[tim311]

Hello everyone I am new to the boards. I recently finished first semester general chemistry and did well. I got an A- and I hopefully will be tutoring this course next semester. My question is, I have been toying with the idea of possibly auditing lectures for organic chemistry this upcoming semester. I was thinking that having a longer exposure to ochem material would help for when I am formally enrolled in the course. Is this is a good idea? Or do you think I am being a little too optimistic and should just wait till I have finished second semester general chemistry.

any advice would be awesome

Thanks!

[movies]

Personally, I tend to learn things new things a little slowly, so I would have found it helpful to audit an organic lecture before I actually took the course.  There is no substitute for familiarity.  I just tend to not get the point that is being made until, say, a week after the exam.  After the exam though, I usually don't forget what I learned.  That might just be me though.

I tried to audit a couple of courses in college, but it never worked out because I always made some excuse not to go to the lecture.  To audit a class effectively you have to really commit to doing it and you have to treat it like a class you are taking for credit.  You'll probably get lost in organic lectures if you don't supplement what you are learning with some problems and reading.

That said, I would say that auditing the course could help tremendously when you do take the course for credit.  Those of us around the forums would be happy to fill in the blanks that you might encounter.  In reality there probably isn't all that much that you need to know from gen. chem. to follow the concepts of organic.

[Qazzian]

Anything that you do multiple times helps you remember it. That's why high school teachers made you do the same types of questions 14 times each, with slight changes.

So yes, auditing the course would help alot, since you'll already be exposed to the material when you take it "for real", and it won't be totally new. You just need to see if there's a lecture available in a time that you have free. Skipping classes you're enrolled in to audit a course you'll take later doesn't help too much  

As movies said, there's probably more than a few people here who'd be more than happy to help you out with something if you don't understand.

[tim311]

  Thanks for the advice. After giving it a lot of thought and working it into my schedule, I have decided that I will audit first semester ochem. I realize that if I want to get anything out of this class that I am going to put in the effort. As of right now, I am only going to audit the lectures and not the lab. I don't think that will have much of an impact on the overall concepts that I am hoping to work on while auditing.

Thanks for the adivce