I recently wrote about the importance of carrying information forward. And I'm sure that you understand by now that the information we cover needs to be applied and not just regurgitated. But there's so much to learn. Is it possible that mere humans can learn organic chemistry?
Yes. And here is why:
If you learn a few things well, they will pay off in a big way. Not only will they provide some very comforting certainty (and dramatically reduce uncertainty), they will provide a supporting framework for other ideas that are still going through the stages of 1) I am just learning to recognize them, 2) I am just learning to use them, and 3) they are something I understand and can talk about.
To see how this happens, suppose our last class gave you 5 new things to remember. And, to continue this highly artificial example, suppose each item you had to remember was useful for answering one (just one!) question on a 5 question quiz. The chances that you could line these 5 ideas up with the appropriate questions would be extremely low if you had to choose every idea at random. You could draw on any of the 5 ideas for question #1, and 4 ideas for #2, and 3 ideas for #3. 2 ideas would still be left for question #4, and finally there would be just one idea for the last question. Altogether, there would be 120 (= 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) ways to arrange the 5 ideas. The odds that you would select the correct arrangement at random? Zilch.
But suppose you had studied just 2 of the ideas for awhile (that's only 40%) and you could reliably say when these ideas would be useful and when they could be ignored. Learning 2 things may not seem like much, but that little bit of progress would actually be a huge step forward. I say this because you would be able to line up 2 ideas reliably for 2 questions, and any 'random choosing' would be reduced to the 3 remaining ideas/questions. So instead of being faced with 120 possible ways of arranging ideas, you would only have to consider 6 (= 3 x 2 x 1) possibilities. That's a dramatic reduction in uncertainty and a huge increase in comfort.
And another thing: if you compare your ability to learn chemistry to that of your non-chemist friends, I think you will agree that you have a huge advantage over them. All kinds of things make sense to you that just seem strange and odd to them. So each little bit of knowledge and skill paves the way for the next bit.
Which brings me back to what I said at the top: if you learn a few things well, it will pay off in a big way.
Have a good Fall Break!
-Alan