The DU Lounge

…and made the mistake of taking 2 semesters of organic chem in 8 weeks of summer school after finishing nursing school that June. Back then, organic was the make or break “filter-‘em-out” class. If you didn’t get an A, no med school would even look at you. The weekly tests were graded on a curve, and one week the cutoff for a C was 32%!

I passed the course with a C, so that was the end of the med school fantasy.

I didn’t realize until the last few days of the class that a number of students in the class, who were getting As were cheating by writing formulas on the legs of their jeans. That would not have occurred to me, and even if it had, I wouldn’t have done it. I squeaked out a 70% on the final, which was not graded on a curve. Only time in my life I was ever happy to get a C.

To this day, I don’t think getting an A in organic chem has anything to do with whether or not one would be a good doctor.