all I can remember is that the pace was just insane and…I was mainly relying on my short term memory on the exams, rather than really learned the stuff. While you probably won’t need to have very extensive organic chemistry knowledge for a medical school itself, you definitely need to know this stuff for the MCAT. I had really hard time learning the mechanisms (pushing electrons and all that), but I remember that I usually did quite well on the tests by answering the questions ‘from the end’. We had multiple choice exams in this class, so I basically tried to go through every alternative and see what the end product would be, rather than remembering what two classes of compounds I have to mix to get the final product…I’m not sure if it makes sense.


I didn’t really use any extra materials, other than exercises provided by my teacher.


Good luck with the class. I hope you’ll find some way for mastering the reactions.


Kasia



9

slb,


I remember my fight with organic very well. Organic 1 went just fine. . . at a community college. When I moved up to the university and took Organic 2, I realized just how far behind I was at the beginning of the course.


Anyway, I came through okay. BUT only because I paid for a one-on-one tutor for many hours. It was amazing when he sat and explained things to me they started making sense.


Check with your school. Maybe they have free tutoring available. If they do, my suggestion would be to use it!

10
  • slb Said:
This is kind of an old thread... sorry for the resurrection, but I have a related question.

I did quite well my first quarter of Orgo. Now I am in quarter two, and feel like I am crashing and burning. Synthesis problems are hurting me. I'm having a mental block with the whole retrosynthetic analysis thing. We are also using the Wade book which doesn't have that many of the "make this compound from alcohols of 2 carbons or fewer" type problems that my professor is favoring on quizzes...

Does anybody have any resources/study suggestions for mastering the second half of organic? The huge pile of reactions is overwhelming, and I have to use up most of my studying time to get down which reagents (Jones, Lindlar's, PCC, etc) and mechanisms are for what - leaving me little time for the higher-level questions of how it all fits together.

Thanks...



I agree with you that the Wade book is not the greatest in terms of learning retrosynthesis. However, you really need to focus on improving your retrosynthesis abilities; I don't know of any other way to become competent at synthesis in the forward direction besides learning retrosynthesis. I highly recommend getting a hold of "Organic Synthesis: The Disconnection Approach" and the workbook that goes with it, both by Stuart Warren. Start at the beginning and work your way through both books. If you finish these two books, you will be not just good, but excellent, at retrosynthesis as well as synthesis. These books are so effective that they even helped me survive the synthesis portion of my quals in grad school. (I have my PhD in organic chem.)

Hope this helps, and best of luck to you.
11

Personally, for the first time, I really learned to appreciate my “right-brained, highly visual-spatial” way of processing problems in OrgoII! I suck, and I do mean SUCK, at memorization of lists & such - never fail to recall the tawdry poem or pneumonic, just can’t recall what in the hell it was supposed to help me remember. So, I survived OrgoII - actually did quite well - by thinking in 3-D about how crap fit together & then looking/comparing to the answers options I had. Virtually every exam was turned in with trepidation - I FAILED THAT ONE. However, all of them came back w/ A’ & B’s - much to my surprise.


I would not pilot my strategy on an exam. Try it, if you wish, & then do some mock exams/questions to see if it works for you prior to committing to doing it under exam-pressure.

12
  • slb Said:
This is kind of an old thread... sorry for the resurrection, but I have a related question.

I did quite well my first quarter of Orgo. Now I am in quarter two, and feel like I am crashing and burning. Synthesis problems are hurting me. I'm having a mental block with the whole retrosynthetic analysis thing. We are also using the Wade book which doesn't have that many of the "make this compound from alcohols of 2 carbons or fewer" type problems that my professor is favoring on quizzes...

Does anybody have any resources/study suggestions for mastering the second half of organic? The huge pile of reactions is overwhelming, and I have to use up most of my studying time to get down which reagents (Jones, Lindlar's, PCC, etc) and mechanisms are for what - leaving me little time for the higher-level questions of how it all fits together.

Thanks...



The experts have posted some great advice; I don't have much to add in that department except that in my organic courses (I took it twice) most people didn't spend much time with the assigned textbooks except maybe to work the practice problems. Our TAs advised us to work from the lectures, handouts, and practice exams, and especially focus on working the synthesis problems over and over. I would sometimes read the book if I needed more explanation of a concept but the lecture notes were pretty good. Also, get with a study partner if you don't already; orgo seems to lend itself to group study.

I would suggest that if you are truly going to crash and burn, that is to say get less than a B, consider getting out now and spend the rest of the spring studying and looking for ways to fix what went wrong, then retake later. Better to do well and get good grades than rush through it and possibly lower your GPA. Best of luck,
13

Make index cards or keep a file somewhere of all reactions. In each file, I listed:


-The Name of the reactions


-Reagents and Catalysts


-Generic Mechanism


-Gotcha exceptions


You can try to do all the arrow pushing and figure out on the spot how a reaction proceeds, but for test-taking purposes it’s just easier to memorize, yes I said it, the dreaded M word, the 4 key points I mentioned above for each reaction.


When I get a chance, maybe just like 30 min a day, do reaction drills, where you draw a “generic” molecule, like say a benzene paired with specific reagents/catalysts and what the expected outcome is.


And yea… do problems, problems, and more problems.


I used this strategy and got an A in orgo I and just got a 94/100 on my first orgo II exam. And yea I know, necro-post, but just thought I’d throw my 2 cents out.

14

Thanks very much to everyone for the advice. Q- I have just purchased the book you mentioned. I hope it helps…


I have made flashcards. I have made a little book of all the reactions that I carry around with me and look at when I am at stoplights. I even bought premade flashcards in the hopes that they’d be better. I guess I feel like I’m missing the bigger picture somehow. If the quizzes and exams just asked for recitation of facts from the book, I’d be fine. But of course they do not - one must put this information together to answer fresh and terrifying questions that one has never seen or even imagined.


Presumably this is why this is such a good weed out course for medical school, because the same skills are needed there… And the frustrating thing about it is that this is normally my strength! I (usually) totally rule at putting together facts and making big-picture abstract leaps. It’s not working for me now, even though it was working last quarter, and I’m so frustrated I can even begin to explain. So instead I will use this mysterious smiley:





I’m not sure what that means but I’m sure it’s relevant.


Thanks again to those who replied.

15

The other thing I would suggest is that you make a little cheat sheet with your reagents on it and start doing synthesis problems before you really have the reagents memorized yet. You can look at your cheat sheet and pull the reagents you need, thus learning the reagents and practicing synthesis at the same time.

16

Hey all (especially web-masters)


Is something wrong with the site? I could not get on any of the forums or index pages.


I just happened to have this link saved! I hope you have not had a “crash”


Richard

17

Richard, try logging out and back in.