Organic chem mem’ries retrievable;
Exam prep for STEM goals achievable:
Two varied texts, choosing
In weekend’s perusing;
Reflections on texts… inconceivable!
This is a non-NaPoWriMo poem that has been on my mind as we near the autumn term’s final exams, based on my recollection of studying for my own exams many years ago. I’ll give this a bit more flexibility with word count, given the scope of time covered.
Organic chem mem’ries retrievable; /
Exam prep for STEM goals achievable: /
Two varied texts, choosing…
I found Organic Chemistry to be a challenging-yet-rewarding subject, which was an appealing combination for me as a student. I would often spend a long stretch of a given weekend day in a study room at the library with my organic textbook and solutions manual, practicing as many problems as I could. To provide a break, I often would grab a non-textbook novel from the library’s stacks, as well.
In weekend’s perusing…
One weekend, the book I chose was William Goldman‘s The Princess Bride; I had seen the classic movie growing up, and it had been a great favorite of mine for many years. However, I had not yet read the novel, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was likewise wonderful.
I had so much fun reading through Goldman’s central conceit of an “abridged version” of a wordy historical text by original (fictional!) Florinese author S. Morgenstern. Goldman’s asides throughout the book frame his creative narrative as one that his Florinese-fluent father originally created by skipping over the boring parts in “Morgenstern’s text” as he read aloud to Goldman, and that Goldman then committed to written text a generation later.
This opened up a new type of writing for me, which I enjoyed as I took (increasingly common) breaks from studying electrophilic aromatic substitution in my chem books. I had learned about metafiction in an excellent Literary Studies course the previous autumn, but it was a different type of discovery to find such a book on my own.
Reflections on texts… inconceivable!
At that moment, it felt like I was shifting between two extremely contrasting texts, and that of course is not incorrect. A STEM textbook and a fiction classic are from decidedly different genres.
When remembering it this autumn, though, I found it also intriguing to think of the similarities between the two books. Any science book is itself also somewhat of an abridgement (as well as a bit of a speedometer): reflecting intentional choices from the author at the exact time of its writing, as well as much cut material from a complex history.
In particular, Goldman has a wonderful aside at one point about how he is going to sum up one densely satirical Morgenstern-penned chapter with his father’s simple summary, which is much more germane to the narrative flow: “What with one thing and another, three years passed.” It’s a phrase that has come to mind multiple times when I’ve provided a sweeping overview of some scientific theory, leaping among decades and centuries (excising FAR more than three years at a time!), in the space of a PowerPoint slide.
“Inconceivable” is both an acknowledgment that I could not realistically have seen this similarity in the moment, many years ago, and (more directly) an homage to villain Vizzini’s famously oft-repeated characterization of unexpected plot developments in The Princess Bride’s book and movie.
***
To add a few more words past the poem translation itself, looking into one of those long-persistent vocabulary questions for me: the “meta” of electrophilic aromatic substitution reflects a specific pattern of how functional groups are attached to a cyclic ring. However, the “meta” of metafiction reflects a genre that is writing intentionally about writing, similar to how metacognition is thinking intentionally about thinking. “Meta” in a chemistry context has always seemed an outlier.
I can imagine a hand-waving hypothesis as to how the chem meaning gets there now, as “meta” itself comes from the Greek for “following.” “Meta-directing” is a category generally presented in a secondary way, in Organic Chemistry: it typically comes up as a contrast to a previously-introduced category called “ortho/para-directing.” I don’t think straining for such a connection would’ve helped me much as a student, though. Moreover, following up after a more targeted search (having more of a sense now of where to look, many years later) I am not surprised to see that experts suspect a more retroactive and perhaps-arbitrary assignment of terms.
However, electrophilic aromatic substitution (with its focus on ortho, meta, and para pathways) was indeed the organic mechanism I was studying during that long-past winter weekend, a fact which is itself motivation enough to use this post title.
Chemphasis 