Next semester I can either take Chem 2 with Physics 1 (thinking that may be too hard), or Chem 2 with Botany w/lab (thinking that may be more doable?)
Has anyone taken Botany? At my school it is a 5 hour class with lab. How hard/time consuming is it? What exactly does the class cover? Was it difficult or fairley easy?
MamaMD
You need Physics, you don’t need botany. I would take physics because I wouldn’t want to take a 5 credit plant class. I took plant development because my major required a plant class. I was bored to death!!! But that boils down to personal preference.
I am in botany right now and at my school it is a 4 credit course. It is nowhere near as time consuming (at least at my school) as chemistry or physics ever was. It is an overview of different plants and it depends on schools on how detailed that is. I actually love this class…go figure.
MamaMD
Yes I took botany, it was a required part of my bio sequence. I got a B in the class. It wasn’t a particularly difficult class, what tripped me up was the boredom factor. I didn’t really enjoy it and I don’t know why. But that is me. just because I didn’t care for it doesn’t mean you will feel the same way. From a level of difficulty, I think is depends on the course and who is teaching it. There is a lot of memorization,parts, what does what etc, and some gen. chem. The lab was straight forward, but there was a practical exam. That part came in handy as I think it was good practice. Is there any way you can get an advanced copy of the syllabus and/or talk to the prof teaching it?
Amy, it’s part of my major as well so I have to take it eventually.
I guess my question was for the fall should I take Chem 2 with Physics 1, or Chem 2 with Botany? Everyone I have been talking to says I should NOT be taking Chem 2 and Physics at the same time. I am enrolled in Chem 2 and Physics but I wondering if this is a bad idea for the fall?
But thie thing is, if I don’t take Physics now I will be stuck taking it with Organic Chem and I don’t know if that is any better.
I hope that makes more sense.
MamaMD
I haven’t taken botany, but I am currently in the 3rd quarter of Gen Chem. I am also taking the second quarter of Physics, second quarter of Bio and calculus. A couple of my Bio/Physics classmates are in OChem right now, and they all wish they had taken the Physics last year with Gen Chem.
I think it may depend on how you are with memorization. I haven’t found a lot of memorization necessary for Physics, but I hear OChem is brutal with memorization, and I would think that Botany would have a lot of memorization as well.
So - I guess I really didn’t give you much of an answer. I can see plusses and minuses to either combination. I think I would try and talk to some student at your school who have taken Physics and Botany and get their perspectives on how difficult/demanding those classes are.
Good luck!
Amy
Hmmm, well I took Organic and Physics, so I don’t know if that is much better. I think since organic is lots of reactions and memorizing things and gen chem is lots of problems but more down to earth stuff, I would say take gen chem and physics. But again I think it is going to boil down to personal preference. Good luck with your decision.
Hi there,
I managed to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Biology wihout taking Botany. I concentrated my classes in the Physiology/Cell Biology range as I was headed for graduate school. When I ended up teaching botany in General Biology, I had to learn the stuff from scratch. It was fun. Plants are our friends and our lifeblood. 
Seriously, depending on your math abilities, Chem II and Physics will be lots of work and are heavily dependent upon the solving of problems to illustrate principles. Botany will not be quite as math heavy and is concept-oriented. If you need it for your major, then use it to offset one of your more problem-heavy courses.
njbmd 
I took Physics and O-Chem together. The main thing was that labs in both courses were incredibly time-consuming, and so those 9 total credits sure ate away at a huge chunk of my week. I think Physics and gen-chem would’ve been OK, maybe better as gen-chem lab is certainly not as demanding. Either way, you’re going to be working hard; two sciences with labs is just a lot of clock hours and there is no getting around it.
By chance I was just talking with a friend of mine who is a professor of botany. She liked organic chemistry more than gen chem because she found it more “real world”, dealing with stuff that related to her field. My father-in-law is a retired PhD in organic chemistry and he believes gen chem is the 400Kg gorilla; if you can get past that, orgo is much easier.
I guess if orgo is just a requirement toward something else it can be tedious, but it’s encouraging to know that at least some people actually find it interesting.