[mercurio]

I must disagree with the Organic Chemistry bit. I took advanced organic chem as an elective in college and I absolutely loved it. Yes there are a lot of different reactions, and there is some memorization involved, but there is a very beautiful theory unifying so many diverse reactions and the focus was always on understanding the reasoning why and how those particular reactions occur (reaction mechanisms). Once you knew the basic facts, then solving problems involved a lot of deductive reasoning (in positing new mechanisms) and creativity (in building new compounds using known reactions).

[ghshephard]

It's possible that your college had a different focus in Organic Chemistry that involved less memorization, and more conceptualization?

Here is one typical text for Organic Chemistry: http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Paula-Yurkanis-Bruic...

Roughly the same as yours?

[zem]

i agree. my organic chemistry course in college was great. i attribute it largely to the fact that we used morrison and boyd as a textbook - they take great pains to present organic chemistry as a cohesive whole, with a solid structure built up step by step, rather than a hodgepodge of memorised reactions.