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This paper describes the teaching and learning occurring in a first year university chemistry course of a degree in Environmental Biology from the students’ perspective. Observations and interviews with students revealed their background knowledge in chemistry, their level of understanding of the concepts being taught and their mental models of chemical phenomena. The constraints to students developing a deeper understanding of chemical phenomena accompanied by better developed mental models, included the students’ lack of mental model, their prior knowledge of chemistry, the assessment style of the course, the small number of chemical representations encountered by the student, the large amount of content, the speed with which the chemistry content had to be assimilated by the learner and a lack of motivation by the student to understand chemistry at a deeper level. Despite these constraints, the students did build up a chemical knowledge framework albeit sometimes scant and compartmentalised. The implications of students’ experience of learning chemistry are significant and desirably should promote a positive attitude and an appreciation of the value of the subject.