Chemistry

by Weike Wang

I am a senior in college when I decide to go into synthetic organic chemistry. I am mesmerized by the art of it. The purpose of this kind of chemistry is to build a molecule that is already present in nature, but to build it better than nature, in the least number of steps, with a beautiful key step. Technique is everything. Percent yield is everything. For months I am running the same reaction over and over again, the seventh step of a twenty-four-step synthesis, just so I can get the yield up from 50 percent to 65 because anything under 60 is unacceptable to the advisor. Then for months, I am running step eight. Then for years, the advisor is asking, Do we have it, the molecule? And I say, No, it is still at large.

Imagine two only children marrying, staying together, and then our parents getting sick. Imagine us flying out to see these parents, four in total if they get sick at the same time, as Murphy’s Law would allow, and only two of us. Imagine if we have children, how many people we would have to see and tend to. And then who would walk the dog?

One meaning of the word tenure is that if the lab as a whole does good work, as this professor had and won the Nobel for it, then certain things are overlooked. But after the potassium cyanide student, the school does make some changes. It adds a hotline for those who desperately need someone to talk to. Just call and we’ll listen, say the e-mails that are sent around. But the line is always busy, say the colleagues who are downtrodden. Is it? I call just to see and get the busy tone.

In the beginning, my mother pays for everything. She does not like Detroit. It is a dirty, run-down motor city. Quarter mile to the nearest grocery store and you have to drive? She finds that inconceivable.

I then learn about the girl he feels strongly about, who feels the same way about him, but has said that it would never work out. She can’t possibly know that, I say. But she’s right, he says. I then learn that the girl who feels the same way about him also studies extreme climate geology and spends most of the year in Antarctica. I ask him to repeat that. I had not heard that one before.