Oh boy, what to say about this class? Compared to the previous two quarters of organic chemistry, this class had a very different tone and focus. Professor Gelb was very sporadic and went on many tangents in his lectures, albeit ones that built on what we were talking about in interesting ways. The course had a healthy mix of regurgitative information learning (memorizing amino acids, reaction types, etc.) and critical thinking (reaction mechanisms, retrosynthesis). The sheer volume of information I learned forced me to dive into a lot of studying techniques I don't normally need to use because I prefer to understand concepts than many minute details. Some of the random aspects of this class were not my favorite, but the course as a whole certainly widened my knowledge of chemistry, biochemistry, and research methods.