I did go back to university recently and among other things I did do one term of basic chemistry. Initially it is like applied maths with weird rules, and then a lot of lab work, which is completely different. I had to work quite hard at it.
The physical chemistry part, which really was more physics than chemistry, was a lot easier for me, as it was actually logical and I could puzzle out an answer if I needed to. Whereas IMHO in a lot of chemistry, when you are new, you need to know all the exceptions by hearth.
I studied some organic chemistry and biochemistry during the IT death. I got ill, or I might be a chemist today. Really hard work, but fascinating.
I went there with the vision of building subroutine libraries and making bacteria programmable.
But biochemistry wasn't so fun, since the big proteins and other macro molecules are magical. You can't design them -- you have to get already created ones or evolve them.
The physical chemistry part, which really was more physics than chemistry, was a lot easier for me, as it was actually logical and I could puzzle out an answer if I needed to. Whereas IMHO in a lot of chemistry, when you are new, you need to know all the exceptions by hearth.