This Upcoming Semester

I'm enjoying these last few days of basking in winter break (classes start up again on Monday); browsing the Internet endlessly and guilelessly, watching TV on my computer, and drinking with my friends. But I'm gearing up for the start of a new semester that will hopefully be good.

Between my theoretical organic chem class (advanced mechanistic organic chemistry) and my intro inorganic class, I'm hoping that MO theory might actually make some semblance of sense. A professor described it once as "chemistry's version of the stork story", so I'm aware of some level of fundamental bullshit going on in describing orbitals and chemical bonding, but I'd really like it to be a little more coherent in my head conceptually than it currently is. When I tutor organic chemistry sometimes I feel like a total faker, drawing meaningless balloons and calling them a HOMO and a LUMO. I understand it well enough to sort of describe what's going on in the Diels-Alder, but just barely. I've been introduced to some ideas that are useful mnemonics for stereochemistry and useful to know to generally understand what's going on in the lit in synthetic organic chemistry (concerted reactions, thermally allowed vs. photochemically allowed, chair like transition states, etc.). But apparently this class goes really into the Woodward-Hoffman rules, and I imagine that conrotatory and disrotatory will mean a whole lot more to me after the end of the semester than it does now. I'll also get a better grip on how to use Spartan, which will be good because computer modelling is useful and not something I am terribly comfortable with.

I'm hoping that i-chem will fill some gaps I currently have in my chemistry knowledge. I felt both in synth and in biochem that some things would have made more sense having more background in inorganic. In any case, the textbook looks pretty interesting and it's a chance to do some totally new chemistry. Along getting a better grip on MO theory, I'd also like to get a better grip on coordination chemistry and remember that d orbitals actually do exist. And to be reminded that there are chemists who don't view carbon as the center of everything and who regularly look beyond the first two rows of the periodic table.

Statistical thermodynamics, my physical chemistry course, looks pretty gross. I know I shouldn't be closed-minded, but I was flipping through my book and saw the return of angular momentum and it gave me chills flashing back to intro physics. I know I'll get through it and I know I'll appreciate it in retrospect, but...it'll be a slogging through it experience. It's going to be a lot of math--and I'm much more into the descriptive aspects of chemistry, or at least that part comes a lot more intuitively.

It's going to be a very chemistry-intensive semester; I'm only taking one biology course and it's a seminar on membrane-membrane interactions that meets twice weekly run more like a journal club than a class, not a full lecture-lab course. This is the first time I've taken so much chemistry at once and I hopefully won't OD on it. It's also pushing me out of my chemical comfort zone of pushing around arrows, but that's probably a good thing.

I'm also excited about my independent study. It's a not-on-the record, not-for-credit thing, which is good because it means I can do as much or as little on it as I have time for. I'm not sure exactly what my synthetic target is going to be, but I've worked in that lab before and the research done in there is ongoing, so I'm familiar with the overall project. I'm going to chat about it with Pat (the prof whose lab I'm working in) on Tuesday to work out some details. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue to TA organic lab this semester or not. I was asked for my availability, but I think it depends on how people's schedules work out. I'm also only taking one lab class--biochemical methods--which is the first time this has ever happened in college. In the past I've always taken two or three labs at once.

I have to take my quals this upcoming spring. Reed sort of mimics the PhD system and junior year you have to take junior qualifying exams in your major before you can register for your senior thesis. As an interdisciplinary major, I need to take both the biology exam and the chemistry exam, so that's going to be two intense weekends this spring.

And then...wow. Next year I'm going to be a senior. Next year I need to take analytical chemistry, one more liberal arts course to fill a group requirement, and my thesis and then I'm allowed to graduate. Crazy times.