Orgo

Orgo. Good stuff.

Today I had a midterm in organic chemistry. That was enough to basically ruin my whole day.

I had squandered all my keeping-up-with-schoolwork time writing raps over the past week or so, so I was left with quite a pile of work to do before my midterm. Thankfully, I got back on task last Saturday, which gave me the slightest hope of getting caught up.
But.

I had to read a chapter of orgo and do problems out of two. When it's put that way, it doesn't sound like that much. Which is what I thought when I sat in the library and developed sick lines for hours. But that actually entails about 12 hours of work -- maybe a little more. And so even though I managed to buckle down and hit the homework load hard, I still found myself swamped, and there's always too much to do on top of homework, and sometimes a lyric is so poignant you have to jot it down even when you're working and then you work a little slower and then even after glaring at organic chemistry pages for hours there's still practice exams and flashcards and six hundred (ish) other things and you're not even sure if you're remembering what you're reading but you just have to read read read and-

The point is, I was in no way prepared for this exam.

I have a graph for proof.

I caught up with the reading and problems at 5:25. The exam was at 6:30. That meant I had like 15 minutes to glance over my notes and flashcards before grabbing a quick supper and heading to the exam.

To put this in perspective, most of the class started studying in earnest last Thursday. They were done with the chapters before we started them in class.

And the whole class is graded on a B- curve.

I was sure I was toast. Which meant that my entire day was awful. It was like there was a big black cloud of misery just- just pooping on me. All day long.

Even when our seminar today proved to be excellent.

In this seminar, we had a professor come in to tell us about biochemical research. Earlier in the year, I had gone to a Biology Students Association meeting and, weird coincidence, this same professor had given the exact same talk there. He's a really in-your-face, engaging kind of guy and he likes audience participation so he always asks lots of questions about things.

Which meant that when he gave the talk last time, I remembered almost everything he said.

Which meant that this time, I came off as an absolute genius.

Meade: "Blah blah blah science science. And in conclusion, we can now identify four different kinds of genetic diseases. Now, what do you suppose would be the problem with this?"
Long silence.
Nolan, with confidence: "Health insurance costs."
Meade: "Exactly."
LATER
Professor Meade: "What do you think these black and speckled shapes are?"
Honest Class: "Neurons? Bone fragments?"
Nolan: "Huh, they look kind of like tadpoles to me. Like tadpoles with two heads or something."
Professor Meade: "That's exactly right. These are genetic mutant tadpoles."

I knew what these were.

Actually, the hardest part of the class was tempering my confidence. I had to try to throw in umms and uhhs as I answered every question right on the money. But I think I was successful because he showed no recognition of me and seemed genuinely pleased with my competence.

But. As fun as seminar was, the misty gloom of orgo was still pervasive and it didn't take much longer than lunch after class for despondency to set in again.

I tried to lift the gloom by heading to SPAC to work out, but there was still that sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach, like when you're about to start in a basketball game or perform in front of a crowd. And it was all the worse because I knew it was my fault and that I could be on top of things if I hadn't wasted so much time writing raps.

And then I had afternoon class, which cost more study time, and then I was cramming in the last little bits of knowledge before supper -- and my head just couldn't hold all the facts and I knew I was going to get like 20 percent on the test, and every part of the future looked like a long black tunnel full of misery.

And that's when my day started to get good.

The funny thing about orgo is that as bad as it is, everyone knows how bad it is. They've heard from someone or another about the twelve thousand reaction mechanisms you need to memorize and the six thousand other compounds and the pages and pages and pages of benzene rings and catalyzed hydrogenations and Diels Alder reactions and Wittig reagents and Friedel-Crafts Acylations and maybe not that specific but they at least have an idea.

Which is really cool.

Because it's kind of like being a gladiator or on death row. Everyone who knows you have a midterm is like, "Oh, man, orgo today? I'm so sorry for you." Or, "Wow, that bites. Best of luck. I don't envy you at all." Or, "I would conceivably trade one of my children not to go through what you're going to go through in a couple of hours."

And if anyone's laughing or joking, you just tell them that you have orgo and then their faces get as sad as yours and they're like, "Oh snap. That's the worst." And you've ruined their day too for a bit.

On a totally sincere note, it's really awesome. Friends are encouraging, they say nice, untrue things about your intellect, they pray for you, they empathize totally. In some ways, having an orgo midterm is sweet.

In other ways, I probably just failed that test.

But I would gladly have another midterm tomorrow -- just so I could tell everyone