Says someone who didn’t take ochem. Of course there’s a point where too much studying isn’t effective, but that point is really hard to hit as a 19 year old and OChem is often designed to be impossibly difficult, graded on a curve, and critical to your acceptance into med school. So the closer you push to that line the better your leg up on your classmates.

I remember I got about a 40% in the course and it put me in the top decile of the class of 400 students. You needed to be one of the top 5% to get an A and the top student, who was probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, had right at a 50% after studying the same kind of hours we did.

Your comment reminds me of other students at the university with their comments like “you never come out on weekends. Who study’s that much?” And the answer was, anyone who was going to pass Ochem.

Almost two decades later and it still spikes my blood pressure thinking about that semester.