Struggling But Passing Chem - Where Do I Go From Here? (1 Viewer)

Silvers12

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So I've put myself into a bit of an awkward situation, first I need to provide some background. I'm currently a first year studying Liberal Arts and Science at USYD. With my course I'm required to choose a science unit, so in this case I chose Chemistry out of interest, it has no bearing on my major or course (which is Psychology).

So my problem begins with Chemistry, the first 5 or 6 weeks of the semester were fine. For the most part I was grasping the basic concepts despite having no prior year 12 or bridging course history with it. After the first few weeks however, I started to drop off from my lecture attendance, then a week later, wasn't really watching any of my lectures at all. So for the rest of the semester I really had no idea what was going on, with only a very limited knowledge of Chemistry. I managed to pass the unit (as it's really easy to pass) and am currently continuing on with 2nd semester Chemistry. This semester I've kept up with it better, but still, without that prior knowledge from semester 1, I'm still not able to fully understand what's going on.

So I'll try to get to the point... recently I've started to think, what if I decide that I want to pursue a career path that requires some knowledge of chemistry? Where do I go from here? If I pass this semester then I have two junior units of chemistry under my belt but without any real understanding on the topic. Should I intentionally fail this unit, or is it not worth affecting my WAM? Would my best option to try retaking the units all together (if that's possible) if I decide to follow a career path that requires Chemistry? Would it be ridiculous for me to learn online off something like Khan Academy?

I know most of you will probably want to berate me for putting myself in this situation... fair enough, I probably deserve it but it really won't help my situation right now and I already kick myself everyday about it. So if anyone could advise me on what my best move is here I'd really appreciate it, thanks in advance.
 
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Silvers12

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I graduated with B Med Science, yet I struggled to understand much in class.

Don't underestimate yourself.

I use Khan Academy too. It's not ridiculous at all.
I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm more concerned about being in a situation where I actually need to apply my knowledge of Chemistry to a particular job or something when I don't have said knowledge. On that note though, are you worried at all that you won't be able to apply certain aspects of what you learnt in class to your field of work?

I really shouldn't have passed first semester Chemistry but it's very difficult not to, so I managed to pass. I just want to know if I should consider trying to relearn the content in some way.
 

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