Totally agree that his strategies are the key to mastering material in some types of course - but, it does suggest you have sufficient IQ in the first place to do things like "Learn it the first time, understand associations, etc..."
It should be noted, though, that there is a large array of course where pattern association and critical thinking aren't going to help you that much.
My Psyc180 Brain and Behavior course was basically identifying and recalling an ungodly number of neuro chemical pathways and elements. Anatomy 101 (which I did not take) enjoyed a week or three of "Let's learn what the 200+ Human bones are. Great, now we move onto muscles." And, I didn't even want to think about what it would be like to subject myself to the ultimate pain that Organic Chemistry is. I would _love_ to hear of a human being that can get through Organic Chemistry courses without the requisite X hours outside of class per hour of lecture. (For a 13 week semester consisting of 3 hours/week, that would typically suggest 80-120 hours of studying for the 39 hours of in-class time) - I've seen that course knock out many a pre-med candidate who decided that maybe this wasn't where they wanted to go in life.
Even more interesting would be to find a human who could simply cram all that information in the week before the final without having studied outside of class.
But - overall, great study suggestions for courses of a particular type.
My O. Chem I/II wasn't that hard. I do think that in some ways the course parallels CS 101 education.
Students that don't have an intuitive grasp for 3D logic are lost early on and have trouble keeping up. Chirality is something you either "get" or you don't--and that understanding is based on logic that is developed at an early age. Is there really an effective way to teach people how to manipulate stereogenic centers of molecules in their head if they haven't been rotating mental pictures in their mind from a young age? I don't think that stick figures and plastic models help much.
One of the most important investments early on is practicing switching between the various projections of molecules. My professor always tried to trip us up by giving us deceptive encodings of molecules and we had precious little time to convert them.
There are maybe 50 reactions throughout O.Chem I/II that you have to "memorize". Grouping them by functionality helps, but ultimately they all mostly follow the same consistent inner logic--just follow the movement of the electrons. It's all rule-based! Take time to perhaps practice synthesis and retrosynthesis as they require you to mentally traverse chemical space quickly. (Kind of like BFS where the edges are chemical reactions. Heuristic: note substructures to cut down the search space.)
Reading IR, H/C13 NMR, and MS isn't that difficult and takes maybe a weekend to learn all of the intricacies. Once you can read them, just use careful tallying and logic to determine the molecular structures of unknowns from spectra.
I would highly recommend these courses to a CS major looking for an elective or two as a means of really getting to know the chemical makeup of the world. (Maybe they can pull you into doing computational chemistry!) The courses are a fun logical exercise, and the labs are great!
I have yet to take advanced organic, but from what I understand it is much more math-intensive. MO theory, etc.
I must disagree with the Organic Chemistry bit. I took advanced organic chem as an elective in college and I absolutely loved it. Yes there are a lot of different reactions, and there is some memorization involved, but there is a very beautiful theory unifying so many diverse reactions and the focus was always on understanding the reasoning why and how those particular reactions occur (reaction mechanisms). Once you knew the basic facts, then solving problems involved a lot of deductive reasoning (in positing new mechanisms) and creativity (in building new compounds using known reactions).
i agree. my organic chemistry course in college was great. i attribute it largely to the fact that we used morrison and boyd as a textbook - they take great pains to present organic chemistry as a cohesive whole, with a solid structure built up step by step, rather than a hodgepodge of memorised reactions.
Yeah, the article's method is very close to what I use for my computer science courses, in which I do very well. But I do a lot worse when applying the same technique to my Mandarin classes - despite all the people who've tried creative methods to learning Chinese characters, rote memorization is pretty much the only way to go. (However, using spaced repetition techniques can still help make memorization much more energy-efficient).
It should be noted, though, that there is a large array of course where pattern association and critical thinking aren't going to help you that much.
My Psyc180 Brain and Behavior course was basically identifying and recalling an ungodly number of neuro chemical pathways and elements. Anatomy 101 (which I did not take) enjoyed a week or three of "Let's learn what the 200+ Human bones are. Great, now we move onto muscles." And, I didn't even want to think about what it would be like to subject myself to the ultimate pain that Organic Chemistry is. I would _love_ to hear of a human being that can get through Organic Chemistry courses without the requisite X hours outside of class per hour of lecture. (For a 13 week semester consisting of 3 hours/week, that would typically suggest 80-120 hours of studying for the 39 hours of in-class time) - I've seen that course knock out many a pre-med candidate who decided that maybe this wasn't where they wanted to go in life.
Even more interesting would be to find a human who could simply cram all that information in the week before the final without having studied outside of class.
But - overall, great study suggestions for courses of a particular type.