Alas, in two days I will begin taking the second semester of Organic Chemistry, again. For the sake of brevity I won’t dig into my previous Organic II attempts, only to state that I made a calculated error in trying to rush this process along three years ago and very nearly derailed this non-traditional premed train. Hindsight is 20/20 (Not really actually, but for the sake of argument…) and it is very true what they say that “speed kills.” In my attempt to make the square peg of my non-traditional premed academic life fit into the (extremely narrow!) round hole of my non-academic, day to day grind in the real world life, I learned the hard way why geometry matters. All things being equal, square pegs aren’t meant to fit in approximately sized round holes. In the end something has to give, and in most cases its neither the peg nor the hole but the genius trying to do the impossible.
Suffice it to say, I’ve learned much over the past three years, both about this process but more importantly about myself. For the past two and a half years I’ve been working as a certified medical technician, medical scribe, and surgical assistant specializing in ophthalmology at a multi-specialty eye care and research institution. It has been a truly enlightening experience working alongside both faculty and residents and, most importantly, patients. Like a sponge, I’ve tried to absorb as much as possible both inside and outside of the clinic. In the interim, I’ve “self-studied” the material covered in most second semester Organic courses, and I feel much more comfortable with the material today. Clearly, “feeling” more comfortable means very little until that “feeling” is translated into fact, evidenced by high scores in a subject that very often turns the most confident of students into minced-meat. With that being said though, I do believe that this time will certainly be different, as more than anything I’ve worked towards creating a better learning environment, both psychologically and practically. Over the past three years I’ve realized that it is just as, if not more, important to construct a psycho-emotional and situational environment that is conducive to academic success. This involves a whole slew of factors that this post isn’t primarily concerned about, but let’s just say that statistics bear out that there is a proportional relationship between how well one performs academically and how well one manages their external environment (if we think of academic life as being “internal” and non-academic life as “external”). In the past, I have not balanced this equation well at all and have suffered the consequences, but, even if “knowing is NOT half the battle” (https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25436) it is definitely a critical, if albeit small, part of it.
Congrats on coming your “normal” and for continuing along the process!!
PS- The KEY to Orgo 2 is practice problems over and over and over again!
O Chem II is a right of passage more than anything else it seems. I had to retake that class, and even then only managed a C.
On the plus side, you’ll pretty much never have to deal with organic chemistry on the level that you do in undergrad ever again…well unless you go into pharmacology or something. Biochem on the other hand, it doesn’t stop coming back up. Get as comfortable with that as you can.
@Doc201X wrote:
Congrats on coming your “normal” and for continuing along the process!!
PS- The KEY to Orgo 2 is practice problems over and over and over again!
I can’t recommend this advice enough. There was a clear difference in my class between those who put in the effort to do the problems in the book and those who didn’t. Doing the entire problem-set for a chapter two to three times in order to get it down better was a must for me. It was an inordinate amount of work, but it allowed me to learn the mechanisms and get a very high A in the course.
Also, I found meeting weekly with a study group to be incredibly helpful. We would take turns ‘presenting’ the mechanisms we covered that week, which encouraged us to really have a good understanding of the material.