Old tale - Organic is so tough?

Went over to Shenzhen to meet up with mom and dad yesterday. They went over to Guangzhou for a short holiday and dropped by Shenzhen to see me. It's so nice meeting up with them, given the fact that I miss home.

I think it's time to do something about my life as I have not achieve much for the past 1.5 months. I wanted to write an education article on pericyclic reaction but it has not started. Sigh. Maybe, as usual, I live in the past too much and thus find it hard to return to reality at times. The feeling is similar to that when I just returned to Singapore from exchange in Jan 2006. However, 2006 was a really good year for me and though I felt blue and at the beginning, I managed to pull through and achieve greater heights. Well, it's not only my effort of course; I have to thank Emily for her encouragement and support. Not to forget, friends like Teck Loon, Chee Siong and Yuan-Ting who are always by my side. Though I had some misunderstandings with Yuan-Ting in the last semester, it has not affect our decade-long friendship. True enough, friends whom you met in Primary and Secondary school tend to last for life.

Tu di remarked that she's not going to do well in her organic test. Of course, the usual remarks (from many other juniors as well) was that memorization is required and there always seem to be an ever-growing no. of reactions to remember. Honestly, I don't have a solution to that as well (coz most people don't seem to understand/appreciate how Eugene and I learn organic). I have taught organic since 1999 on and off and till this day, I have to say I still don't know how to teach it well. I am still exploring and it is indeed not an easy subject for people to master and appreciate. I am still learning and we just gotta keep reading to keep it alive.

So how to do well and appreciate it at greater depth? I have written 2 article in it and basically, it can be summarized it as follow:

Experience: Read, discuss, debate among friends etc. The more one does it, the more one will get in tune with the subject. There is a reason why old organic chemist always like to say "I feel that this reaction will not work" before they perform an experiment. Gaining experience means improving on your data base of knowledge.

Intuition: Developing a chemical sense is very important. It can only be gained from experience and allows you to predict many things (if not, people will end up memorizing a series of seemingly similar facts). Why electrons move this way, that way all comes from intuition (and experience)

Creativity: It is always good to go beyond the status quo to explore new possibilities. Be daring and not be afraid to make mistakes. The more mistakes one make, the more one will learn and on his way to become a better chemist.

Feeling: It is always important to have a feel for molecule. How will the molecule arrange itself in space when they react? How does the transition state and intermediate look like? MO Theory is of uttermost important here.

Yah, time for me to work on some really nice things as well.