Chem SL Options - Biochem vs. Further Orgo?

[CommeDesEnfants]

Which would be more desirable to self-study in a relatively short, 3-4 week time frame: Option B, Biochemistry, or Option G, Further Organic Chemistry? I hear that both of them are rather difficult, but the syllabus objectives for Option G actually look somewhat shorter to me in comparison to B. On the flip side, Option B seems to contain a lot of memorization of molecular structures and the such.

Anybody with any past experience in any of these two options care to share their opinion? My other option is Option D, medicine and drugs.

[KLSmash]

I only know about Option D (Medicine & Drugs), since that's what I did last year. Personally, I found it really easy (a lot more than Environmental) and fascinating as well. There was barely any memorization, and a lot of it was more or less common sense.

[Sandwich]

I did Option G (admittedly the HL version) and thought it was one of the hardest options you could do -- I also did Option D, so can't comment on Biochemistry. Some of the harder stuff for Option G is HL stuff to be fair, but if you consider Opt D to basically be a load of reasonably simple memorising (which incidentally is such common sense that it's not even memorising), Opt G is a load of pretty evil memorising. I don't know what Biochem is like, but I'd not really like to do G again!

I suggest you look at some past papers to see which questions look harder to you (look over a couple of years -- I know I was surprised in my exam when D was hard to answer and G relatively straight forward!) and then just get on with it. If you've not got very long to study them, the more time ahead you can get some notes down and go through it before the actual exam, the less stressful it'll be. All Options are probably a bit of a pain in the end. If you don't like Biochem/Opt G, just pick another. I am told Environmental is quite easy by my friend who decided to do that one instead of G.

[Mahuta ♥]

Briefly:

You are taking biology HL, option B would be much much easier for you seeing that you are taking chemistry SL.

Besides option G is very hard to be self-taught. I recommend option B if you are looking for a desirable self-taught option.

An important point: do not judge by looking briefly through the length. Although option B looks longer, it would be more interesting and better to learn, again, seeing that you are taking biology HL.

I did both Chemistry and Biology HL and the Options B(self-taught) and G.

Concerning option D, I wanted to do that, but I wasn't advised to since option B has a lot of similarities with my Bio HL material, which means it helped me revise for it. Do not consider enviromental, it's complicated and boring.

[CommeDesEnfants]

Thanks for the advice. I eventually decided to go through with Option B, and I learned the entire thing in about a day. The experience was actually riveting; although it might sound crazy and nerdy, but I enjoyed learning about the structures of monosaccharides and the structures of fats and oils. Plus, the correlation between it and Biology HL was indeed unexpected and refreshing. Yay for laziness!

Yeah, my teacher's teaching options A and E, but they liked pretty undesirable to me. I'm glad I got out of Environmental Chem; it didn't look very interesting to me, considering how one of the topics is "Soil." Wow, total bombshell there.