<p>My D will be a junior in HS this year and is going to be doing an independent study in organic chemistry. I am thrilled that the teacher has taken an interest in her and he is well qualified to teach the course, but I’m a little worried about the content - maybe I shouldn’t be. I’m hoping that there are parents out there or students with experience in this subject that can suggest some study guides for her to use- she already has the text and has been doing some reading over the summer- but if anyone can suggest any guides (please, no “Organic Chemistry for Dummies” unless you truly found it helpful) I would be most appreciative. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>If the teacher is well qualified to be teaching orgo 1) ask the teacher to recommend a book and 2) tell the teacher he’s overqualified to be teaching high school.</p>
<p>On the other hand, your daughter should not be taking a class that she will not be able to readily apply the knowledge from. When she finally does have a chance to apply it, it will not be fresh and she will spend more time attempting to recover lost information and this will detract from her learning the sequentially next set of knowledge. </p>
<p>636</p>
<p>I took organic chemistry first semester of my senior year of high school. I had an excellent teacher and had such a good experience in the class that I signed up for organic chemistry first semester of freshman year. Kudos to your daughter for stretching her brain!</p>
<p>You asked for study guides-- I don’t know any. But what I did is ordered my high school textbook to use as a study guide for this year, because it was really clear and laid things out well. This particular one is McMurry’s Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry, 5th ed, and if you can find a good secondhand copy it might be a worthwhile investment even though she already has a text.</p>
<p>Orgo is usually a college course; it is also used as a weed-out course for pre-meds. In other words, it’s tough. So kudos to your D for being considered ready to tackle it. You may want to check the MIT Open courseware for syllabus, exercises, etc… besides what the teacher would suggest.</p>
<p>As for forgetting, that is indeed a concern, but I doubt that she would be forgetting everything; she could also recover her knowledge fairly quickly. With my S, my concern has always been how to keep him challenged now and worry about the future later. There was a 3- year gap between his taking AP-Physics and taking the next (college) physics class. He’d forgotten some stuff but was able to hold his own.</p>
<p>willow, thank you for that suggested text- exactly the kind of information I was looking for.</p>
<p>marite- I was hoping you’d respond and had completely forgotten about the resources MIT offers. I’ll have her look there as well- particularly at the problem sets.</p>
<p>marite: Could you tell me about what the MIT Open courseware is? I just visited the site and it’s incredible. What is the MIT’s purpose of administering a website like that?</p>
<p>It’s a wonderful public service by MIT, isn’t it? MIT just wants to make the information available to as many people as possible. The open courseware consists of the materials used in MIT courses, from syllabi to problem sets and other assignments.</p>
<p>Here’s a list of the other US colleges taking part in the Open Courseware Consortium:</p>
<p>United States (member profiles)
Defense Acquisition University
Harvard Law School, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michigan State University
Tufts University
University of California, Irvine
University of Michigan School of Information
University of Massachusetts Boston
University of Notre Dame
Utah State University
Utah Valley State College
Wheelock College </p>
<p><a href=“http://ocwconsortium.org/[/url]”>http://ocwconsortium.org/</a></p>