Can't study, it's exam week but i can't get organized

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I NEED to study for my exams, but i keep drifting off to do somthing something else, like checking the forums here... And it's not bc i am lazy or even really distracted. I CAN'T GET ORGANIZED! I need organization and structure to be able to study anything in school. If there is no system it is hopeless and i just give up. I like systems and logic so i usually make one for myself, like going through each powerpoint slide and reviewing in a systematic fashion. But my math notes are everywhere, we didn't follow chronologically in the book, and looking at old exams only gives me random problems that i don't have a system to be able to study from....

I've had problems focusing on my subjects this past week as well. It seems my heart isn't into studying because i don't see any benefit it brings to other people.

That's why I've given up on organic chemistry. There's no structure in making the chemical structures. It's basically: "Here, take this and make something. You can use seventy different methods to get here. There's no right way..." Sorry, but I can't do that. Combine my inability to get the "big picture" and apply knowledge to different situations with my severe visual-spatial deficits, and you can easily see why organic is not my strong suit...
-OddDuckNash99-

Same here. I don't feel like studying for exams, which bad for French. The rest of my classes are no problem. Also, I never got the point of staying up all night or studying all day for test. If I did that i would fail because my brain would be overloaded!

That's how I felt at the end of my first semester of organic chemistry. So many multistep syntheses to do, and I had such a difficult time remembering how to convert one functional group to another. I seriously thought I was going to fail the class (especially since I got a B- on the first midterm and an F on the second), and I was so distraught that I made myself study for the final exam for 10 days straight. It was a serious struggle to generate some kind of organized structure to it; eventually what I did was make flow charts on pieces of paper. At the top was a functional group (alcohol, R-OH, for example), and then I would draw bubbles below it with an arrow connecting the top functional group with the bubble. In one bubble I would write "aldehyde" and another I would write "carboxylic acid" and so on, writing the necessary reagents for each synthesis next to the arrow. By doing this, eventually I began to see patterns ("Oh, now I see how useful a Grignard reagent is!!") and then the concepts made a lot more sense.

For stuff like stereochemistry, it helped me a lot to actually draw the stereocenters out, and then judge R and S designations and stuff.

I know it's very frustrating now, but once you're actually able to get everything to click, it's amazing. Just need to organize all the material in a way that makes sense to you. I didn't fail the class, I managed to get the best grade on the final exam in the class, and got an A as the final grade.

That's great that you were able to get such a high grade! Luckily, once I take my final on Tuesday, I'm done. I'm not pre-med, so I don't have to take the second semester... We're actually allowed to use our notes on the tests, even though they don't do much good because the questions are nothing like what we've done in class. I'm an expert at seeing patterns, though- that's how I get by in subjects like organic or math because I just memorize things that I notice. I don't understand why I'm doing it until months after others have already mastered the concept. (I swear that I have Nonverbal Learning Disorder.) Like with Grignards- I don't have a clue what the point of a Grignard is. I just have memorized that, when you see "MgBr," you do a certain step. Why? Who knows? This is how I get partial credit because it looks like I sort of know what's going on. As horrible as my visual-spatial skills are, though, I didn't have a problem with "R" and "S" configurations. I think it was because it was all based off of memorization of rules: "If you have this, then this group has first priority. If H is going back, it's 'R,' if it's coming out, it's 'S.'" I still don't understand what the point of the configurations is, but I can figure out what they are, at least...
-OddDuckNash99-

Same as me, when I look back at the material from classes I took months, even years ago, I marvel at how easy it is for me to understand it now, compared to how difficult it was for me to understand when I really needed to know it!

It was especially painful for me because I was a declared Chemistry major by then, having chosen Chem because of how interesting and easy general chemistry was. I remember thinking that if the other Chem classes (inorganic, physical, analytical, etc.) were going to be this hard, then I might as well just quit school. Luckily for me, after that organic chem experience, I really loved organic, and managed to finish off the bachelor's degree.

Heh you're lucky you've got an open-note final exam! As you could guess, I didn't have anything like that for my exam. But it was amazing how many different things in organic boil down to a few simple concepts that are learned from general chem. Like the Grignard example, I like to think of it as Mg being somewhat electropositive compared to any aliphatic carbon stuff connected to it, so if the carbon stuff has more electron density, then it will tend to react with atoms in a molecule that are less electron-dense (electrophiles). Or something like that, hah. (though I graduated in chem, I'm in grad school in molecular biology and therefore had no use for the hardcore organic synthesis stuff, so my knowledge is fading away)

I'm a Biochemistry major in my junior year of college and I completed Orgo I and Orgo II last year. It was challenging, but I ended up loving it. I liked it precisely because it required you to reason your way through a problem rather than just recite stuff you'd memorized. Organic Chemistry is a SKILL rather than a subject to study, in my opinion. The way to succeed is to PRACTICE rather than memorize. Practice as many problems as you can find and then make up some of your own.

I learned to visualize reaction mechanisms in my head as I thought about them, which was fun. My favorite was visualizing a nucleophile attacking an aldehyde and when I was studying on my own, I would actually say "Boom!" out loud as the nucleophile hit the carbon of the aldehyde and broke the double bond, forcing the oxygen to "hold" the electrons for a moment. I was such a dork.

I also want to say that many, many people find Orgo difficult regardless of disability. My Orgo I lab class started off with twelve students and ended up with eight because so many had dropped it by the end of the semester. The exam average in my Orgo class hovered around a 65%. Orgo is infamous for weeding out pre-med students who think they want to be doctors. In other words, Organic Chemistry is widely acknowledged as one of the most difficult subjects to study in college and many students struggle with it.

Yes, I guess chemistry is fine for aspies. I'm doing my PhD in astrophysics and this is quite challenging. I'm thinking about switching to pure applied science.