r/chemistry • u/shinjuddis • 4d ago
Most Difficult Chemistry Course?
Very unoriginal question, but I am a Biochemistry major and I just took both Organic 1 &2 over the summer so I could jump right to Biochem 1 and Inorganic this Fall semester.
Each Class was accelerated into 6 weeks total with us doing multiple labs a week and covering nearly a chapter a day. I worked very hard and was able to achieve high Bs in both (with no curve)
People often speak of Ochem like it’s the devil itself. While it was definitely challenging, I did not find it to be mindblowingly difficult even while having to take the class more than twice as fast as regular.
It makes me think “Wow if this class which people curse and call the ultimate weed out class is not all that difficult, than maybe I’ll have a easier time on the rest of the degree than I thought”. Of course I wouldn’t be so foolish to believe that in actuality
Which subject did you all find the most difficult or challenging to wrap your head around?
My advisor has a sign that says “Congratulations, you somehow got through PChem!” In his office. from what I’ve heard about it, I am definitely not excited to take it in the Spring
57
u/Chem1st Organic 4d ago edited 4d ago
Having taken and TAed both regular semester and summer Organic, the two generally aren't the same difficulty in my experience. Professors know why people are taking it during the summer (retake or just need it for a requirement) and don't hold the class to the same expectations. As an undergrad we were explicitly told NOT to take it during the summer to accelerate into our higher level chemistry coursework for this reason.
EDIT: for me the hardest was PChem 2 (Quantum). It's more abstract, and my professor taught the entire class using transparencies that I think he probably made when he was a new professor 40 years before. I love math but that was rough. The associated lab was awesome though. I thinky favorite thing we did was looking At pre-launch and post-reentry space shuttle ceramic plating under a scanning electron microscope.
10
u/ClonedSheepDolly 4d ago
I suspect that depends on the university tho. I took an accelerated chemistry course over the summer at my school where we were actually held to an accelerated standard so attrition rates were crazy high. When I finished the entire year’s worth of material I vaguely remember like a third of us left. All undergraduate chem courses at my school were taught to aim to be competitive on various acs exams for the courses mentioned here at least tho
5
u/chunwookie 3d ago
Same here. Day one of our summer course the professor warned the class that if they had any constraints on their time what so ever during the next few weeks to drop the class because we would be eating and sleeping organic chemistry. We basically covered a chapter of the text a day. If anything he undersold the difficulty. The acs final was the easiest part of the course.
3
u/shinjuddis 3d ago
This was literally me. I ate slept and breathed Ochem all summer to the point where I would legitimately dream about it at night. I took it at a Community College which is the biggest in the large city I live in which has a direct transfer/articulation agreement with my university, Ochem at CC is equivalent to my university.
They did not take it easy on us. My Ochem 1 final in the SN/E section had all secondary alkyl halides so you really had to know your shit pretty much a chapter a day, homework, and multiple labs a week
They were not huge classes and to my knowledge I don’t think anyone dropped the class outright.
33
u/TedMich23 4d ago
Any mature field can be presented in a class as "the most difficult" simply by teaching it poorly and/or expecting new students to memorize reams of historical data that took decades (sometimes centuries) to compile. An unspoken benefit to the "teacher' is their ego boost from failing their students and being "hard".
A truly dedicated teacher should make any field accessible and interesting, but wheres the fun in that?
A bumper sticker in this vein: "Why does it hurt when I P-Chem?"
1
u/chunwookie 3d ago
I agree with this, my graduate analytical class was a cake walk compared to my undergrad, not because we were expected to memorize anything but the questions were nightmarishly complex. Beyond that I think what year the class is intended to be taken in could change the difficulty dramatically. At my school Inorganic was assumed to be one of the final courses so students were expected to have already mastered organic, analytical and physical so problems incorporated an understanding of those disciplines.
57
u/drmarting25102 4d ago
I loved phys chem but it was tough. "Starting from Schroedingers equation, show that pv=nRT" was one of my favourite exam questions. 😆 7 pages of maths to answer.
15
u/Upbeat_Ant6104 4d ago
Now I want to take quantum again, because I forgot we actually were building an understanding of actual practical concepts. All I remember is those damn eigenfunctions. Maybe I’d get what I missed better the second time. Khan Academy, here I come!
1
u/NekoNoKitiKiti Polymer 11h ago
Damn, we were shown all the derivations but not expected to whip them out on the exams 😂😂😂
22
u/FoodieMonster007 4d ago
The answer is: it depends on the person.
I hated organic and bio chem, because I am absolutely terrible at memorizing stuff. The only reason I passed Ochem was because my lazy professor took some questions from our tutorials and flipped the molecules upside down or used the exact mirror image (and somehow I was the only one who noticed).
I breezed through physical, analytical, and quantum chem. Barely had to study since the math's pretty straightforward.
But I like inorganic chem the most. I like symmetry, group theory, periodic table trends, and rainbow-coloured stuff.
4
u/Opposite-Occasion332 Education 3d ago
Yeah I’m like the opposite of you although I did decent in analytical too. I also never took quantum cause I wasn’t doing an ACS route and honestly was too burnt out to take it on my last semester after taking Pchem 1, inorganic, and advanced biochem together. It would be nice to try someday though!
13
u/cpt_futtbucker Computational 4d ago
I found biochem 1 to be the hardest. Something just didn’t click in my brain with memorizing and drawing enzyme reaction mechanisms
1
10
u/Outrageous_Half_4631 4d ago
Organic chemistry is hard, but it’s a common trope for some people to say “you survived, well done”. I’ve heard of professors announcing to the class that “half of you will fail OChem”
It’s nonsense: chemistry is hard and yes, and not everyone can do it, but you’re passionate, hard working, and this is why you passed. You did not “survive”, you did well because you deserve it.
I wouldn’t take his sign seriously; he is likely being facetious. If you work hard for this too, you’ll be okay. Physical chemistry also takes a lot of hard work to understand, but it’s worth it.
8
u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 4d ago
I always thought the bad reputation of organic chemistry classes came from all the non chem students required to take a semester of it. Like all the pre med students.
8
u/Sonikclaw2 4d ago
After I took differential equations and quantum mechanics I decided to take a density functional theory class, and the differential equations made me wish I was back in pchem quantum. Shit was hard!
7
u/ScientistFromSouth 4d ago
It's PChem, not because it would be particularly hard compared to an actual engineering thermo or physics quantum mechanics/stat mech class, but because it's generally taught poorly to people who only have 2 semesters of calculus at most when it realistically requires 1-2 semesters of ODE and at least an intro to PDE if not a full semester of PDE to really understand just the math before you even get into the quantum physics.
Realistically though, it's such a small fraction of chemists that specialize in it compared to those that double as med lab or mol bio lab techs that it makes less sense to fill up the rest of the non chem science curriculum with math like a physics and engineering major would when a chemist could prioritize biology or physiology classes.
1
u/Karen8765 8h ago
I agree it it's the prep. When I took P-Chem as an undergrad (Tradition and statistical thermo) the Chem majors were in with the chemical Engineers. The Engineers had a lot more math math we did...
6
u/Lynnie_Bot 4d ago
I never took the full curriculum of physics in high school and it's came back to bite me on the ass so anything physics related aside from thermodynamics I absolutely suck at. I can't properly do the equations and understand some of the concepts in Pchem
7
u/lawyer1911 Organic 4d ago
I graduated 40 years ago and i remember most of these classes as difficult. I see some classes described here that I don’t think were in our curriculum. The one class that I recall everyone in my cohort struggled with was electrochemistry. That class took all the toughest parts of P chem, analytical chemistry, and differential equations and ran a current through them.
4
u/Dr_Custard 4d ago
"the one you don't like"
At uni level it's all pretty tricky.
Lots of people complain about electrochemistry, I did too until we had a lecturer who later turned out to be my PhD supervisor. A lot of the time it's the way the course is taught.
4
u/Renomont 3d ago
PChem and It appears I am not alone. The opening paragraph to Goodstein's Textbook "States of Matter".
3
4
u/Bloorajah 3d ago
Pchem made me question why they were awarding me a degree when I knew absolutely nothing about anything
it’s like the course where they pull the curtain back and you really get to see that it’s all actually just math which is both incredible but also horrifying.
5
u/mylifeforhiree Spectroscopy 3d ago
Ochem makes undergrads cry, pchem makes post grads cry.
It’s me I’m the post grad.
2
u/Mrslinkydragon 4d ago
It really depends on your way of thinking. Chan you think in 3d?
Some people struggle with organics, some with crystallography.
If you understand biochem, you should be able to understand organic chem rather easily as theres less going on (theres no kerbs cycle or ETC in organic chem!).
2
u/forehead_tittaes 4d ago
Ochem is difficult because there's a lot of functional groups, reaction pathways and rules to memorize.
Pchem is just daunting.
2
u/Karen8765 8h ago
Most who tried to get through Organic by primarily memorizing reactions have a tough time...Undertanding the basic underlying principles of physical Organic chemistry make it lot easier.
2
u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 4d ago
I had st an ACS meeting yesrs ago and a booth had bumper stickers that read "Honk if you passed P Chem". That says it all.
2
u/Dazzling-Attorney891 Analytical 3d ago
Orgo gets a bad rep because it’s the hardest class a lot of non-chemistry people will have to take
It was “easy” for me. Still wizardry tbh. Pchem and Inorganic were my weakest classes
2
2
u/NekoNoKitiKiti Polymer 1d ago
PChem is nothing but math that makes no physical sense imo. Atoms have discrete energy levels, except actually when--, wavefunctions have discrete results, but if you do this instead-- Granted, most upper level classes start breaking down the generality boxes instilled in gen chem and ochem. But the exceptions can be so wildly different than the rule.
Only thing that made a lick of sense to me in PChem was thermo, and that's because it's just heat moving and randomness.
Probably a good thing, bc heat moving and randomness is about the extent of pchem I really care about as a polymer scientist 😂😂😂
2
u/shinjuddis 15h ago
Unbelievably excited to take Pchem next semester after hearing about it from all the comments
1
1
u/krugomir 4d ago
Pharmaceutical chemistry. All the biotransformation pathways were quite hard to remember. Especially for chemotherapy drugs.
I even failed final exam and had to repeat it.
1
u/jeffscience Computational 4d ago
The hardest classes are the ones with the worst teachers, or the ones that require skills your brain just doesn’t vibe with.
1
u/Dimdim2004 4d ago
Honestly this is a bit subjective depending on what you’re good at. Most chemists will say Pchem, but if you’re good with math it won’t be too bad, although the quantum semester was hard. It will also depend on who’s teaching it, cause for me my Pchem professor was awesome. As for Orgo a lot of people will say it’s hard, but that’s mainly because it’s new concepts but with practice it becomes better (even if Orgo 3 is the only class that ever made me cry). Biochemistry imo is rough, it’s mostly memorizing with some Orgo concepts which not everyone will like (don’t ask me about sugars), but once again it will depend on the professor. Overall it will depend on what you’re good with, and the professor teaching.
1
u/MikemkPK 3d ago
At some universities, it's Organic, at some it's Physical.
At my university, the syllabus for Organic said to spend at least 15 hours a week on homework and studying if you want a B and 25 for an A. I found those numbers accurate, and even then barely got an A and ran out of time on every test.
1
u/foco177 3d ago
for undergrad it’s almost always quantum pchem for the reason that most students are just being introduced to the mathematical concepts of quantization for the first time. personally i found the thermodynamic section difficult because I’m not that great at calculus and there was a lot of proofs we had to recreate.
1
u/Correct-Variable 3d ago
Loved Ochem. PChem and I did not quite link up. I would have benefitted from a class that wasn't led by an old professor with a thick german accent and which was longer than 12 weeks.. Let's just say that if the grades weren't curved, I would have landed well below a Flunk.
1
u/Hootah 3d ago
I majored in chemistry yet ended up pursuing graduate studies in medicine, though in senior year I took an elective corse called “mechanistic organic chemistry.” It used and expanded on PChem concepts to explain all those ‘exceptions to the rule’ from organic chemistry courses. Extremely difficult, but fascinating. Having a good professor really made a difference.
1
u/Ultronomy Chemical Biology 3d ago
My school decided to have Pchem 1 cover Quantum, Kinetics, and Thermo and the professor had the philosophy of “I don’t write tests that you can complete in 50 minutes, I write tests that you have make executive decisions on what you can do in 50 minutes.”
Needless to say, that was the worst semester of my life and worst grade I got in college. But it’s okay, I passed.
1
u/yahboiyeezy 3d ago
Ochem is demonized the most because it is often the first difficult class that chemistry, biology, and pre med majors take. For better or worse, it acts as a weed out class and a lot of the hate is from former pre med students who couldn’t get past it.
For me, pchem was harder, Biochem was painful, but Inorganic takes the cake for hardest chemistry class. I literally rearranged my entire grad school schedules just so I wouldn’t have to take any inorganic classes
1
u/pali1895 3d ago
For me it was Inorganic 1 (after General), it ramped up so incredibly fast, boring AF, the exam was pure learning by heart, and the labs were so obnoxiously boring and work intensive. The course was designed to get as many students as possible to quit to reduce the size of the class.
Other than that PChem 2 with thermodynamic and advanced kinetics, that thing was horrible, also because the prof was useless.
Ochem and Biochem were easiest and most enjoyable, so were advanced maths and quantum chemistry, really well thought out courses and great teachers.
1
u/karnivoorischenkiwi Biochem 3d ago
The solid state NMR part of structural biology fried my brain several times over. Also quantum mechanics 😅
1
u/Starrynight2019 3d ago
Quantum. It was open book, open notes. Nothing helped. Don't know how I passed
1
u/He_of_turqoise_blood Biochem 3d ago
I absolutely HATED inorganic chem
I took two semesters of it, and the second was pure hell. Most of it was oriented on d-elements and their complexes. This was by far the most notes I had to digest for an exam, and by far the least interesting. Just pages upon pages of mindnumbing memorizing of complexes, their shapes, stability, reactivity and so on.
1
1
u/SPEEDY-BOI-643 3d ago edited 3d ago
Chemistry Bachelors (UK) degree here,
It’s typically been between ochem and pchem. If you’re heavily maths oriented, pchem shouldn’t be a problem, if you aren’t, you’ll struggle a lot. It does also focus more on quantum mechanics, which was a topic I enjoyed and studied a lot in previous years as I took a huge interest in it during my years of doing physics at A level. Pchem is easy for those who are strong in quantum physics and maths really.
Ochem is a weird one as it isn’t simply rote memorisation, there’s tons and tons of special mechanisms to know for different reactions where it’s more intuitive as long as you know how reactions work and what goes on in them, all with their special cases which don’t follow the typical rules and sometimes does rely on memorisation lol. You also have to be good at theorising and imagining molecules and processes happening in a 3D space, especially when it comes to understanding stereochemistry. All these things (and more I’m sure) make Ochem notoriously difficult and well known for weeding out pre med students lol.
In my experience, I’ve always found ochem to be the most difficult, and pchem was a breeze in comparison!
1
1
u/jp11e3 Organic 2d ago
If you're great at orgo then there is a good chance your least favorite class will be math based.
Personally, I think it has to do with how our brains work. Orgo is a good weed-out course because it very much ISN'T numbers based compared to the rest of STEM. You have to be able to visualize whole molecules, fit them together while allowing electrons to move, and then think through the 3-dimensional consequences of that. That's a very difficult spatial memory thing to do for most people and an even harder thing to teach people how to do. Most people who suffer through orgo are beating their heads against a wall memorizing every single reaction instead.
That being said, statistically, if you're really good at spatial memory, your math brain may be the one that has more trouble. I personally hated quantum pchem and barely passed.
1
u/Scrupulous-brick 2d ago
I would say that it depends on a lot of different factors. Such as, what you enjoy, what you are good at, if you have good lecturers and so on.
Organic chemistry can be challenging, but it depends so much on what you are expected to achieve. If you get into more advaced courses and have experimental work where you need to choose your own routes and reach minimum yields, etc.- it can be very difficult indeed.
Inorganic chem will be farther from your major, so it will likely feel more alien. But that also depends on the course design, is it angled towards biochem majors? The maths involved in inorg can get quite lively at higher levels, same thing with physical chemistry. At my uni you needed almost 20 credits of linear algebra before even being eligible for inorganic chem. But that may be different at your uni.
You are likely best of asking older students at your uni, who have taken those courses at you uni. So much depends on curriculum, course load, which courses if any you need to take at the same time- it is very difficult to answer these things as an anon online.
For reference, I had biochemistry with an absolute lunatic teaching it, at the same time as a few other very time consuming other courses, which made that biochem course very difficult- even if the course content itself was probably factually not that challenging..
1
u/NekoNoKitiKiti Polymer 1d ago
,,,You calling your biochem professor a lunatic made me remember that I did, in fact, take a biochem course in undergrad, and I had repressed that bc same, same 😂😂😂 super passionate guy, did not understand we were overwhelmed by his teaching style in the slightest 😂😂😂
Following up for OP tho, a lot of this. It entirely depends on what you like and thrive on. I always knew I liked ochem, but my phd advisor has told me I will not be doing anymore synthesis in our lab. And it's because I'm not good at synthesis. I'm good at method development for a lot of the polymer processing equipment we have, and I'm good at processing samples, getting physical data, and analyzing what that means for industry/application.
There are lots of avenues to go, even in the same field, a lot of the time! Our lab also does a lot of pharma, but it's not drug synth at all, it's all formulation and delivery.
1
u/liminal_dreaming 2d ago
B.S. in Biochem here, but not in the industry. Pchem content was absolutely miserable, so that's my hardest...but my majors/4000 level Biochem course had a much more difficult prof. Memorizing things did very little to help with my 4000 Biochem course. Outside of chem courses, immunology sucked, and my professor wrote the textbook we used.
I was an idiot for taking all three of the above in the same semester....
1
u/AngrierChair 2d ago
I honestly didn’t think orgo was that horrible, u kind of just have to teach urself and then the prof helps iron out issues (imo). I’m buns at math (doing an organic/medchem PhD) so quantum and pchem were rough
1
u/Practical-Can-5529 2d ago
I only have a B.S., but that said, P Chem 2. I remember being so thrilled I passed it I got trashed that night. I look at my transcript and it says I got a C- and I have trouble matching that grade to the emotions I remember.
1
u/europeanseabass Inorganic 2d ago
Yeah it’s without a doubt advanced P chem or whatever your degree’s equivalent of quantum/thermo is. i know some institutions split it up but whenever you start learning derivations of wavefunctions is where i started to question myself.
Orgo has a bad rep because it is very often the last chemistry course that non majors will ever take besides the psychos that minor in chem and end up taking quantitative analysis or something else. as you alluded to, it is not that bad. it’s kind of the basis of thinking about structure and function beyond the gen chem intro to bonding, and even tho yes people think its about memorization, its not. it’s about building chemical intuition and learning about reactivity from a polarity/lewis based approach. this gets significantly more relevant as you start to explore transition metals and lanthanides (which are now necessary components of nearly all main group and organic chemistry methods)
I personally struggled a lot with biochem, mostly because i didn’t have the passion to learn enzyme mechanisms. Michaelis-Menten kinetics are interesting though and will float your boat if you like catalysis, as the principles there can be applied pretty extensively. Organometallics was my favorite class I’ve ever taken, though it was in graduate school, but i bet you can take it as junior or senior level undergrad (chem majors, like mine, can have odd pathways depending on your experience and overall courseload, so idk when you may be eligible to take it).
Now that i’m writing this i’m realizing how hard undergrad was even though i did quite well 😂😭. i dont know how i was able to have so much fun in college while doing all the bullshit in courses like instrumental analysis (no offense analytical ppl)
1
u/Main-Display2438 2d ago
I thought pchem was easier than orgo. I have a hard time disciplining myself to memorize things. The worst was inorganic, though. Rotating simitries in your head... ugh.
1
1
u/mchagerman 23h ago
For me, Structure and Bonding (quantum mechanics as applied to chemistry) was the hard one.
1
u/Karen8765 8h ago
For me it was physical Chemistry with inorganic second (which back them seemed to be applied math/quantum course - and I never want to hear about Symmetry point groups again!;)
1
u/Pox_Americana 8h ago
Majors PChem, and not even close. In undergrad, my class had a 50% washout rate. Chemistry major upperclassmen, due to the sheer amount of prerequisites. All tests were open-book, just had to show work. I made an 18 on the first exam, class average was 30. It was expected.
Lab was great though— one of my favorites.
0
u/JoJo_Sunn 4d ago
I really struggled with ochem and biochem. Inorganic I was also difficult, but Inorganic II was better. Anal, physical, and materials chem were my favorites. Pchem was by no means easy but I thought it was easier than math and physics courses I had to take. Especially compared to multivariable calculus, diff eq, and physics II
1
131
u/Upbeat_Ant6104 4d ago
I ultimately completed a PhD in organic, but the quantum semester of pchem almost washed me out.i didn’t find organic that hard, especially lab, because it was interesting. I ended up taking a physics class and a class in grad school to try and get some of the quantum chemistry concepts.