I found out my final grade for Orgo I is a C+. The main problem I had was not knowing how to manage my time and balance all my work, I felt like there literally wasn’t enough time in the day for me to study for every course the way I needed to. So for Orgo II I was thinking I would take time this summer to read and take notes on all the chapters we are covering. I have the textbook and my brother who has taken Orgo as a resource. Do you guys think this is a good idea or is it a waste of time? Any advice? I really want to get an A so the C doesn’t look so bad :l
You only have two or three summers in your college carrier, if you spend a whole summer to prepare for the org II, you will miss a big opportunity to work on your EC’s which will be looked at when applying med school. And yes, the cGPA and sGPA are very important, but I am not sure how good it will be by pre-read the books/courses ahead of the time. If org is the only deficiency in your curriculum, maybe you can fix it in the summer, but if your GPA is way behind, perhaps you should have a backup plan.
You have a good point but I am already doing shadowing and have a research opportunity, so I will be adding to my EC’s as well this summer. I still have plenty of free time I can spend studying. So far, Orgo has been the only class I have struggled in.
My pre-med D. did not take a single summer class. She never studied ahead either. However, Orgo was tough for her and she had to lay off other claases’s work before Orgo exams. Every Orgo exam took her about 30 hours to study. She also have exceptional time management skills as she always had tons of un-related ECs and the pile monted even higher in college. She said that she studied a lot while walking from class to class. She was going over material in her head. This skill was very helpful later in Med. School also. D. wanted to have an A in every class, that was her goal. Not everybody has this goal. Our hometown does not provide many opportunties for summer ECs either. D. had to do all of them during school year, all long term, like 3 years. She needed her summers to relax. I cannot advise you beyond D’s experience and it may not be applicable to you.
I am not sure if anybody can advice YOU what you need to do. You know yourself better and everybody is different.
If you got a C+ your time might be better spent reviewing orgo 1 so you have an A level foundation going into orgo 2 rather than just diving into orgo 2 early with a bad foundation.
Either way I think it’s kind of a waste. Probably just need a tutor for orgo. Not having enough time to study for your courses is probably not the reality. The problem is you probably don’t know how to study efficiently.
Before each lecture, do you pre-read the material in the textbook, do a few problems, and identify anything that was “fuzzy”?
@iwannabe_Brown Yes, I definitely wasn’t studying efficiently. It would take me hours and hours to take notes on a chapter and even after the notes I wouldn’t have it down 100%. I am getting a tutor next semester.
@plumazul No I honestly never did that and I know I should have
In general pre-studying material for a new course is a waste of time because unless you have the pressure of needing to do well on exams, you will not have the motivation to be thorough enough to actually remember concepts come fall. Also, not having an instructor will make learning less efficient. If you are motivated enough and can’t think of a better way to spend that time though, I guess you have nothing to lose.