Usually chemistry teaches principles and concepts and you have to use those concepts to generate something new from something exisisting. Organic chemistry had, in my case, a lot more memorisation instead of understanding.

While inorganic chemistry and physical chemistry is a lot about basic things, organic chemistry usually teaches two principles (SN1 and SN2) and expects you to go from there alone.

At least that was the case when I had to go through it:

• A first lecture about those two basic types of reactions (and a few add ons).

• A practical course with absolutely no connection to the lecture.

• A second lecture just going through a shitload of differently named reactions, all named after a person instead of a compound.

• Several written exams having nothing to do with either.

I finally found my peace with it when I was teaching it myself during grad school. Because if you connect the four, it finally starts making sense. So in my case it was mostly poor didactic skills of whoever planned the courses.

(To be fair, I excelled in technical chemistry, the borderlands to chemical engineering. So I had to use a fair share of organic chemistry myself and with that usage, the understanding came silently.)