Philosophy and Goals
The bad news is that this will not be a course in memorization. It is easy to memorize stuff and regurgitate it on the exam. Sure, you will have to learn stuff but a major goal of the course is to take the stuff you learn and apply it to problems in organic chemistry. CHE 321 will be a course about ideas.
Why is chemistry required for so many career paths? Is a knowledge of chemistry necessary for success? Do I really need to know all of this stuff? The answers to these questions are not obvious. However, what is obvious is that molecules are involved in the proper function and malfunction of everything around us as well as ourselves. A functioning cell phone requires successful chemistry. When a cell phone fails, its failure will be a result of its own chemistry failing. The same is true for life. The proper functioning of all living things is the result of a number of chemical systems successfully working together. However, diseases, from depression to cancer, are the results of our own body chemistry malfunctioning. Treatment of these disease states must occur at the molecular level.
It is also true is that the chemical knowledge of the things around us and life is still very primitive. We are unable to predict the biological activity of the simplest molecules. However, our knowledge of how things function at a molecular level is far better known than it was 20 years ago and will be much greater 20 years from now. Advances all of the live sciences as well as other fields such as engineering and psychology are moving towards the molecule. This was true in the past and will certainly be true in the future. If your career goals involve science and technology then it is likely that good understanding of chemistry will serve you well in the future.
Our primary goal is to develop chemical tools such as new reactions and refinements in chemical bonding and to use these tools to understand known chemical events such as the functioning of ion channels or cholesterol biosynthesis or preparation of a DVD disk and to use these tools to predict new chemistries such as the preparation of unknown molecular compounds, the prediction of unknown reactions or the nature of the interaction of a substrate with a receptor or enzyme.
Learning general problem solving methods is probably the most useful lesson most will take from this course. Life is full of problems. Learning how to solve these problems and make good decisions is very important. Problems in organic chemistry are difficult but they are simpler than most problems in life. Success at learning how to solve problems in organic chemistry will help solving problems in life.