<p>You’ll be fine if you work hard. Yes, there will be students in your general chemistry class who will ace the class because they’ve learned everything in high school already. However once you pass your first year everyone will be in the same boat (since all the other stuff is new to everyone). And your class will be starting from the basics (or at least, it should) so you shouldn’t need any previous chemistry knowledge from high school.</p>
<p>You might have to work a lot on unit conversions, significant figures, dimensional analysis, and stoichiometry if you’re not used to these concepts since many other students will be able to do this stuff in their sleep (it’s a huge part of chemistry in high school).</p>
<p>One more thing:
“I know that anything in the STEM field will pay off in the long run”
That’s not really the case for chemistry (or much of the pure sciences). </p>