It is weird how walking into a
class on the first day you already have a feeling about the class, the professor, your classmates, and your semester. It almost makes you want to run
away screaming and bumping into anyone you meet on your quest to find the
nearest exit to save your life. This is exactly how I felt the first day I
walked into my Organic chemistry class. I thought well… it is the beginning of
the semester and you generally feel that way… adding a tad- bit of nostalgia especially
if you had an epic summer like the one I had. Anyway… you assume that the
dizziness-fainting type of symptoms you experience (coupled with nausea)
upon entering the class will get away as time passes. Trust me… you are so
wrong it will fade but it will constantly haunt you and around exams time be as
virulent as the flu!
Some people say that organic
chemistry is not hard. Well it is not if you are Asian, or if chemistry is your
major (then it better not be hard otherwise you are oh-so screwed!) or if you really are into this type of topics
meaning if you reaaaaally reaaaaally reeeeeeeeeeeaaaaally like chem, then maybe
it will not be hard (at least for the first couple of classes). Wait until you
get into the whole fischer projection , SN1, SN2, E1, E2 mechanisms with
regiospecificity or stereochemistry… you are going to feel like your instructor
is speaking everything besides English.
I like to define orgo as another
language and it truly is another language. You have to learn how to “speak”
organic chemistry and boy this has nothing to do with learning Spanish or
whatever. Of course it demands a lot of practice like learning any other
language does. But at least, you can incorporate languages into you daily life.
With organic the reality can be cruel and oh-so rude: forget your dream of
having a life when school is in session, train your body to sleep a minimal
amount of hours, be prepared to the fact that your stress level is going to be
sky-rocketing during these next 4 months you will be taking it. You will eat,
breathe, talk organic chemistry, you will dream about it. In one word it will
oversaturate your life and ruin it. That’s how you will know that you are doing
well in that class.
I got fooled by my professors
saying “Organic is not hard, you just have to put in the time, but most
importantly you should not dread it”. I was so gullible… ORGANIC IS HARD!
Especially that it is not the only class you will be taking! But! Don’t get
overstressed or overscared… just dread it enough to keep up with your work and
read your notes and your book and you can be guaranteed that you are increasing
your chances of passing the class. Passing with a good grade is a whole other
level I was aiming at the beginning of the semester but I realized that I
wasn’t being realistic: I had to rescale my expectations and aim for more
realistic goals. One thing you should never ever EVER do though is miss a class and if
you do, PLEASE, I BEG YOU get notes from someone else and catch up with your
work. Because if you do fall behind guess what happens? Well… you're screwed. and don't even think about locking yourself in your room the night before your final
thinking you can catch up a whole semester worth of work. Very bad idea. How do I know? I tried...
Do you feel stressed after
reading this? If yes then good! That adrenaline will boost you and turn you
into the superman (superwoman) of organic chemistry. It will be hard but at the
end your efforts will pay and maybe somewhere along the way you will have as
much fun as I had taking organic chemistry.
Signed: a survivor of organic
chemistry
