Given that organic chemistry describes the fundamental building blocks of life and grants insight into the intricate dance that takes place in every living organism, one might expect a degree of elegance and wonder to accompany the subject.
That is not the case.
Any enjoyment that could have been gleaned from this subject was completely extracted, leaving behind a death march of abstract concepts in which virtually no effort was taken to ground these concepts in reality.
Lectures consisted of rushed powerpoint slides, difficult to follow monologues and a dizzying menagerie of wildy crisscrossing arrows and convulsing carbon skeletons that were dubbed “reaction mechanisms” in the postmortem report. The professor was constantly rushing through the material and skipping back and forth in the slide deck, ensuring that even the more tenacious students were flung from the narrative, fully divested from their attention spans, and left behind in a muck of confusion to reflect on their life choices.
Any questions pertaining to biological or industrial applications of various reactions were met with a nonanswer or an incorrect answer where a simple “I don’t know” would suffice. This gave the impression that molecules like DNA and polystyrene are simply the objects of an arcane system that bear no true connection to the physical world and are simply studied by self-loathing academics for the love of the game.
Students would be well served by bringing their book or homework to lectures and listening passively (or tuning out entirely) while completing assignments or working problems from the book. This will allow a semblance of productivity to be preserved in the hours dedicated to lecture, and perhaps a modicum of information can be absorbed via freak osmosis. Napping is also an acceptably productive alternative to attentiveness.
Assignments were exceedingly long, had deadlines bordering on abuse, and were weighed down by extreme tedium. They provided little to no educational value, as evidenced by the massive disparity between homework and exam averages. At 30% of the final grade, students were held hostage by these assignments and lost valuable time that could have been spent on more effective study methods. The last week of the semester saw homework assignments due on Monday, Thursday and Friday. In an apparent effort to spice things up, the grading methodology was changed halfway through the semester without explanation, and then changed back to the grading scheme outlined in the syllabus, again without explanation. Near the end of the semester, the professor offered extra credit in return for completion of course evaluations, perhaps as a means of tempering harsh ripostes from a disgruntled and largely demoralized student body.
All in all, this was the most needlessly miserable class I have ever been enrolled in, and I have an engineering degree, and have done literal rocket science. An A was only achievable through complete destruction of my work-life balance. This class is a quintessential representation of the widespread systemic failure of higher education chemistry departments to effectively prepare students for–and subsequently teach–organic chemistry. For any wayward students finding themselves enrolled in this course, there is no luck in these lands, there is no hope in these waters, there is no sunshine beneath these clouds. Here there be dragons.
May God have mercy on your soul.