Why I took Organic Chemistry as an English major

“A chalkboard? What year is this?” That was the first thought to cross my mind on my very first day of Organic Chemistry.

Little did I know, learning to deplore the ancient concept of writing things out on a chalkboard and then copying them into a notebook would be one of the only valuable things I took away from my semester in Organic Chemistry.

It’s not easy being a humanities major at one of the most well-renowned research universities in the world. With the STEM fields dominating the university’s spotlight and resources, it’s difficult to get people to take you seriously when you say, “I’m an English major.” Therefore, I took one of the most stereotypically difficult classes of all time: Organic Chemistry. Everyone would have to respect me if I told them I was in that class, right?

All five of my housemates are science majors, and it’s difficult to join in on a conversation with them when they analyze the oxidizing nature of the metal on our brownie pan or discuss the separation of the different layers of my breakfast smoothie. Riveting conversations, right? I wanted to be able to keep up.

The first couple of weeks in Orgo went smoothly. I, like everyone else, was just an amateur in organic structures and reactions, and I had not yet mastered this “second language.” I had taken my fair share of science classes in high school, so I thought I knew what to expect. Slowly but surely, lines, dashes, and wedges changed from misshapen stick figures into organic molecules and reaction mechanisms.

But my transition into this new brand of academia wasn’t going to go that smoothly. The first bomb dropped: a 56% on my exam. On the chemistry scale, that’s a C+. On my scale, that’s an F. The rest of the semester went about as well. I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details of my inevitable decline.

After that first midterm, the class picked up even more. The shapes on the board were not only growing, but they were attacking each other. It was like I was stuck in that old Asteroids PC game I used to play as a child. The molecules were the awkwardly shaped asteroids and I was trying to destroy them. Needless to say, the asteroids were winning.

My all-nighters got longer (impossible, right?), and I thought to myself, why do people do this to themselves? What kind of masochistic lunatic (sorry, Professor Coppola) spends her/his life studying this?

I sure as hell couldn’t. I couldn’t even make it through an entire semester of this nonsense. I didn’t drop the class, but my mind was not in lecture anymore. Sohaib, one of my classmates, would always turn to me and ask these complex questions regarding the material on the chalkboard.

What he should have asked was how many seats were in the CHEM 1800 lecture hall we were sitting in. 469. I could answer that confidently. I’ve counted, and recounted, and then counted again. When I got bored with that, I started memorizing the periodic table that hangs on the wall. I made it quite far, all the way up to the lanthanide series (I know – hold your applause).

Why didn’t I invest this energy into Organic Chemistry instead? I could say that I wasn’t passionate about the topic or that I had lost all hope of salvaging my GPA, but honestly, the truth is my mind just doesn’t work that way. This isn’t an ego-booster for the science majors. I’ll admit your classes are difficult. But I want to see you take my ENGLISH 298 exam, where I spent 90 minutes frantically writing 15 paragraphs analyzing randomly selected passages from the multiple books we had read throughout the class. Each class is difficult, and each major is just as valuable as the next.

Thankfully, I passed the class and landed somewhere in the B range. Did I lose it a little bit? Absolutely. Did Organic Chemistry make me hate every fiber of my being? Well, sort of. But I passed. I gained some (hopefully) useful knowledge. And now I can keep up with all of the science-y people at this university.

I am not, however, in any hurry to trade in my 10-pound, 2-volume set of Shakespeare’s plays for a coursepack, lab coat, and chalkboard. Sorry, Coppola. But at least you got a thunderous round of applause at the end of the semester.