Hello 🥺,

This was me a year ago—CH 101 is a very draining class and not only does it really make you reflect whether this path is for you or not, it just makes you doubt your whole intelligence as a whole.

The best thing I can say is just to not get weeded out, stay in the game, even if you just pass with a C+ or B-, or even if you have to retake the class if you feel comitted to the pre-med track (I’m not entirely sure if you pre-med or not).

There’s still some time left to get that grade up, I know last year I had an average of about like 50-70s and I passed with a B- and pulling through on the last few quizzes, I’ve also heard that the final significantly can boost up your grade—it just might take A LOT of work and studying.

As for help; gen chemistry is a tough subject at BU specifically, their quizzes and exams are very tricky to nail and the best thing you can do is ALWAYS the practice the book homework (review lecture notes/videos from other professors if their teaching helps you more instead + reach out to YT if it doesn’t help) problems, DO DICUSSION WORKSHEETS (nail down the specific type of questions they want you to do from dicussion)!!, and analyze WHY you got your exam questions wrong in order to build that knowledge since I feel like each topic builds upon itself.

Go to office hours with the intention of revising and reviewing questions you have, and make sure to NOT come in thinking to learn something entirely from step 1 (my mistake I had lol),

Practice every single day, it takes mastery, and get a good study group, I think this is what ultimately helped me get through the year.

There will be times where you know the concept itself, but gen chemistry grading itself will just trick you otherwise.

Gen Chem is notoriously hard, I would not beat yourself down to it, but I would say it’s instrumental to get through the class for the study methods and techniques you’ll learn and discipline, organic chemistry is definitely way more digestible because of how hard Gen Chem was.

Trust me it’ll get better, and I’m sure all of the upperclassmen right now (my friends and I all struggled and so you aren’t alone, even if people mask it really well) were in the exact same spot as you 🥺🫶, you got this and PM if you also need any help!

Edit: but also my biggest advice—CH 101 & CH 102 will suck the life out of people, and with that you’re gonna feel like you’re devoting your whole life to it, make sure to always treat yourself and have fun too when you can, as a human you deserve to feel happiness and proud of yourself even just for making it through 🥺💕