<p>so,I placed into organic chemistry at orietation, but i signed up for regular chem because I didnt take ap chem and I thought orgo would be too hard and not a good first semester class. any thoughts/ advice on what to do if you place into orgo but dont think you're ready?</p>
<p>Thoughts? It’s a good decision.</p>
<p>I agree. Orgo actually is not nearly as difficult as people say provided that you keep up with the material, but you do want to have Gen Chem down cold before you take it.</p>
<p>ok thanks guys, I think I’ll keep my gen chem then. :)</p>
<p>I’m in this same exact situation, except I chose to take orgo… how disastrous do you predict that to be?</p>
<p>And how much does gen.chem relate to orgo? Like what parts of gen.chem do you have to know in order to take orgo? I looked through the orgo textbook and it doesn’t look like it has anything to do with gen.chem.</p>
<p>Not distasterous, provided that you work really hard. </p>
<p>The reason it doesn’t look like gen chem is because it is extremely different from gen chem. It requires a very different type of thinking and approach. Genchem is more straightforward calculations, equations, molarity, etc. Orgo is critical thinking. You will have to predict products of reactions, be able to visualize molecules in 3-d space (stereochemistry), work with mechanisms, etc. In my opinion, it is actually a lot more interesting than gen chem is, but also harder.</p>
<p>That being said, you do want to understand gen chem pretty well. By this, I mean you should really have some familiarity with the structure and bonding of various atoms (i.e. how many bonds nitrogen normall makes, how many lone pairs, formal charge, etc). While orgo will review this, the review will be quite brief. Knowing stoichiometry, for instance, is not essential, but you should really be familiar with structure because orgo teaches you more advanced structural concepts, so you want to have the basics down cold.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply.
I think I’m going to go ahead and take orgo.</p>
<p>you do NOT need to know any gen chem when going into orgo 1. It’s completely different material and a different learning approach (a lot more visual, less calculations).</p>
<p>Although technically its true that you dont need to know gen chem going into orgo, it definitely helps. You learn lewis structures, 3D visualizations, basic things about the elements. There are elements of gen. chem in orgo, but only about 5% of what you learn in chem will come up in orgo.</p>