Reply to Organic Chemistry

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Organic Chemistry"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Many kids, especially premeds, try to memorize their way through organic chemistry by memorizing every single reaction.  That isn't a good strategy as there is too much to memorize.  Instead, you need to understand the reactions, why they are happening (the mechanisms), and be able to apply the mechanisms to new situations (i.e., problem solve). Most kids don't understand the reactions well enough to apply that understanding and thus do poorly on tests.  You need to study by pushing arrows and doing a million problems.

The kids who do well in organic chemistry tend to be analytical thinkers who are good at strategy (e.g., board games) and willing to keep going until they understand the content.

--organic chemistry PhD[/quote]

Agree with this.  I remember helping a pre med peer who had always gotten As in other courses basically through brute force and practice.  I tried to teach him to take more time for understanding to help organize his knowledge--understand patterns and mechanisms etc, but at first he was so panicked that he didn't have a moment to spare because he could picture how long his usual strategies would take him with this content.  I vividly remember when I asked him to more fully explain why a reaction worked the way it did or how one was similar to the other, he said we didn't need to know that because the professor didn't ask us to explain (which actually was also technically wrong not just strategically, because the professor did have questions that asked us to identify mechanisms, he just saw that as one more discrete thing to memorize rather than the professor laying groundwork with clues on how to solve the problem).  I think the reasons my peers struggled was they didn't know that there were patterns of information that helped you think through problems that you haven't encountered before.  I wasn't perfect at it--but I did fairly well and I at least knew what the enterprise *should* be.  I also agree with the person who mentioned spatial thinking--I remember getting "flashes" of insight based on just picturing the problem that I would then use to help me figure it out.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics