{"id":4981,"date":"2013-11-02T22:28:05","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T05:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/?p=4981"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:12:59","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:12:59","slug":"like-ketchup-on-sushi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/2013\/11\/like-ketchup-on-sushi\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Like ketchup on sushi&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reed chemistry alum and medical school student, <strong>Hassan Ghani &#8217;08<\/strong>, just sent me this story from yesterday&#8217;s NY Times, <a title=\"How to Get an A- | NY Times\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/11\/03\/education\/edlife\/how-to-get-an-a-in-organic-chemistry.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>&#8220;How to get an A- in Organic Chemistry&#8221;<\/strong><\/a> by Barbara Moran. Like so many others, Ms. Moran has decided a mid-life career change is in order, but her search for professional fulfillment has taken an unusual tack: at the tender age of 42, and with parental responsibilities for two small children, she finds herself enrolled in organic chemistry so that she can become a doctor.<\/p>\n<p>Her story about the joys of &#8220;orgo&#8221; includes observations on the necessity of mastering electron pushing (draw a &#8220;zillion&#8221; curved arrows and you will eventually develop the kind of &#8220;intuition&#8221; that makes a poorly placed arrow seem as unpleasant as &#8220;ketchup on sushi&#8221;), similarities in the type of reasoning (&#8220;inductive generalization&#8221;) used by organic chemists and doctors, and the all-important life lesson that, even though our life compass points towards the Land of Perfection, it is not a place that we can ever visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reed chemistry alum and medical school student, Hassan Ghani &#8217;08, just sent me this story from yesterday&#8217;s NY Times, &#8220;How to get an A- in Organic Chemistry&#8221; by Barbara Moran. Like so many others, Ms. Moran has decided a mid-life career change is in order, but her search for professional fulfillment has taken an unusual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-study-habits-distractions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4981"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5068,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981\/revisions\/5068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/chem201202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}