How to Successfully Pass General Chemistry

 Introduction

Hello, I have been struggling with General Chemistry until recently. Taking a harder class teaches you a thing or two about studying. I wish I would have followed these tips earlier in the class so that I could have potentially done much better, however I did pass the class with a B. For many of you this may be your first Science class taken as it was mine. Some school’s General Chemistry classes will be easier than others. If you are taking General Chemistry from a medical school it is bound to be harder. I am upset at myself because I was not hard on myself near the beginning of the year, but towards the middle of year I became much more critical of myself. Now, these tips do not guarantee success, but hopefully they can inspire it.

1) Create a Study Plan

How many hours of Chemistry do you study each day? When I study Chemistry, I will create a sheet on excel that counts the hours of Chemistry that I study. For some people printing off a paper from excel is the better option. This is an example of my study sheet on a piece of paper. Set a goal to how many hours you should be studying and make sure you have met that goal. Some weeks may be more intense than others. Some weeks I would study 12 hours while other weeks I would study about 7 hours. My advice for other people and myself is to make that number more consistent. For my remaining science classes I will make sure I study at least 10 hours total on all  of my material. 

Somedays we can trick ourselves into thinking we were productive, when we were not. Therefore, counting your hours of study time truly helps. A thought that is discouraging many people in STEM fields that geniuses were born that way. They have some unobtainable gift that is unreachable, however EVEN GENIUS' HAD TO STUDY. Your knowledge will be your most important asset to your resume.

2) Trick yourself if you don't like it

Pretend you love Chemistry. Now I know you're probably rolling your eyes, because honestly who loves General Chemistry, but just pretend. I would tell myself I loved it, I began to believe myself, and studying became more fun.

3) Keep it Simple Stupid

Who has ever heard of this phrase before? Some of you might recall the statement "KISS", no I don't mean the romantic kind. The idea is that if you cannot break something up into simple statements then you do not understand the material. This sounds difficult for a subject such as chemistry. Chemistry is so vague, there are a lot of ideas, however many of the ideas are just simple ideas jumbled together. Sometimes one simple idea follows another idea. Take a machine for example. The most complicated machine that I can think of is the super computer. Looking at it from the outside I feel overwhelmed. There are so many components mounted together, so much software and coding, however if you take a step back all it really is, is a bunch of tiny simple instructions that create something complex. Why can't we think that way then? Perhaps we become so overwhelmed with the entirety of it that we forget the simplicity of it.

4) Sometimes your grade is not an accurate reflection of your work

This is something that I have learned while in a STEM field. Your grade is very dependent on the teacher and depending if the teacher will make accommodations or not. I had classmates who took the same class whose lowest exam grades were dropped, however not all teachers will do this. For my class 22% of my grade was dependent on my final while the other classes teachers would drop their students’ final grade. However, even if your teacher is difficult it doesn’t excuse your “bad or medium” grade. One thing that bothers me is when students who take an easier class brag about receiving an A. If a student takes a difficult class and receives and A that is something much more than an easy A. There is so much stigma about a B- or a C letter grade that we forget the difficulties of the class to begin with. It would seem in my class about half of the students have dropped since the begging of the semester. General Chemistry is the most failed class at the University of Utah.

5)Practice, Practice, Practice

Every single day at least do one practice problem. Here is a photo of how I lay out my practice problems.  On the left side is a practice question, and on the right is an explanation to that question. 

I wish I was more consistent with studying practice problems. At the beginning of the year I would simply stop the moment my homework was completed, however I can now see how big of a mistake that was. What I should have done is to keep studying practice problems until I could no longer practice. This is what I did in the middle of the year. I would create practice problems and review them over and over again. Near the end of the year I had made about 50 sheets of practice questions. This helped immensely for the calculations portion of my exam, but not so much with the idea portion. It took my grade from about a 50% on my midterm exams to a about a 90%. 

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day after chemistry has fried your brain, you have passed the most failed class amongst university students. Learning all of humanity's chemistry in 3 months is not easy. These are classes that a University will place for freshman as, "Weeding out classes". That is why about half of the class drops, and so many people switch majors into non STEM fields. They want to make sure that you can take the heat. I promise you, if you make sure you don't just complete the homework and make sure you take your time to study, you can at least pass the class. My lesson learned from this class is to make sure next semester that I work so much harder in the beginning of the year. Good luck with chemistry, you can do it!