The more time I spend around physicians and healthcare, the more fustrated I become with understanding the importance of “weed out” courses. Over the past decade I have heard many of stories regarding the pre-medical student adversary – Organic Chemistry.

While it seems clear that success in these courses do not necessarily coorelate with success as a physician, I ask the question “Why?”

Some argue that being able to perform well in a class such as organic chemistry indicates that one, as a student, has proved their capability to prioritize, study, and learn effectively – a reasonable statement.

Others argue the importance of understanding the chemical underpinnings of disease and therapeutic treatments – also a reasonable statement.

Despite somewhat agreeing with these arguements, I can’t help but feel that the way in which organic chemistry prevents many from becoming physicians is ultimately a hinderance to solving the problem of physician shortage.

Perhaps the issue lies more in the infrastructure and goals of secondary education. Thus, my goal is to take advantage of the hurdle which is organic chemistry and make it useful for me. Below is a poster my organic chemistry course assigned as homework. Having a balance between basic science theory and real world application makes the topic a bit more interesting.

One thing I learned is that researching the mechanisms of action of functional groups highlights the importance of understanding real world application of basic roganic chemistry knowledge.