Why most students struggle with organic chemistry — and what actually helps
I’ve watched enough first-year organic chem students bounce around trying different resources before finally settling on something that works. The problem isn’t usually intelligence. It’s the gap between watching someone solve a mechanism and actually being able to do it yourself under exam conditions. That’s where Chemistry Step By Step Monthly comes in, and I’m going to walk through how to use it without wasting your money. It’s a monthly subscription service that breaks down chemistry topics into structured, sequential lessons — mostly focused on organic chemistry, but they also cover general chem and biochemistry. Each month you get a set of lessons, practice problems, and video walkthroughs. The key word is sequential. The curriculum assumes you’re building from the ground up and doesn’t let you skip ahead, which is either its biggest strength or its biggest weakness depending on where you are in your class. I found the actual value isn’t in the videos. They’re competent but generic. The value is in the problem sets. Each lesson comes with 15 to 20 problems that are tiered by difficulty. You can’t check the answers until you’ve submitted your attempt. That friction is intentional and it’s what separates this from the free YouTube tutorials that everyone watches and then still fails the midterm on.
Here’s the workflow I’d recommend if you’re using this alongside a regular college course. Don’t watch the video first. Try the first three problems blind, then watch the video, then do the next three. This forces your brain to actually struggle with the concept before you see the solution. Watching the video and then doing the problems is easy — you just pattern-match the instructor’s steps. Struggling first builds the neural pathway that actually matters. I hit a specific wall around module 7 last year when I was working through the stereochemistry section. The problem set included a handful of R/S configuration questions with bridged bicyclic compounds, and every single one of the worked examples used the standard priority rules. These didn’t. I spent about 45 minutes stuck on problem 8 before I realized the bridgehead carbon needed to be treated as a phantom atom for priority assignment. I emailed their support team, and within six hours I had a follow-up problem added to the next month’s set with an explanation. That level of responsiveness from a subscription service is unusual.
What most people miss about this resource
First, the monthly cadence is a trap if you’re behind. If you’re more than two weeks behind your school coursework and you try to use this as a catch-up tool, you’ll burn through a month’s content in three days and retain almost nothing. The design assumes a steady, paced approach over four weeks. Use it that way or skip it until the next semester. Second, the pricing model favors long-term commitment. A single month runs about $29, but a quarterly subscription drops it to $22 a month and annual drops further to around $18. If you only need it for one semester, the quarterly option is the sweet spot. I paid monthly my first month and felt foolish the next time I logged in and saw the pricing breakdown. Third, there’s a hidden feature most people don’t use. If you go into your dashboard settings and enable "error review mode," the system flags every problem you got wrong and replays it mixed into future sessions. After three weeks of this, I noticed that my previously consistent weak areas — mainly Newman projections and retrosynthesis — started showing up less frequently. It’s basically spaced repetition built into the platform, and it’s genuinely effective.
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I should mention where this doesn’t work. If you’re in a course that uses a non-standard textbook or follows an unusual sequencing — say, your professor teaches thermodynamics before kinetics in a physical chemistry class — the monthly lessons might not line up with your syllabus. I had a colleague in a medicinal chemistry track who found the biochemistry modules completely misaligned with what her professor expected. She ended up paying for a month she couldn’t really use and switched to a standalone problem set PDF bundle instead, which cost less and let her pick and choose. There’s also the issue with advanced topics. The content covers everything from basic nomenclature through pericyclic reactions and spectroscopy, but the later modules — particularly the mass spectrometry interpretation and advanced synthesis chapters — feel rushed. Two videos totaling about 40 minutes to cover material that a dedicated text like Clayden or Klein devotes hundreds of pages to. It’s fine for survey-level understanding but inadequate if you’re preparing for the MCAT organic chemistry section or a graduate qualifying exam. The download link is straightforward — it’s on their homepage under "get started." No complicated onboarding, no sales call you have to dodge. You create an account, pick a subscription tier, and you’re in. I’d suggest starting with the trial week they offer, working through the nomenclature and bonding modules, and then deciding whether the problem sets click for you before committing to a full month. That trial period alone will tell you whether their teaching style matches your learning style, which is the single most important factor in whether this actually helps you pass your class.
