[dexwiz]

OChem tends to be the weed-out class for several majors, primarily Chemistry. You often take it as a college sophomore, and represents a fundamental shift in topics. Most high school and introductory chemistry is acid/base aqueous chemistry, which is relatively straightforward HAcid + BaseOH <-> H20 + Salt. You may do an organic reaction here or there, but only the the most basic like esterification. Making the fake banana flavor is pretty common, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoamyl_acetate.

The article is paywalled, so I didn't read, but OChem is supposed to be very hard. Maybe he did grade too hard, or maybe whiners want a passing grade without doing the work and this is the first academic challenge they have truly faced.

[chernevik]

Per the article, he's been teaching this for decades, and his textbook is in its fifth edition.

Frankly these students are lucky to have this guy for a professor.

The article notes that he's seen a decline in student application for a decade, and the pandemic just collapsed application entirely.

[faeriechangling]

Calling them whiners is too harsh even if it’s technically correct. This was a class setup to fail by COVID. If they took no action, they were going to be crushed when in normal circumstances they would have succeeded.

[stop50]

OC is hard because carbon is unlike any other known element: it has too many possible combinations. Anorganic chemics has a few hundred combinations, but carbon has more with hydrogen alone.

[dexwiz]

Correct. OChem represents a shift from atom based thinking to electron arrangement based thinking. You kind of learn this before with orbitals and simple stuff like Cl's 7 electrons+ H's 1 electron = 8 electrons, a full shell! That is why halogens make great acids. But this is only the simplest form.

OChem is much more about how electrons move during reactions. Carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen are simple atoms, but their electrons can be arranged in so many ways. Concepts like electrophilic and nucleophilic are introduced to help model these interactions. You can memorize OChem reactions based on atoms, but its much easier to comprehend once you start looking the electrons in the bonds as the important bit and atoms are just a place to put them.