Has anyone ever taken Biochemistry?

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As both a biology student and a premed student, I mite have to take Biochemistry sometime next year. So for those who have ever taken, how was the course? What were some of the things that you had to learn?

I would say that biochemistry is pretty fundamental to any biology or medical degree so it is not a case of might have to take it but that you definately should.
It's a big area so I can't guess what might be in the course but maybe you have online course descriptions at your college or you could google.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochemistry

I am a premed student also, in Upstate New York and I didn't find Biochemistry difficult at all. You had just better be very
knowlegeable with General Chemistry and especially, Organic Chemistry if you want to do well.

There are so many students that want to become medical doctors so, if you are planning to apply to medical school...make certain you get high grades in your premed courses to do well on the Medical College Aptitude Test (MCAT) as the competition into medical school is very great.

I was a biochemistry and biology dual major. (Now I'm a grad student in Medical Pharmacology.)

In my undergraduate university, there was "baby biochem" (only 1 quarter) for non-majors and then there was the hardcore biochemistry series (3 quarters of lecture and 2 quarters of laboratory). In the hard core I learned pathways, pathways, and pathways. The hardcore series was relatively hard. I don't know much about the baby biochem or how much biochem you're expected to take for med school.

Hopes this helps.

The main thing is to make sure you know your organic chemistry and cell biology before you take Biochemistry. At my university we have Biochem I in the fall and Biochem II in the spring. As Psychedelic said, it's all metabolic pathways, pathways, and more pathways, as well as protein chemistry, ion regulation, and all other sorts of arcane stuff.

I am a biology student as well. I'm into my first semester, so I have never taken it. However, my dad took it as a biology major, and absolutely loved it. He wasn't very strong in chemistry, and said that it was more bio-focused.

Our biochemistry class was probably the most confusing/difficult thing I've ever attempted before. I'm strong in chemistry (both general and organic), but biochemistry has a lot of biology, which I'm not very strong in. I much prefer physics over biology (even if biology is interesting, it doesn't stick in my head very well) and I can actually do physics. Hence, the fact that I'm a physical-chemistry major.

Biology majors at our university have to take the "baby biochem", but chemistry majors take the 400-level biochemistry. Biochemistry majors take two semesters, but physical chem students don't have to take any of it. We only have to take upper division physics instead.

yeah, if you're studying medicine, biochem's pretty fundamental for the first year or two (at least in my course it was). It's tough - you have to learn a load of seemingly pointless cascades and cell cycles etc, but they come in useful in later years when you do pharmacology (which is even harder...).

Thanx for the tips and advice guys. I'm fairly good at chemistry anyway.

That's odd. My school requires bio majors to have a strong background in chemistry (and vice versa). While there are dumbed-down classes for nursing majors and the like, bio & chem majors take the rigorous stuff.

Bio majors have to take the first two years of chemistry (general and organic) and a year of physics, so it's not completely dumbed down. And "baby biochem" is far from easy. It just focuses more on the biology and not so much on the chemistry. In the chemistry class, you do more enzyme kinetics and it focuses more on what's going on, not necessarily the implications of what happens at the molecular level. In chemistry biochem, you also go over a lot of the lab procedures for sequencing proteins and the like.