The biggest piece of advice I can offer is that you need to really UNDERSTAND the concepts...why does a reaction happen the way it does? What are the rules of attraction for electrons? If you understand these, the reactions come together all by themselves.
I have used several internet sites as study materials, and will list all of those below. While I did not have this particular professor at University of Texas, Professor Iverson was one of the authors of the textbook that we used, and this guy has consistently been rated by his students as being the most awesome professor they've ever had, despite the fact that he teaches one of the most hated subjects in all of academia. The reason why they like him so much is because he is great at teaching a very notoriously difficult subject. Students come away from the class feeling like they understand the material and aren't doing a ton of rote memorization. They all say that they still have to do hard work, but that he teaches in a way that they don't feel like they've been thrown into the deep end of the pool without water wings! So...the biggest resource for studying was Professor Iverson's website for Organic Chemistry 1 (CH310M at University of Texas).
Professor Iverson's Web Page:
Some of the most helpful documents on Professor Iverson's site are his old example tests, homework assignments, and practice reaction sheets. Also, one of the things that was stressed in our classes was being able to construct a "roadmap" of reactions...knowing how to convert a molecule to any other molecule that we studied though various reaction types. Here is a template of one that we used in our classes...it's setup like a literal roadmap of the I-35 corridor in Texas since that's something most of us in Texas are familiar with, and the names of cities that are included provide some cues to help remember the structure. It's only partially filled in.
Some other example roadmaps that I found online with all of the reactions filled in look like this:
IUPAC Nomenclature is one of the most basic elements to Organic Chemistry. You have to be able to know how to identify and construct molecules. Luckily, the convention for naming molecules is pretty systematic. Of course, it requires practice to get the hang of it, but once you've got that down, it starts to become second nature.
Some good sites are:
This one has everything, but it is more technical in nature:
I like this one because I think it's really great for beginners who are just getting into Organic molecules:
This is a pretty awesome little molecule naming application. You draw out your molecule in the java applet, and then the site will take the molecule you have drawn and generate the appropriate IUPAC name. Pretty nice for checking your answers. I'd stress, though, that you want to use this to check your answers after you've given your best shot at doing the work first. Practice is the most important element to doing well in this class.
So...that's some good info to get you started! Understand all of these things, and you are well on your way to doing well in organic chemistry!
