thinking about ochem

This semester, I am taking two organic chemistry courses.

I guess this requires to go back to last semester first, though. Last semester, I just started. I took one organic chemistry course: Organic Chemistry I.

Then, this semester, I am taking two: Organic Chemistry II (continued sequence) and the lab component: Organic Chemistry Lab (that's probably not the official name or anything, but that's what it is, and what I'm going to call it). In order to take the lab, you have to be either in concurrent enrollment of Organic Chemistry II, or have taken it previously.

Obviously, the semester is almost over. And now it's been a year of taking organic chemistry. Now there are so many reactions, boy I can tell you, the semester is really heating up. Even though it's only been a semester, so a few months, of the lab component, since we are at the end of the semester, I do feel in a good place to be able to discuss this all. Overall, given how much we've done, we don't have that many labs left. And the labs themselves...definitely have patterns.

Also saying "Organic Chemistry I" and "Organic Chemistry II" is getting to be too much, so I am just going to say the common abbreviation of "ochem" from now on.

All these school topics are so up my alley right now! I feel like with how much I talk about school, make it my life, make it affect me, I don't exactly show enough all that passion and underlying foundation. But I hope that this series of blogposts (even if they do end up being split up, don't know yet what will happen!) will angrily and aggressively show that passion and basis/foundation!

Maybe it is because so much of the rest of the world is just focused on the world. About general day-to-day life topics. Which are obviously still big topics of my blog, as of course, how could life not, but the previous point still stands!

That is biomedical engineering, the marriage of all these separate topics (i.e. blogposts)! I hope you will recognize that, if you read all of them. And I hope the passion shows.

It's about doing both. It's about doing everything. It's about...doing it all.

First, I want to talk about chemistry in general. I maybe have never wrote about this, but I have told people, how I have always had some weird experiences with chemistry. It seems that, everytime I have taken it, it has been somehow traumatic. First, was taking AP in high school without any previous chemical knowledge. Then, in university again, three years without having taken it? And that AP time being the first time...very quickly, I had to learn the basics to jump into the "AP" aspect. General chemistry felt like such a mess...because the topics were so everywhere.

I guess, is that any class that is "general" anything? General physics...general bio...(or intro or whatever, same thing). So broad...it won't get specifc...nothing will be explained...(the way I like/appreciate).

Previously, I wrote about physics. And I feel that it was important to write about that first, because I like ochem, but there are things about it that I don't like so much. Qualities that are possessed by physics for me. And before I can really talk about that, I needed to talk about physics first.

Organic chemistry, I wanted to like. Because that is what both of my parents studied: chemists by nature. Working in the lab. I wanted to like it. And I do like it. But there is interesting things to think about and discuss. I like molecules. I like reactivity. Of course, I like learning how stuff works.

But it almost felt like this pressure that I had to be good. And I felt like I was doing good too. Continue the legacy, not disrespect it.

Especially after all of the personal problems that have been going on last semester and this: I just wanted to be good. Almost like this could be a secret. Something I do alone, never seen.

Whatever it would take. If that required...if it takes hours of conversations with my parents, who have busy schedules and lives themselves...before every exam and quiz...then so be it.

And I do just have that passion. Over winter break, along with my sudden idea and desire to learn Polish, I was also reading the big ahh organic chemistry textbooks. It would've been helpful to read more, since I was taking ochem II the next semester, but then all passion died, when I was rejected from the college of engineering. When that email came. Then, for the rest of winter break, I was depressed and passion-less. The same thing happened with the Polish. I didn't get very far, but it was funny to me since I was basically becoming my parents when I would sit on my bed and I could see both of those book spines peaking out on the dresser.

Basically, to summarize, in physics, there is just a direct correlation and application to life, the world, and engineering. And with chemistry, it's kind-of crazy.

We sit in lecture, with this blown-up molecules, learning how they react.

After that it is interesting to stand in lab. Because when you think about it, in lab, we just take pipettes of stuff, liquids, or sometimes measures solids, usually dealing all with pretty small amounts of everything. The reaction, the yield, all of it is usually pretty small product when you compare it to the real-scale world. And then we just add stuff. Mix it together. Just different methods of mixing, when you think about it.

Whether it's reflux, distillation, rotary evaporator, stirring plate.

Chemistry happens on such a small level. I guess it would be similar to microbiology, wouldn't it? Because bacteria too, are very small. I've never taken microbiology, and I am almost 100% sure I won't need it, so I'm not trying to pretend I know about it. And if there is something I grossly don't understand about it, I apologize for that as well. Just trying to make comparisons here.

And I mean all of that is cool I guess, sure. Carboxylic acids. Oxidation. Alcohols. But it is hard sometimes seeing how it relates? To real life? Like why are we doing what we are doing?

It is just so hard, I think, to care about something that doesn't seem to have a correlation.

But I guess that's where that "desire to learn how stuff works" especially challenging stuff and something as fundamental as chemistry...kicks fiercely anyway to counteract any of those doubts. Even if the foundation is so small as chemistry, but foundational also means building blocks.