This past Wednesday, I turned in my organic chemistry lab notebook.
I realize that something as mundane as carrying a notebook across Grounds and putting it in a box at the Chemistry Building isn't particularly newsworthy; it's more symbolic than anything.
When I was a first year nearly done with general chemistry and introduction biology, I was more scared of organic chemistry than I was about my final exam in either course.
I saw the look that crept over most people's faces when I asked about it. There seemed to be two camps: those who shrugged and said, "it's not that bad," and those who made it sound comparable to the Battle of Antietam.
One person even said that people cry, break things and decide never to be premed ever again.
In my experience during the past year, there may have been breakage incidents, but there was no crying and no deciding not to be premed.
Back in general chemistry, I used to worry myself into a migraine before every lab. To this day, I don't really know why. Back then, though, I thought that if general chemistry lab induced a migraine, orgo lab might very well induce a heart attack.
Thankfully, I was wrong. This semester, we even played music from someone's iPod speakers during lab. There was time to talk and compare yields. Those in the vicinity of my lab bench and I developed a habit of comparing products to food items. There were a few comparisons to raspberry lemonade, mango juice and refrigerated honey, as well as a preponderance of products which looked like melted Jolly Ranchers.
My first-year self had imagined organic chemistry lab as a cutthroat, insufferably tense milieu, but in reality, some friends from my section and I went to dinner at O-Hill after almost every lab. We laughed good-naturedly at one another when we didn't get a product, and we had unofficial competitions to see whose product had the closest melting point to the ideal.
I never imagined that orgo lab could be tolerable, let alone a source of fond memories. My favorite lab was one where we synthesized polymers, including nylon. We stretched our strands of nylon as far as we could make them reach.
Instead of sensibly rolling my strand around a cardboard tube, I walked all the way down the lab bench, leaving the polymer trail on the desktop. It reminded me of grade-school science experiments. There was a real energy in the room.
I ended up keeping the product for a whole week; by the end, it looked like raffia.
We made Plexiglass as well - mine currently sits in a flower pot next to my salmon pink Gerbera daisy.
Although the final exam still looms - and orgo lab finals are somewhat terrifying in and of themselves - the lab has come to a graceful close. My premed advisor told me when I was an overanxious first year that the most important thing to remember in organic chemistry is not to get psyched out, and I now know firsthand that it's true.
Then, I thought the best outcome I could hope for was a grudging acceptance and controllable anxiety. Now, I realize that orgo lab has become something memorable.
That isn't to discount the difficulty of the course. Lab reports are demanding, and I spent countless hours learning new chemistry and integrating it.
I've discovered that organic chemistry is a lot like a language. Some people say that a lot of memorizing is involved. That may be true to some extent, but more than anything, I've realized that it's important to gain a flexible understanding of molecules and how they interact.
In learning a language, memorizing vocabulary will only get one so far. The important thing is to know how to use the words to form sentences, just as individual molecules work together to form reactions.
It's been an intense year, but the difficulties of orgo lab have been balanced out by good memories.
Now that I've almost completed the ultimate premed weed-out course, I can breathe a sigh of relief.
Courtney's column ran biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at c.hartnett@cavalierdaily.com.
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