Chem S-20 Is Total Experience

For most, the summer school is a mode of relaxation-filler between weekends at the Cape and evenings by the Charles. But not for the esoteric few enrolled in Chemistry S-20.

Organic chemistry is total experience: sixty lectures, one hundred hours of laboratory, 13 very unlucky hours of examinations.

Seance on a Muggy Morning

Chem S-20 schedules lectures 9-11 am. every weekday. These meetings quickly degenerate to excercises in digital dexterity. The chemical symbolization washes over the blackboard with the regularity of the tides. While the dissemination of information in any other course is cyclical, some parts being decidedly less irrelevant than others, Chem 20 ebbs and flows at perpetual middle tide. It make sense to record all or nothing. For the conscientious student, Chem 20 is the university's only three-notebook course. For others Chem 20 turns into a seance. They stare entranced at the C's, O's, H's, and N's and wait for some mystical finger to arrange them in a more significant pattern.

The atmosphere of intense concentration is occasionally relieved by a smile, although organic chemists are more serious than ordinary people. Early in the course this summer, the lecturer was talking about mixtures of molecules. He pointed out that if you have a bunch of apples, pears, and bananas all mixed up, that's different from just having a bunch of apples. This was good for one hiss from our audience expressing a preference for more abstract thinking. The lecturer's stern reply: "If you don't like fruit--too bad!"

Surprisingly Chem S-20 has its ethical side. Much time is spent considering "good bonds" and "bad bonds" and even "lousy bonds." Otherness is attributed to many molecules and there is concern whether or not they are happy in a particular situation.

Life Among The Poisonous Regents

Laboratory is more exciting. By sophisticated treatment of everybody cupboard compounds, one synthesizes chemical exotica. The poisons are the best. Along with tornados, poisons are the most charismatic things in nature. Introduction to a great poison or a great man is the same--the pulse quickens for both "Today you will use mercuric chloride. Inhalation of two tenths of a gram of mercuric chloride dust will kill you."

Equally noxious are Chem 20's six hour exams, median consistently 50 out of 100. On the midyear test the marks ranged from 1 to 214, out of 200. The student with the 214, one of the entranced mystics, really had a 138. But his grade became more than itself when he freaked out on a chemical conformation and entered supra-infinite space.

The low scores come from having to assimilate myriads of reactions and concepts and then to apply them to unseen situations and even irrelevant ones. Furthermore since the backbone or organic chemistry is synthesis one must be able to synthesize theoretically anything that comes up. This requires a photographic memory rather than understanding. For those who are taking the course for a third time all things are possible, for the novice the course is hell.

Why It Hurts

Chem 20 is like going to the dentist. It is something that you do for your own good, it's prerequisite for med school, but every single minute of it is unpleasant if not painful. It lasts for seven solid weeks from soup to nuts. This is better, they say, than stretching it out over a whole year. During this time every one else is doing summer jobs, summer excursions, summer festivals, summer refreshments, summer romances, ballgames, movies, life. But for Chem S-20 (with the exception of one or two couples who love through it together.)

There is too much material to assimilate. In Lamont fellow sufferers walk over to each other's stalls and speak quietly of how their minds have stopped working. The psychology is similar to the famous Berlitz method. One's resistance must be broken down before one can take it all in.

And so one's whole life becomes permeated by organic chemistry. You lose your sense of humour. You adjust to a cultural vacuum. You dream about organic compounds. You hallucinate laboratories, even blackout. And you save your mind by contem-plating the nondescript charisma of your friends the poisons.