Chemistry and scandals
Jan. 21st, 2005 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirLowell House, on the Feast of Ste. Agnes
I have been decimated by the chemistry final. There is no resurrection for me, alas! (For those who may not be familiar with the term, a "resurrection" final replaces all your midterm grades if you score better on the final than on the midterms.) I suppose the thought that I was not the only one annihilated should comfort me, although I suspect that I again will come out below average. ::sighs:: There goes my GPA. On the other hand, I have an A in biology (despite a terrible lab report grade).
The Chemistry 30 course website has a page where you can view all the anonymous feedback left by students during the semester, and lately it's been quite creative. Some priceless examples (spelling and grammar mistakes left intact):
On a more serious note, recently Larry Summers went to an economics conference and said some ill-advised words on the subject of the gender gap in science. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNN, and of course, the Crimson all covered it in detail (here's an article), but I shall recap the basic gist of the talk, for those of you who haven't followed education news. Summers basically said that women were underrepresented in science because (1) women tend to prioritize family and childbearing over their careers and thus were more reluctant to commit to "80-hour work weeks", (2) recent studies suggested that more boys tended to score in the highest percentiles of standardized math exams than girls and that this difference might be biological rather than social, and (3) . The furor was immediate; one MIT professor walked out in the middle of the lecture. Harvard faculty critcized him sharply, and many, many students and alumni sent him emails expressing their outrage and disappointment.
My roommate and I, both being female science concentrators, were rather disgusted, when we heard the news (a few days late, like we always do, hermits that we are). Summers has always been a controversial president for the university--I'm sure you've heard of the way he alienated the top-notch Afrian-American studies faculty, many of whom moved promptly to our rival Princeton--and he's always been rather blunt with his opinions. Still, Summers has a vision for the university that is very pro-science, and I'd approved of him for that. (He feels that more people ought to be science- and math-literate, and that the Core should be made more rigorous for humanities concentrators, something I definitely agree with.) But with this new development, I felt pretty pissed-off and frankly embarrassed--how could a university president make statements like that in public and expect to get away with it? I mean, how could he ever look at a student like me in the eyes again after saying something like that? Honestly.
Still, Summers may be blunt and horrible about public speaking but he knows when to apologize. Today, he issued a letter regretting his remarks at the conference and apologizing to the university. I'm slightly mollified, but it still bothers me that he could make a statement like that. I've always been rather gender-blind--it doesn't really occur to me often enough that I'm female as opposed to, you know, just human--and at this university, where all the female students are high achievers, it's even harder to notice the gender gap. (It might be more noticeable if I were an engineering or CS concentrator, but biochemical sciences is pretty well-distributed.) I suppose in some ways it's a good thing to be jerked back to reality and realize that not only is the faculty nearly all male but that the gender gap is something that I definitely have to face, even within this bubble called academia. Nevertheless, the sense of bitterness remains.
Tomorrow I shall be back in New York! Goals for break: find more![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanthology recs, finish reading subrosa_tennis, update dragondormant, finish the WK 20 themes, write that NYR fic, and write drama reviews. How pleasant! I had hoped to get a start on that to-do list tonight, but am too drained from chemistry and packing to do anything but go to sleep.
Yours &c.
I have been decimated by the chemistry final. There is no resurrection for me, alas! (For those who may not be familiar with the term, a "resurrection" final replaces all your midterm grades if you score better on the final than on the midterms.) I suppose the thought that I was not the only one annihilated should comfort me, although I suspect that I again will come out below average. ::sighs:: There goes my GPA. On the other hand, I have an A in biology (despite a terrible lab report grade).
The Chemistry 30 course website has a page where you can view all the anonymous feedback left by students during the semester, and lately it's been quite creative. Some priceless examples (spelling and grammar mistakes left intact):
"I will destroy exam 2 with unprecedented ferocity. You will rue the day you challenged my superiority."(This particular quote has become a running joke in the class, as you shall see.)
"it makes me feel like poo-poo whenever I try to do a problem from the dbase, can't figure it out, then find out that its because we haven't even covered the stuff yet (enolates alot). i am sooooo going to fail tomorrow! on a different subject, my tf has very nice buns. its a pleasure to watch him write on the board. bye."(I inserted line breaks in that one for ease of reading. I swear, I would so sing this if I actually did survive the final. Which I didn't. ::sighs::)
"I really liked the second hourly exam. It was a good test I thought. Question 5 destroyed me with unprecedented ferocity though. Ouch."
"Chem 30 handouts come at the expense of innocent trees. Perhaps 2-sided printing is possible."
"Aaaah I feel like I'm dying! Help! Help! Heeeelllllppppp!!!!! Slipping slowly into the depths of blackness......................................"
"Orgo has defeated me. I put up my white flag."
"To "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gayner
At first I was afraid I thought my life was sacked.
Kept thinking I would never pass with GPA intact.
But then I spent so many nights,
Thinking how I got tests wrong,
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along
And so I'm back. From winter break.
I just came back to Pfizer Hall and saw Evan's smirk upon his face,
I should've taken seventeen, I should've quit at Chem twenty,
If I had known for just one second that the tests were murdering me,
Go on now go, write the final,
Just write it down now, cause you can't scare me with enols,
I know Evans will try to trick with 3-3 sigmatropic shifts,
He thinks I'll die,
He thinks I'll lay down and cry.
Oh no not I. I will survive.
As long as I know how to push I know I'll stay alive,
All my hourly scores were low,
This resurrection has to go,
I will survive. I will survive. Hey hey
Well I spent all of reading period in my lonely room,
Spent it looking at the packets that would spell my doom,
And I spent so many nights,
Feeling sorry for myself,
I used to cry. But now I hold my head up high.
And you see me somebody new
I'm not a stupid little person, no, I'm smarter than Chang Liu,
And so you feel like making tests
Just expecting me to fail
Well I've been studying all this time for this resurrection bail,
Go on now go, etc."
"the final will crush me with unprecedented ferocity. sigh."(At this point, I think you can see that the thin veneer of sanity has begun to slip for all of us.)
"Oh woe is me. My heart is broken. The reading period lecture videos have not been posted. I sob in agony and disbelief, shedding big salty tears. a haiku: Amino acids are fun to learn about, yes? no video though."
"Chemistry is like a normal false moustache, but it responds to ambient light changes. Organic chemistry is a fax machine that cleans itself and follows a target of your choice."
"I want to cry."(For people who have never taken organic chemistry before, T.S. stands for transition state. Zimmerman-Traxler, oh how I hate thee!)
"Enol: Can my grade be saved?
T.S.: I'm sorry I don't have the answer to that question. But if there is an answer, there's only one place you're going to find it.
Enol: Where?
T.S.: You know where. And if you can't find the answers, then I'm afraid there may be no grade resurrection for any of you.
Enol: What does that mean?
T.S.: Everything that has a beginning, has an end. I see the mechanisms coming. I see the synthesis spreading. I see chemistry. And you are all that stands in his way.
Enol: Evans.
T.S.: Very soon he's going to give the exam to destroy your grade. But I believe he won't stop there, he can't. He won't stop until there's no ferocity at all.
Enol: What is he?
T.S.: He is you, your reagent, your chelate control, the result of the equilibrium trying to balance itself out.
Enol: And if I can't stop him.
T.S.: One way or another, Enol, this course is going to end. On Friday, the future of your grade will be in your hands or in his."
"This is about the review video from 1/18. To the girl wearing the white sweater with the red stripes right in front of the camera: when you swirl your hair, my heart flutters and i feel like pericyclic reactions make sense at last..."(Just goes to show, in the middle of stress and bewilderment and unrecognizable synthetic transforms, there can be romance. And on a final, eloquent note...)
"somebody save me."
On a more serious note, recently Larry Summers went to an economics conference and said some ill-advised words on the subject of the gender gap in science. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNN, and of course, the Crimson all covered it in detail (here's an article), but I shall recap the basic gist of the talk, for those of you who haven't followed education news. Summers basically said that women were underrepresented in science because (1) women tend to prioritize family and childbearing over their careers and thus were more reluctant to commit to "80-hour work weeks", (2) recent studies suggested that more boys tended to score in the highest percentiles of standardized math exams than girls and that this difference might be biological rather than social, and (3) . The furor was immediate; one MIT professor walked out in the middle of the lecture. Harvard faculty critcized him sharply, and many, many students and alumni sent him emails expressing their outrage and disappointment.
My roommate and I, both being female science concentrators, were rather disgusted, when we heard the news (a few days late, like we always do, hermits that we are). Summers has always been a controversial president for the university--I'm sure you've heard of the way he alienated the top-notch Afrian-American studies faculty, many of whom moved promptly to our rival Princeton--and he's always been rather blunt with his opinions. Still, Summers has a vision for the university that is very pro-science, and I'd approved of him for that. (He feels that more people ought to be science- and math-literate, and that the Core should be made more rigorous for humanities concentrators, something I definitely agree with.) But with this new development, I felt pretty pissed-off and frankly embarrassed--how could a university president make statements like that in public and expect to get away with it? I mean, how could he ever look at a student like me in the eyes again after saying something like that? Honestly.
Still, Summers may be blunt and horrible about public speaking but he knows when to apologize. Today, he issued a letter regretting his remarks at the conference and apologizing to the university. I'm slightly mollified, but it still bothers me that he could make a statement like that. I've always been rather gender-blind--it doesn't really occur to me often enough that I'm female as opposed to, you know, just human--and at this university, where all the female students are high achievers, it's even harder to notice the gender gap. (It might be more noticeable if I were an engineering or CS concentrator, but biochemical sciences is pretty well-distributed.) I suppose in some ways it's a good thing to be jerked back to reality and realize that not only is the faculty nearly all male but that the gender gap is something that I definitely have to face, even within this bubble called academia. Nevertheless, the sense of bitterness remains.
Tomorrow I shall be back in New York! Goals for break: find more
fanthology recs, finish reading subrosa_tennis, update dragondormant, finish the WK 20 themes, write that NYR fic, and write drama reviews. How pleasant! I had hoped to get a start on that to-do list tonight, but am too drained from chemistry and packing to do anything but go to sleep.Yours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-22 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-24 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-22 07:32 pm (UTC)and on the topic of larry summers: i agree. while i'm willing to admit that 'innate difference' MAY exist - who knows, after all, since there's hardly any way for a scientific study to be done that would remove the infinite cultural biases enough for us to tell - i do believe that it's wrong for someone in his position to say such things.
like... the people who are crying: oh foul, you're violating larry's right of free speech... no. not really. he's perfectly allowed to say whatever the hell he wants as a private citizen. but if he wants to say things like that, he shouldn't be the harvard president. it's the same idea as expecting the american president not to make sexist remarks.
*shakes head*
anyway, don't worry about chem too much. it's over, anyway. yay!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-24 04:18 pm (UTC)Oh, yes, this is not a matter of free spech! He shouldn't have made such remarks in public. >_< It's bad enough in private conversation but he should realize that he's never just Larry Summers, but Larry Summers president of Harvard University. >_> I think he tends to speak before really considering the impact of his words...I got that sense on the opening speech he made last year too. ::shakes head as well::
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-25 12:25 am (UTC)so true!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-23 01:16 am (UTC)BUT
It's over! AND it's snowing! A lot! in NY!
Speaking of which, I hope you got home safely - there's oh-so-much of that fluffy white stuff lying around and I'm going to rue the day my parents decided I was big (not old, big) enough to start shoveling. Yarr. I remember you saying you were going to swing by Hunter [heads up - the math midterms are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday this week, so a lot of people will be panicking on those days... myself included >_<], but I don't remember *exactly* when. Nuuu?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-24 04:22 pm (UTC)And yes, it's over! I won't have to take more chemistry until junior year! Thank goodness--and let's hope Ms. Basker never hears those words from my mouth.
I was planning on coming on Thursday, since that's the Science Fair showcase...do you think that's really bad timing? Hmm...well, maybe I'll pop in on the Science Club on Friday too, then, so I can catch all of you post-exam frenzy. ^_^