Leaving Cert Chemistry?!

Jack55

So, I'm in a small bit of a dilemma. I'm in TY and we're picking our subjects next week. I'm almost certain that I want to pursue medicine as a career and earlier on in the year I decided on doing Biology, Physics, French and either Economics/Applied Maths. I've been recommended by many chemistry students not to do chemistry as it's so hard. However, doctors etc. recommend doing chemistry. I was initially going to keep to the same subjects until I found out that I would have to do 'Pre-Med', a 6 year medical course rather than a 5 year one if I didn't have LC Chemistry. I know it doesn't sound too bad but I think I'd prefer to do the 5 year one and prefer to be in the same year as some of the people I know (Vast majority of them are doing chemistry). My problem with chemistry is that i'm almost certain I don't like it and have no interest in it. So my questions are for any Med students at the moment or people who are doing LC Chemistry. What would you recommend? How hard is chemistry and what is the course like?
Thanks in advance!

Eurovisionmad

I think Chemistry gets a bit of a bad reputation, I don't think it's massively hard, I suppose it sort of depends on the teacher (I fear Spurious might have my head for that comment!) like I had a sub teacher who was covering maternity leave for the permanent teacher and she was bbbooooorrrrrrriiiiiinnnnnggggg and I just didn't develop a massive interest in it which of course made it harder to study really! But then this year we got the permanent teacher back and she knows her stuff and I find Chemistry very interesting!

Having said that if you're doing physics, I find anyway, that the way you approach each subject is fairly alike, if you understand the concept generally everything else is reasonably easy! (there is a bit of overlap between the syallauses but it's not really worth talking about!)

Have you had any experience of Chemistry from TY (I don't really think the chemistry part of the JC science course was massively reflective of what Chemistry is for LC) I would ask the chemistry teacher about Chemistry as a subject, like thinking about it if I was asked by someone in my school what I thought of Chemistry I probably say it's very hard just to have a bit of a moan about it, but really I quite like it.

Really though at the end of the day you want Medicine, you need high points and the best way for that, to do subjects that you like and are good at, not liking a subject I find makes it a lot harder to do well in!

Jack55

Yeah we're doing some chemistry at the moment. We only started last week so we began by mixing acids and bases and all that banter.. I totally agree that if you don't like a subject then it's much harder to learn. Is the exam predictable?

Acciaccatura

It's a bad start if you think of chemistry as "hard" because then you'll have such a bad mentality towards it and won't enjoy it, and that will just make everything worse. It is challenging, but is ultimately doable. I'd definitely advise doing chemistry, if you're looking to do medicine, or even another health sciences course, it's very useful for understanding. The LC paper is horribly laid out, but just overcome that by combing through it with a highlighter. You'll probably pass, but you won't get a fantastic grade just by learning things off (though there is a good element of that too) because a lot of questions test your understanding as well. If you like particle physics, there's a good bit of that there too. All in all, I find it a very enjoyable subject, there's good experiments (though there's no practical part to the exam, only questions on experiments), and I'd recommend doing it for medicine, but you will find it tough if you go in with a bad mentality towards it and have no interest in it. If I were you I'd go for it with an open mind

And the exam isn't too predictable, but the course has been around for 11 years so almost everything has been examined, it's not likely they'll throw up a strange question or anything

Eurovisionmad

Jack55 wrote: »

Yeah we're doing some chemistry at the moment. We only started last week so we began by mixing acids and bases and all that banter.. I totally agree that if you don't like a subject then it's much harder to learn. Is the exam predictable?

As long as you understand the concept, the exam is grand and predictable! There's two sections, Section A consists of 3 questions on your mandatory practical experiments (there's somewhere around 25 of them) but it always one question is a titration and another is based on the organic chemistry experiments, and the last is one of the others. You have to do a minimum of 2 out of the 3 but there quite easy, they tend to ask some experiment specific things but a lot of it is the same all the time like "how do you use this piece of equipment?" "state two precautions" there's only so many questions they can ask!

Section B consists of more general questions, one question is broken into little short questions on different parts of the course and you have a choice of what to answer within that question, it's very doable! In the rest of section B there will always be a water questions there'll always be two organic chemistry questions and so on! On top of that there's some questions also where you have choice within the question.

All in all the exam isn't too bad, really I find the actual classes and egtting your head 'round the concepts harder than the exam. You only have to do 8 out of the 11 questions altogether in the paper so if there are topics you really despise you can just avoid them!

ray2012

I do chemistry myself and I find it grand. My teacher is fairly good, so it makes the class a little better. I find the subject fairly boring though to be honest. It wasn't what I expected it to be. Saying that, you may like it. But my main piece of advice would be if you do not like the subject or if you find it boring, don't do it. :P

rainbowtrout

Jack55 wrote: »

I think I'd prefer to do the 5 year one and prefer to be in the same year as some of the people I know (Vast majority of them are doing chemistry). My problem with chemistry is that i'm almost certain I don't like it and have no interest in it.

1. If you don't like it now and it's putting you off doing it for LC, how are you going to cope with a considerable amount of Chemistry in college?

2. It hardly matters who is going to be on the course. Some of them will apply for it and not get it at all, not all of them will get it in the same college as you (assuming you are successful). You will meet new people on the course. Don't have that as a factor when deciding, you can be damn sure that people in your class choosing Chemistry for LC with a view to doing Medicine are not thinking 'Oh I want to be in the 5 year course cos Jack55 is going to be in it'. That's not the way it works. Do chemistry if you want to do a 5 year course instead of 6, not because of who might be in your class. You mightn't even be speaking to some of them by the end of leaving cert.

Jack55

Well, pre-med is designed to teach the essential chemistry that you don't know. It's not meant to be an intense year and therefore the chemistry involved wouldn't really bother me, I'd put up with it to get where I want to get to. My problem was that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do an extra year just to learn chemistry. But now I've decided that I'm going to do the 6 year course rather than doing a subject I dislike for LC.

I fully agree with your second point. I think I became a bit delusional because all of the people I know who want to do medicine are taking chemistry as a LC subject, (Subliminally thinking I'd know nobody). But yeah, good point. I was just over-thinking it! Thanks!

Prodigious

Chemistry is my favourite subject. I expect to get an A1. It's very manageable if you approach it right. It gives a very good boost in a lot of fields and is often a requirement. It is often considered more important than biology by colleges.

spurious

Like most subjects, once you have a solid understanding of the basics, Chemistry is very accessible.
From speaking to friends who did all three, many of them would say it was the one they had to work least hard for, in terms of memorising things and 'studying'.

Slow Show

spurious wrote: »

Like most subjects, once you have a solid understanding of the basics, Chemistry is very accessible.
From speaking to friends who did all three, many of them would say it was the one they had to work least hard for, in terms of memorising things and 'studying'.

This is really, really true. I do two sciences - Biology and Chemistry. When I was making subject choices, Biology was the one labelled as 'easy', and Chemistry was the tough one. I've never found Chemistry to be overly difficult myself. The wonderful thing about it is that it all links together. You learn something in one chapter and you apply that knowledge in another chapter. I spend far less time studying Chemistry than Biology, or most of my other subjects for that matter. I wouldn't let an opinion of Chemistry at JC level influence your decision either, it's massively over-simplified for the most part! But yeah Chemistry really is quite accessible, with a nice paper too. I mean I managed to revise most of the course the night before my mock (about six/seven hours-ish, it was a rough night:pac:) and it went quite well really. But if you really detest the idea of it then fair enough, but if you want to do Medicine, by all accounts it's a fairly significant component of the course so you'll have to get used to the idea of it at some stage.

I'm constantly telling anyone who will listen how brilliant Chemistry is so I couldn't resist jumping in.