Summer organic chemistry classes are generally tougher than the regular fall or spring ones. A typical semester is 12 to 16 weeks long. However, you’ll be covering the same amount of material in 8-10 weeks in the summer. Additionally, some summer classes aim to jam the entire 2-semester sequence over the summer making it extremely information dense. During a regular organic chemistry semester, you can expect to cover about one chapter per week. So, talking about it from the perspective of the textbook pages, you’re looking at reading 50-70 pages per week. This averages to about 10 pages per day, …

Taking Summer Organic Chemistry Course Online: What to Expect and How to Prepare Read More »

Organic chemistry is an extremely interconnected science. As you have already seen in the first semester of your organic chemistry sequence, one topic connects to another in such a way, that mastering consequent topics is very hard without mastering previous ones. Before we go further, let’s look at the typical first semester organic chemistry topics. Typical Organic Chemistry 1 Topics There are many topics that you will typically see in the first semester organic chemistry course. Those are: Nomenclature Acid-Base Equilibrium Bonding and Resonance Stereochemistry Substitution and Elimination Reactions Alkenes and their Reactions Then, there are some “maybe” topics that …

How to Prepare to the Second Semester of Organic Chemistry Read More »

Imagine yourself doing your homework or reading the textbook and something doesn’t make sense. What would you probably do in such a case? Correct—ask your teacher. Next day you go to school, go to your teacher’s office hours or visit with them after the class, you ask your question and… you get an answer… not necessarily a helpful answer or the answer that you would’ve liked to hear. So why didn’t you get the answer to your question? Is it because it was a bad question? Is it because you asked a good question, but your instructor is in the …

What Is the Difference Between a Good Question and a Bad Question? Read More »