How can I study chemistry, the hardest class I've taken?

Student Lounge College Life
1

I’ve dual-enrolled at a local university this summer and am taking General Chemistry 2. After the first lecture, which was supposed to be a relatively simple review of half-reactions and gas-phase reactions, I left clueless. I ended General Chemistry 1 last semester with a B+, the only B I’ve ever gotten in a science course before. For this class, I’ve read and worked on several problems in my textbook but to no avail.

Problems:

  1. How can I become more fluent at predicting reactions? There seem to be so many exceptions and every problem seems to be different with no particular "algorithm" I can use. The textbook always seems to assume that I already know that "X combines with Y" or "Z produces a water molecule when mixed with W," and so on.
  2. How can I master redox-reactions, kinetics, electro/thermochemistry, and equilibrium in a span of two months? I've tried reading through two AP chemistry prep books, but they were too broad and led me straight back to problem #1.

For those of you who aced general chemistry, how did you do it and what resources did you use?

2
  1. Read the text book
  2. See if there is another book that helps explain it better or that gives you more problems to solve, e.g., http://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-College-Chemistry-Problems/dp/007181082X
  3. Go to the professor’s office hours
  4. Form a study group
  5. Get a tutor
3

MIT publishes its intro and intermediate [chemistry courses](1. The importance of chemical principles - YouTube) on Youtube.

[UC Irvine](General Chemistry 1A. Lecture 01. Introduction to General Chemistry. - YouTube) and [UC Berkeley](- YouTube) do the same.

Go to office hours and ask for help.

Search online, especially on Youtube, for concepts you’re having difficulty with.

4

Khan Academy has wonderful college chemistry videos. With regard to becoming better at predicting reaction products, it’s really about practice and pattern recognition. If you know the basic reaction types (synthesis, decomposition, combustion, single replacement/displacement, double replacement/displacement), you can apply them to everything. Find as many practice problems as possible on the web, and work through all of them WITHOUT looking at the answers first.

I also second the second textbook idea. Not all textbooks work for all people, and it might just be that a different textbook would be easier for you to understand. I used the textbook by Silberberg in college, and I thought it was a nice and clear text. And it can be an older (read: cheaper) edition also, as chemistry reeaally hasn’t changed that much, at least on the intro college level