Well… I’m a third of the way through my second semester at university.
For some dumbass reason, I decided to take 14 credits, including Spanish 2 and Chemistry 101. I thought that Chemistry 101 would be relatively easy, because my peers assured me that most of Chemistry 101 consisted of high school chemistry, and I “passed” the Chemistry entrance exam with a 57% (despite not knowing a damn thing about Chemistry)
Well… either they were wrong, or I didn’t learn shit in high school chemistry. Because I’m getting my ass handed to me.
Personally, I’m willing to bet that I didn’t learn shit in high school Chemistry. I have a decent grade in chemistry, so far, only because the bulk of my grades are based on group projects. My individual grades make up a small portion of my overall Chemistry grades- if you don’t include the exams, the first of which is coming up fast.
My individual grades are… less than awesome. The highest quiz score I’ve gotten on chemistry material was a 90%. After module 1, however, my quiz grades have nose-dived. Today, I got a 30% on my latest quiz.
Ouch.
So… what’s going wrong? What am I not doing that I should be doing? What holes in my knowledge of Chemistry do I need to fill?
To be honest, I don’t really know.
Whenever I come upon a problem like this, my first approach is to try to figure out what led me to this point. Why am I not taking to Chemistry like a duck takes to water? What isn’t sticking in my mind that should stick? Hell, what don’t I know about Chemistry that I should know? And why didn’t I learn that stuff in the first place?
When I took Chemistry in high school, I was attending a small, private Christian school that taught Young Earth Creationism. In fact, the Chemistry “textbook” (if you could even call it that) we learned from at my Christian school spent far more time shitting on evolution than it did teaching us Chemistry.
On top of that, I was dealing with constant lung and sinus infections, as my Cystic Fibrosis was really starting to progress. In fact, the only reason why I decided to attend that private, Christian school, was because there were very few students. In fact, only nine students (including myself) made up the entire high school. Fewer students meant I’d be exposed to fewer germs, and it also meant that I’d get more one-on-one help from the teachers.
Needless to say, I did not learn shit about Chemistry in 10th grade.
It’s not my fault that I didn’t learn shit in 10th grade (or throughout most of my high school years). But, now that I’m a university student going for a degree in BioTechnology- which is basically BioChemistry but more technical- it is my responsibility to fill in the gaps in my Chemistry knowledge.
Good news is, if I put my mind to it, I know I can pass Chemistry 1, if not outright master it.
For me, 90% of my struggles with college classes such as Chemistry come from within. I have a terrible habit of comparing myself to the people around me. In my Chemistry course, I’m surrounded by fresh-outta-highschoolers who seem to know everything after taking AP Chemistry for their entire senior year, leaving me in the dust.
There’s a part of me that feels insecure and ashamed about it- like I should know the things everyone else does. Because I don’t know everything about Chemistry that they do, I honestly feel stupid. But, looking at that statement logically, is it true? Should I already know basic Chemistry? Am I stupid because I don’t know basic Chemistry?
In a perfect, just world, I should know some basic Chemistry! But, logically speaking, I had a lot of hurdles to surpass in my high school years that my current Chemistry peers did not. Those hurdles I had to jump over weren’t simple exams or quiz questions. They were literally life-or-death decisions that I had to make.
Naturally, taking care of my physical health to the best of my ability- knowing full well that my best efforts would not work in the end lest a literal miracle happened- was far more important than memorizing the fucking periodic table.
In a way, that’s still true. My physical, mental, and spiritual health are far more important than my academics. But, the next piece of good news is that I do take excellent care of myself, which means I now have the energy and the ability to learn- and perhaps even master- Chemistry.
Sure, it has taken me nearly ten years to get to this point. But, logically, I know that’s okay. It’s okay to be a bit “behind” in certain academic subjects, especially after all that I’ve been through (as much as I like to minimize and ignore my past struggles).
Still, I struggle to not compare myself to my peers, because it’s simply natural for people to compare themselves to other people. I’ve been working on not comparing myself to others. However, that takes a lot of time and a lot of therapy. If I want to pass college Chemistry 1, I really don’t have much time. So, I have to weaponize my flaws against myself, in a way, in order to reassure myself that it’s okay to be a bit “behind” academically.
In other words, if I’m gonna play the “comparison game”, I ought to compare myself to people who I actually respect and relate to.
Dr. Tara Westover, the author of “Educated”, didn’t even know what the Holocaust was when she took her first history course at university. This led to her asking her professor, in front of an entire lecture hall, what the Holocaust was. Many of her peers were horrified by her question, thinking that she was one of those “Holocaust deniers”. In reality, Westover genuinely did not know that the Holocaust happened, because she grew up in an off-grid cabin where she was homeschooled by her religiously-zealous parents.
Even so, Westover went on to get a PhD in history from Cambridge University!
Obviously, me asking my peers to help me understand what an “ion” is, is far less embarrassing than what Westover went through. Moreso, I’m probably not the only student in the classroom who has only just figured out what an ion is, six weeks into the semester.
For those as clueless as I was, an ion is an atom/molecule that is electrically charged, after losing or gaining one or more electrons. Electrons are negatively charged. Therefore, if a neutral atom ends up gaining an electron, it becomes negatively charged, and vice versa. However, electrons are very small compared to protons (positively charged particles) and neutrons (particles with no charge), so the addition or subtraction of electrons really doesn’t mess with the atomic mass of an element.
Anyway…
Another person I ought to compare myself to (if I’m gonna play the comparison game) is Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford university. He has a podcast called the Huberman Lab where he teaches people about biology and chemistry in a way that makes sense. I first learned about Dr. Huberman from the Joe Rogan podcast. Then, he popped up again in Cameron Hanes’ podcast, where he learned how to shoot a bow for the first time.
Dr. Huberman is not your stereotypical academic. Sure, he came from an academic family, but he got heavily into skateboarding and delinquency after his parents divorced. He really only got into academics after one of his athletic mentors told him to “…not be stupid like me…” and to “get an education”. That same mentor also apparently told Dr. Huberman, “PhD stands for Piled High and Deep.” but still threatened to kick his ass if he didn’t go for it.
Long story short, that’s how Dr. Huberman discovered his love for biology of the brain, which is what got him through a PhD.
Was Dr. Huberman “piled high and deep” for awhile? Probably. But did his hard work pay off in the end? Absolutely!
Luckily for me, I wasn’t raised in an off-grid cabin by religious zealots who failed to teach me about the holocaust. In fact, I spent the vast majority of my K-12 years in secular public charter schools. Even better, I was never a delinquent, either. Sure, I spent much of high school days riding dirtbikes and fostering an addiction to World of Warcraft, and I did eventually get too sick to attend school for a while that nearly led to my parents getting charged with truancy.
But, in the end, everything was okay, and I survived. Hell, during my last three semesters of high school, largely thanks to Dr. Eric Smith, I actually thrived academically!
To be continued…