Chem Advice!!

[kjl08]

Help!

I've just decided to take premed-halfway through my first university year. I'm currently in Business so I didn't need to take any science courses. Now I'm stuck trying to take intro chem, organic chem and two biochem's in 3 semesters. They are all prerequisites in respective order (not sure of the correct term for that). So I am trying to get permission to take intro chem and organic chem concurrently.

I need advice. How hard will it be to learn organic chem without already having learned intro chem? Has anyone else done this? How hard is organic chem? From what I've heard intro chem isn't much different from high school chem. Neither University in Saskatchewan has an Organic Chem summer class so I can't take it without travelling some where else for the summer.

Side note - unfortunately chem was my lowest mark in high school -80% or 3.7 gpa. its only low because i got permission to use this class time for helping in the administration office in my school and i didn't take the time to catch up and learn everything. My overall high school average was 92.5% or 4.00 gpa.

[Jochi1543]

I don't think taking orgo with no gen chem at all is a good idea at all. If you took chem in HS - ok, maybe. I took orgo after the first semester of gen chem and did fine, but I can't imagine jumping into orgo with no chem background...there's enough stuff to learn without worrying about names of elements, atomic numbers and masses, orbitals, etc.

[KamG]

I disagree with jochi, i think its doable. You dont need to know alot of gen chem to do organic (at least not at my uni). Im a chem major and have taken upper level organic courses and still dont find that i ever need to know any gen chem. The very basics (acid/base chem etc) would be kinda useful but HS chem is more than enough (or spend 1 week reading gen chem for dummies and youll be fine)

[Corsci]

I can relate, i am a business major, however i started out in sciences.
do not try and take ochem and gen chem at the same time unless you are really comfortable with chem. I'll level with you, business is a cake walk... (even stats and accounting which all "future CEOs" complain about) a 4.0 in business takes a bit of effort and a little luck but just cause your a superstar in commerce doesn't mean that science will be the same. Its doable though i have been able to do well enough in both at the same time to keep my options open (fingers crossed) but don't get too naive and bite off more then you can chew.

Not sure if you are planning on totally switching to science but trying to cram in all your pre reqs in three semesters (presumably because you wanna get into med after 2 years?) will likely do more harm than good and you might not even be competitive after four years if you screw yourself over in the next 3 sems.

[Julie]

Did you look into Athabasca University? You might be able to take some pre-reqs with them during the summer without travelling...

[Jamer]

...why do you have to take them all over the next 3 semesters?

[switcheroo]

If I were you, I'd be more apt to try to do orgo and biochem together, after doing general chem on its own. At my undergrad institution, orgo 1 and 2 were prereqs for biochem, but if you got high enough marks in general chem you could take orgo and biochem together--and lots of people I know did this successfully. Orgo was hell on earth for me (I did the full 6 credit hours in two months of summer classes, so this might have been part of the problem lol), and I can't imagine having done it without general chem--at least, this is how it was at my school.

[fireball]

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[fireball]

+1 for the biochem and organic together, very complimentary

[Wut?]

I took both orgos before I did my inorganic courses. This was in my first year.

Then I took biochem in my second year and got destroyed. I admire whoever can do biochemistry, because it's far too much information for my tiny brain!