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5. Check
your answer.
Once you
have a potential synthesis, go back and make sure all of your
reagents are compatible with the functional groups on your
molecule. Make sure, for example, if you are proposing a Grignard
reaction, that there are no alcohols or other incompatible
functionalities on your reagent. Undergraduate organic professors
often seem to take delight in creating challenging (read:
tricky) exam questions, giving little partial credit for incorrect
answers, so double check every detail of your synthesis for
correctness. Which leads us to the most important tip at becoming
good at multistep synthesis questions, which is:
6. Work
lots of problems.
There's
no way around it, no magic formula. A good textbook will have
plenty of problems to practice on. Start with easy synthesis
problems to get the feel of what is required, then work your
way to harder problems. Get help from a tutor if you need
it. If you have a solutions manual to your text, don't refer
to it until after you have completed the problem. Looking
at the solution manual and thinking "yeah, I could do
this problem," or "yeah, that looks about right,"
is no substitute for actually doing it. On an exam, the question
will never be "Does this look right to you, check yes
or no." So you'll need experience to get the feel of
how to work problems. Get lots of experience. Working in groups
can help, but make sure that you do the work yourself. Don't
let someone else do it for you. You're on your own when exam
time comes.
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