Reddit mentions of Biochemistry

I would go look on Amazon and buy a cheap, old edition of a biochemistry textbook (you can find one usually for <$25). You can even buy a used copy, who cares? In undergraduate I used Garrett & Grisham's "Biochemistry" and I loved it. That link has the book for $19 plus shipping - not a bad deal. That's the exact edition I used. Mark's "Basic Medical Biochemistry: A Clinical Approach" is a good book, but I do not think it is appropriate for undergraduate classes.

It is true that you do not need biology courses to take a biochemistry course. However, if you are not willing to peruse a biochemistry book, you then NEED to read the first few chapters of a general biology textbook. The material is not impossible to comprehend without a background, but you'll be wasting your time learning super simple biology concepts like "what is a protein" rather than focusing on the intricacies that you will be tested on.


As for your classes below, I've taken them all except "Biometry" (do you mean Biostatistics?), so I'll add a quick word.

• Molecular and Cellular Biology: You will need General Biology, and you should first take Genetics if possible. Biochemistry will help a little bit. This will probably be the hardest class of all of these.
  
• Plant Biology: Probably the easiest of all of these. You will need General Biology, and probably nothing else.
  
• Genetics: You will need General Biology. It will be a hard class, but it is certainly manageable, and can even be fun.
  
• Microbiology: You will need General Biology and probably Genetics. This is a great course.
  
• Animal Diversity: You will probably need General Biology. That's it.
  
  Again, it's not that you will absolutely fail if you do not first learn some basic biological concepts. The point is that you will spend too much time learning basic concepts during the semester that you will run out of time to study the big broad concepts. For example, you cannot understand bacteriophage-mediated transduction (microbiology topic) if you do not understand anything about DNA or a cell membrane. Also, most of these classes are not even remotely math-intensive, so do not worry about it. At my school, none of these courses required anything passed Calculus 1.
  
  
  Let us know what you decide to do!