FWIW, the OP is a professional science writer...that is, she's written books about scientific topics and has also produced for scientific-themed shows like NOVA. Her undergrad was in American Studies.
I'm pointing this out to give her more credit for making the career change (at 42) to become a doctor. It'd be different if she were an engineer who became a science journalist and then later decided to become a doctor...This is assuming that if you didn't do something like o-chem as an undergrad (many engineers do o-chem or an equivalent hard science topic to graduate), doing it at 42 is quite the brave shift.
I think one of the quotes in the article resumes it perfectly : "Sometimes, if a student has really good math skills, they can slide through physics, but you can’t do that in orgo". If they would concentrate a little bit more on physics and math, they'd get to realize the "exceptions" based on cold, acid, etc... can be explained instead of just memorized.
Although I advocate for chemists to know more physics, what you are saying is not true. There are exceptions that can be rationalized based on general principles of physics, detailed understanding of physics is not necessary. The relationship between physics and math is not the same as the relationship between chemistry and physics. Much of mathematics (especially college-level calculus, versus say, college theoretical algebra) were explicitly created with physics in mind. So with an encyclopedic knowledge of calculus transformations, a semi-educated guess at the appropriate transformation is possible. You're even better off if you understand dimensional analysis.
This is not true for chemistry. Even chemists disagree vehemently on why, for example alkanes are staggered in the lowest energy conformation. Is it because the electrical charges in the hydrogen electron orbital clouds have a weak repulsive effect? Or is it because the hydrogen electron density can partially donate into the sigma antibonding orbital and stabilize the conformation at the expense of a little bit of bond stability?
I'm pointing this out to give her more credit for making the career change (at 42) to become a doctor. It'd be different if she were an engineer who became a science journalist and then later decided to become a doctor...This is assuming that if you didn't do something like o-chem as an undergrad (many engineers do o-chem or an equivalent hard science topic to graduate), doing it at 42 is quite the brave shift.