How difficult was ochem /sci/? I got to say after a whole year

shameless bump

>>8154910

It wasn't hard. Only premed biofags complained about it.

>>8154910
Pretty sure it depends a lot on your school. Some places have super hard gen chem and easy ochem. Other schools it's the other way around.

Only going off of what friends said in undergrad and kids I tutor said later at different schools. I only took gen chem.

>>8154910
I thought it was very easy, mostly because I found it interesting and it felt like a puzzle game (I'm honestly not very smart)

Also, since the classes was curved, it's pretty easy to beat pre-med and bio majors. They just try to memorize their way through the class, when they should be trying to understand major concepts.

I found ochem to be pretty straightforward. A bit boring, maybe, but nothing all that complicated.

Somewhat related question. How difficult would it be to self-learn ochem? I took gen chem and enjoyed it but chem is definitely not going to be my major or minor. I'm a bit of a DIY polymath.

>>8155019

Not very. The core concepts are pretty easy, classes make it harder than it needs to.

Check out UCI openchemistry project.

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>>8154910
I tried to blunt force learn in orgo I and it was hell on Earth with genetics, calc, psych, and a gen ed on top of it. Followed the advice of others and tried to develop an intuition/see the big picture of it and it wasn't too bad. It really just weeds out people who try to memorize or aren't really interested in biology or chemistry.

>>8154910
it's fun and interesting anon

It's as hard as the examiner decides to make it.

there's obviously the "stamp collecting" basic reactions you have to learn by wrote.

But then when you're meant to put them together and devise a synthesis for a molecule it requires much more puzzle-solving skill.

and a hard retrosynthesis or multi-stage reaction you have to come up with a plausible mechanism for can be very hard.

If it's your first Ochem course though it is probably not that bad.

>>8155143
i thought the mechanisms were way easier than the retrosynth. retrosynth is like juggling "what do i think will work", "what will actually work", "what do i remember that i can use to make this work", and "what does the professor want me to write down" all at the same time. mechanisms are just going with the flow...of electrons.

I took 3/4 of the series in community college and it was retardedly hard, I ended up dropping second semester

I took 2 quaters of it in uni and it was easy as fuck

it depends on the professor, as with all lower division classes

>>8154910
mine was super easy
the tests were literally copy pasted from last year

>>8155199
>the tests were literally copy pasted from last year
What does this have to do with anything unless you cheated? Schools are fucking lazy, what else is new?

>>8155206
not him but my uni had an entire drive that was passed to everyone (I didn't use it, not for my classes anyway) that had previous tests of every professor who was too lazy to make new shit

>>8154910
Dnp can fuck your shit up senpai.
Tnp is even better at doing it from what I understand.

Dont forget the antihistamines

>>8155223
Ah... nvm... thats a methyl group...

So fuckin' true on the professor's difficulty level. I did almost every practice textbook problem along with spend 75% of my study time for OChem and still ended with a curved 'C'. I thought I was good for every test. He would be paranoid and make new shit every single semester and he thought our entire life was his class. Worst thing is that I took the class at a junior college and local students said that OChem was easier at a university down the road. That means that when grad/medical schools look at transcripts, they will see someone with university OChem and a decent B or A while someone from my class who mostly suffered to get a "just" a C at a junior college.

>>8154910
pretty easy rote memorization.

the fun stuff is nmr, spectroscopy.

everything else is memorize shit.

>>8154910
was ok, nothing too complicated in my opinion. I'm more of an analytical kinda guy though

resonance in aromatic structures always got me though, iv'e long forgotten the rules for ortho, parra and meta

>>8155342
Agreed with this, I fucking love NMR

Just study up

>>8155296
or maybe you're not as intelligent as you think you are...

>>8154930
>Also, since the classes was curved, it's pretty easy to beat pre-med and bio majors. They just try to memorize their way through the class, when they should be trying to understand major concepts.

Five-star post. The concepts in OChem are not difficult. But, it's probably the last "weed-out" class for pre-meds, so professors make it much more difficult by the amount of material they throw at students. This is where many pre-meds run into problems: rather than understand concepts, they turn the class into a memorization marathon. So, the class does its job: it identifies the kids that can memorize tons of shit.