Who knew I would be good at microbiology? The topic doesn't particularly interest me. In fact, I'm generally uncomfortable with a lot of the "what we can do and what we might be able to do soon" discussions surrounding this topic. I know I'm the oddball, but I don't necessarily think it's a good thing we can take a multivitamin when we eat a carrot because it has been genetically modified to have all these extra vitamins in them. In fact, genetic modification as a whole just seems very wrong to me. I am interested in diseases and disease processes. Learning the techniques used to identify a bacteria is interesting, though something I don't foresee utilizing in my career. Typically, if I'm not interested in a subject, I don't excel at the subject. So color me shocked that I currently have the second highest grade in the class after our first two exams.

As for organic chemistry...I'm fairly convinced that chemists have created this crazy naming system just to create job security for themselves. The long list of rules you must go through just to identify that the strange little drawing you are looking at is a 1,3-dimethylpentane, just seems a bit silly. And I dread lab every week. It seems you cannot have an organic chem lab experiment that doesn't include smells that you wish you couldn't smell while in the lab, and your nose burning and unable to smell anything else for days. There are several of us who have experienced nose bleeds, burning nostrils and lost ability to smell each week. And for what? So we can see that cyclohexene will react in the presence of bromine? And I will use this when?? Exactly, just as I assumed.

I do enjoy being at the end of my pre-reqs. And I also enjoy being known as someone who is competent in science. Hearing that more and more of my former instructors are sending struggling students to find me is a nice ego boost.