CHEM 233: Organic Chemistry for the Biological Sciences

Posted on December 31, 2020

What to expect:

There are many profs that teach this course because many life science majors have to take this course. With that being said, a good organic chemistry prof can change your mark. Personally, I recommend Jay. I didn’t really use the textbook that much because I felt like the class notes were in depth enough.

There were weekly quizzes. Exams were long answer with true/false like questions (which molecule is more acidic) and ranking questions. There was an individual portion and an optional group portion.

Overall Thoughts:

Since I’m not a chemistry major 😭, this was the pathway I had to take in order to take higher level organic chemistry classes. I attended Jay’s lectures, even though I wasn’t registered for his class. Sadly, Jay will not be able to make any more T***p jokes. Lots and lots and lots of reaction pathways.

Cheatsheets are your friend in this course. But don’t rely on your cheatsheets, they should only be used to confirm what you know. You should have nearly all the reaction pathways memorized. (I’m not sure if you will be allowed cheatsheets in person, so just memorize the pathways). But note that you can’t just memorize the pathways, as you might need to use a combination of pathways to reach an end product. You should view these problems like puzzles and the general pathways as puzzle pieces. Make sure to stay on top of problem sets and attend office hours.

To excel in this course you need to practice.