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Can I learn o-chem independently?

When it comes to learning, this is the order I rate "effectiveness":

1. On hands with trained instructor (think School or Teacher/Labs or working as an assistant in a Master/Apprentice type relationship which is how I learned software development)
2. Online Video Lectures that are properly done by experienced professionals
3. Hard copy text books.
4. Online electronic text books.

Nothing beats hands on learning, but obviously that is not always feasible. Video learning by professionals who are trained teachers though, is very effective as well as seen by Khans Academy and the new online classes Stanford was involved in with AI. Well written books follow, then online books seem to be lowest quality. Also it seems to be easier for myself to recall information I've read on a physical piece of paper compared to an electronic screen.
 
^ Thanks a lot. I think I'm going to try to use Khan Academy's video tuition in parallel with textbooks (at least for the subject matter that he covers). I have a suspicion that the redundancy in using parallel resources will help a lot, especially when the wording / approach of one resource seems vague, and I can reference the other to "fill in the blanks".

So, since my knowledge of general chemistry at this point is pretty limited too (due to a piss-poor high school chemistry class), can anyone recommend a textbook for familiarizing myself with the basics of chemistry as a foundation for o-chem?
 
General Chemistry by Linus Pauling is the book I got, and it seems to have a lot of favorable reviews as well. It doesn't hold your hand or treat you like an idiot though.
 
^ Hmm. The price is rather attractive, but this portion of a review on Amazon gave me a bit of hesitation:

On the other hand, the section on chemical bonding, which is actually where Pauling made his reputation, is very eccentric, like the author, so much so that it makes the book unsuitable as the sole text for a course. It is all based on sp3 hybrid orbitals. As far as I can tell, sp2 and sp hybrids are never mentioned. With the sp3 story, Pauling is able to account surprisingly well for some systematics of bond lengths. Whether this is fortuitous or not, I don't know, but it is interesting. On the other hand, without sp2 and sp hybrids, he is completely unable to give the standard, very simple, beautiful account of bond angles. A student learning introductory chemistry from this text who then went into organic chemistry would soon be at a disadvantage without knowing the theory of hybrid orbitals that everyone else would get from any of the standard contemporary texts.
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TheAppleCore said:
So, given the option, would textbooks be preferable to PDFs or online lectures? Or would you guys recommend supplementing textbook chapters with lectures concurrently, or watching lectures and doing textbook problems, or...?

Part of me likes the idea of being able to take some time away from the computer screen to study chemistry. I do a lot of work and recreation on this machine.
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This is my favourite online O-chem text, which is free. It actually has a number of things that aren't in the two OChem text books I own.

http://www2.chemistry.msu.edu/faculty/reusch/VirtTxtJml/intro1.htm

If you're trying to get a really spot on grip on organic chem like you would from a class, you need to make flash cards for all the nomenclature, reaction schemes and mechanisms. You would be expected to know all of this by heart for an exam (name complex compounds, provide reagents or products for reaction schemes, be able to synthesize chemical x from precursor y in 4 steps, give the mechanism of a claisen condensation show the electron movement at every step with arrows, that sort of thing)
 
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TheAppleCore said:
^ Hmm. The price is rather attractive, but this portion of a review on Amazon gave me a bit of hesitation:
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing that out. Knowing that at least, you could use the book and then do further research on the parts that it doesn't touch on or to an unsatisfactory level.
 
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