Yes, we realize that many of you that are taking organic chemistry dream of going to medical school someday. Everybody needs doctors, and the job pays well, so good for you. There is plenty of research out there to suggest that organic chemistry is a pretty important class for getting into medical school. Heck, if you got a good recommendation from your prof, that would probably help your chances too.
However, there is a seething underbelly to the pre-med world. Some horrible things that nobody wants to talk about are:
1) Pre-Meds are notoriously cutthroat. By this, we mean that they would slit your throat if it would get them another point on that quiz. We have seen pre-med students tear essential pages out of textbooks in the library because they didn’t want the other students to get that help. We have seen pre-meds steal the exam answer key off of the wall (most answer keys are online now, so that helps), so that YOU don’t know what the correct answers were. We have even seen some of them give other students the wrong information on purpose to lower the curve and help their grade. I taught organic chemistry at a major US university and saw this first-hand. Wretched.
2) They can be curve-wreckers. It is not unusual to find a professor who has the average grade in his class be a 50 out of 100 points. This means that anything above that line is a “B” and anything below is a “C”. Pre-med students are like the Terminator: they don’t feel pity, they don’t feel remorse, and they are relentless in their studies. The average grade in a class full of pre-meds is going to be much higher than one with only a few of them.
What can you do about this? First of all, avoid the bad ones. Second, make sure you are prepared to do well in the class so it doesn’t matter what they do. Third, don’t become one of them.
Sorry for the doom and gloom post. It gets better from here.