<p>I will be entering as a freshman next fall in the Commonwealth Honors college, and although I'm not sure if I'll actually major in chemistry (I'm leaning towards majoring in physics and I'm not at all interested in going into medicine), I'm wondering if I should take organic chem next fall. </p>
<p>I already took the honors section of general chem at Umass Lowell my senior year of high school, got an A first semester, and an A- second semester. I enjoyed it a lot, so I decided to take a look at some organic chemistry the last few days. It didn't take me long at all to familiarized myself with the standard naming conventions for alkenes, alkanes, and halides pretty thoroughly, I'm pretty familiar with identifying structural isomers through substitution, and some terminology here and there. </p>
<p>I know I'm only at the very beginning and that I'm just scratching the surface, but I've been using an old orgo textbook, "Basic Principles of Organic Chemistry" by John D Roberts and and Marjorie C Caserio (it's available free on Caltech's website) in conjunction with Khan Academy lectures and I've really been enjoying it. So far I've found most of the problems in the textbook to be pretty straightforward. </p>
<p>The only problem is that Orgo is a "weed-out" class and I here horrible things about it all the time. I still want to do well and I don't want to lower my GPA my first year for a class that I won't be required to take. Is it really so bad, or can I get an A? I don't understand why people say it's all memorizing. I see it as half and half. You have to memorize somethings, but I love the jigsaw puzzle feel it has with the structures.</p>