orgo-sucks

What’s the worst thing about O-Chem?

March 10, 2011

“In the deepest layer of hell, Satan makes you do orgo.” I love the snapping whip and the little cyclohexane chair conformation in the bubble. For me, the worst part is IUPAC nomenclature. What about you? Related Posts:“O-Chem Is Hell On Earth!!”Screw Organic Chemistry, I’m Just Going To Write About CatsHow Simplicity Breeds Complexity in [...]

Tagged as: complaining, fun, hell, orgo-sucks

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“O-Chem Is Hell On Earth!!”

March 3, 2011

From a bathroom stall at the University of Chicago. Source: quinn.anya ‘s Flicker photostream Spot any other o-chem graffiti? Share it! P.S. One way of making it less hellish   Related Posts:What’s the worst thing about O-Chem?Screw Organic Chemistry, I’m Just Going To Write About CatsHow Simplicity Breeds Complexity in Organic ChemistryProton Bank In Crisis: [...]

Tagged as: fun, orgo-sucks

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Screw Organic Chemistry, I’m Just Going To Write About Cats

November 9, 2010

Screw organic chemistry, I’m just going to write about cats. Organic chemistry? People don’t want to hear about it. It’s been called “worse than prison“, or “like a bad hooker“.  Based on some opinions of this subject,  having a blog entitled “Master Organic Chemistry” is not unlike having a blog called “Master Genital Herpes”. Sure, [...]

Tagged as: cats, fun, orgo-sucks, self-promotion

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How to Succeed In Orgo: Collected Advice

October 11, 2010

The course syllabus is that sheet of paper you get on the first day of class that explains what the grading scheme is, the course content, contact information for the instructor, and so on. For most courses this is pretty standard. What makes organic chemistry course syllabi distinctive is that they are often accompanied by [...]

Tagged as: advice, exams, how to get an a, orgo-sucks, problems, study tips

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How Simplicity Breeds Complexity in Organic Chemistry

October 8, 2010

Learning rules is relatively easy. Looking backward from a situation and understanding how those rules led to a specific consequence is a little harder. Predicting the consequences of those rules in the forward direction is hard. Incredibly hard. Let’s illustrate with a chess example. If you’ve played chess, you know that there aren’t really a [...]

Tagged as: chess, complexity, fun, hydroboration, markovnikoff, multivariable, orgo-sucks

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Organic Chemistry Study Tips: Quick Wins

September 17, 2010

Sometimes I spend time on the SDN forums to see what premeds have to say about their organic chemistry woes. Last night while poking around, I found the following: Organic Chemistry Has Violated Me Countless Times I’m in week 2 of Organic Chemistry and I’m feeling SO discouraged. I was really good at Chemistry (and [...]

Tagged as: exams, functional groups, notes, orgo-sucks, studying

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“Why is it that I spend all this time studying and I still don’t feel like I learn anything?”

July 24, 2010

This week I had a session with a new student (who I’ll call “Tim”) from Virginia. We had a brief session, where we went over things like the additions to alkenes and reactions of epoxides. He showed me some of the answers he’d given for his recent problem set and for the most part, they [...]

Tagged as: advice, orgo-sucks, study tips, studying

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Gen Chem and Organic Chem: How are they different?

June 28, 2010

After finishing my freshman year of college, I spent my summer in the university town where I went to school. I had a menial telemarketing job along with some volunteer lab work on the side. Life was pretty easy: many of my friends had also decided to hang around, and there was lots of time [...]

Tagged as: acids, bases, bonding, electronegativity, equilibrium, General Chemistry, gibbs, organic chemistry, orgo-sucks, thermodynamics

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Commitment is More Important Than Intelligence

June 11, 2010

I’ve failed a lot. About a month and a half ago, I had my latest failure. My wife and I have been enrolled in Hebrew classes. It’s our fourth class, level Bet-plus. We’ve gotten to the point where we can read this strange language and have simple conversations, like tell Shoshana the cashier at the [...]

Tagged as: how to do well in organic, motivation, orgo-sucks, personal, procrastination, Psychology

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Is Orgo Hard?

June 9, 2010

Yes. Let’s skip past the anecdotes, as entertaining as they may be, and move right through to a more detailed analysis. Here’s why: 1) There is a ton of vocabulary to learn. David Klein, author of the acclaimed book “Organic Chemistry as a Second Language“  really hit the nail on the head with that title: organic [...]

Tagged as: concepts, is orgo hard, nomenclature, orgo-sucks, symbols, vocabulary

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