First Day of Organic Chem I

Today will be the first day of my organic chemistry class. I'm a little afraid, as I am so completely exhausted right now that I can barely stay awake as I type this. But this first day is a lab day, and I doubt we're going to do much more than familiarize ourselves with the laboratory safety procedures. This is worrisome though: I haven't been able to sleep properly in weeks; I really need sleep or my headaches become a lot worse. Exercise is supposed to help my headaches, but I have to wake up early for the gym now that I can't go after work anymore. I planned on going early this morning, but I was so exhausted.

I am so tired I cannot think right now. More later.

Pre-Preparing For My Organic Chemistry I Class

Of all the pre-requisite classes for medical school, Organic Chemistry has the reputation for being the hardest: it is known as the Dream Killer, and for good reason. It's a "weed out" class, where averages can be in the 40-50% range, which means people either end up dropping the class and/or abandoning their pre-med pursuits. It certainly happened to me: try as I might to memorize the pathways, nothing stuck, and while I passed the course, a B-/C+ in the course series is not impressive. I have had people tell me horror stories of their interviews at schools, where the interviewer had highlighted their orgo scores in their files or had demanded to know why the candidate had such a poor score in that class.

That is why I chose orgo as the first class I want to retake in my DIY post-bacc. Not only will this be extremely helpful in improving my sGPA/BCPM grades if I do well, but it will also be a strong refresher for the physical sciences portion of the MCAT: while I know physics is a weakness and can practice the math for it to do decently, whenever my practice exams or real exams had a bulk of organic chemistry problems, I was never able to score high. I always felt a bit ashamed of my inability to grasp orgo because my dad is a polymer chemist who works with these kinds of reactions all the time. Going to him for help was a fruitless endeavor, however, because when you have someone working in the field doing complicated stuff all the time, they forget how to teach someone the basics. I would spend hours with my dad, and we would only get through a single problem in a set, reducing me to tears.

It is a little insane that I am signing up for a summer course, as the pace will be intense, and as someone with a full time job, I won't have that much time to study as the class meets 4 days a week for about 3 hours at a time. I'll be learning what most people learn in 15 weeks in less than half that (seven weeks), but I would like to point out that Drexel's terms were 10 weeks, and we covered the same amount, so I know what it is like to have a brutal pace. And to help alleviate some of my anxiety, I'm starting to learn the concepts before the class even starts so that I will have a basic understanding before I even sit down for the first lecture.

Normally, I pre-read for classes by reading the textbook (which I will be doing before each lecture, just not before class even starts, as the book is an intimidating size). This time I researched tools for learning Organic Chemistry, and the book that kept popping up over and over in these searches was Organic Chemistry as a Second Language by David Klein. The summer class I am taking is actually using David Klein's full textbook, so I thought it would be prudent to buy the Second Language book as a companion. I'm on chapter two, and I have to say, it has been an invaluable resource. The book is not intended to replace the textbook; rather, it is a supplemental workbook/study guide of the major concepts you need to master as you go through the class. And when I say companion book, I mean it: I read the first few textbook chapters and they give a lot more information than was in the SL book.

I've made a lot of mistakes, but what I'm doing is every time I make a mistake, I mark it and write out why my original answer was incorrect. This helps me identify which concepts I need to solidify as I go on. Then I can redo the problem until I get it correct, or I can use the textbook or other resource to find new, similar questions. I'll try to blog about any resources I use while taking the course.

The New D.O. Application

Yesterday the new Liason International D.O. application website was launched. Naturally, I started populating the application with my information. A few thoughts come to mind:

• The new layout is so pretty! The previous website was an ugly eyesore; it was very dated looking. The blues and greens make this a very modern-looking page, and the simple graphics add a very nice touch.
• It isn't just pretty, it is also WAY more functional and easy to use than the previous version. Now, it isn't perfect, but there are several things that I have noticed that are improved:
• The transcript entry utility is a lot simpler to use. You can organize things by quarter/semester, meaning you can select a semester, add the classes, and choose another quarter, instead of having to re-enter the semester information each time you add a class. This saves a TON of time--last cycle I spent HOURS inputting the information, and I still messed it up.
• It also has a bar on the bottom that lists if the schools you are applying to have certain pre-requisite courses. If you hover over the "i" icon, it tells you if the course is mandatory, how many credits they require, and the minimum grade they will accept. This last piece of information quite helpful for non-trads who already have a science degree--it tells you if the "pass" grade you earned would be accepted. For example, for Rowan, they want a 2.5 minimum grade in the biology pre-requisite. This would mean you would need somewhere above a C+ for consideration, and that it might be worth your while to retake the course.
• One unanswered question about the transcript tool: I went to Drexel University, and it is on the quarter system. The old application asked us to translate the quarter hours into semester hours using a chart in a PDF that wasn't even prominently displayed on the site or the webpage (this is part of why it took hours for me to complete this step in the past). The new website has no mention of whether or not I need to recalculate all of my credit hours. I assume that during the verification process, they will tell me if I need to do so.
• The "Evaluations" section. I wish they had a more clear description for what this is. Who are these evaluations coming from? I don't know if this is supposed to be for Letter of Recommendation (LOR) writers such as a science professor, pre-medical committee, D.O. physician, or workplace supervisor, or all four of those things. And if it's from a pre-medical committee, I have no idea how they would have a SINGLE email address to give.
• And thought that I'd put this out there: as a non-trad, it is effing HARD to find professors willing to write these LORs, especially if you're more than a year out of school. I wish med schools would take supervisor letters more seriously, especially for those of us who are working in a science- or medically-related field.
• I'm guessing the section is for LORs though, as on their previous emails they mentioned that the new website would have a utility to replace Interfolio, and that this way your LORs would come bundled with your application itself, allowing for faster processing times.
• In the personal information spot, I'm surprised they eliminated information about siblings. They do, however, have a more detailed information spot for people to list physicians in the family. Unfortunately for me, that spot will remain woefully blank. It makes me vaguely uncomfortable to see a spot dedicated for nepotism on an application that is supposed to evaluate the student holistically, rather than the student's family.
• The language entry spot. They ask you to pick a primary language. For those of us who were raised bilingual (this is a case for so many of us who were born in America to immigrant parents who could speak at least a minimum of English), there is no "primary" language. It feels weird to call my home language level "advanced" because I cannot understand the news/literary grammar, but I'm fully able to converse and live a normal life using my home language.