Tuesday, June 23, 2009

#29: Telling people when they have an Organic Chemistry Exam

Of all the students and all of the majors at Notre Dame, the most notoriously neurotic are Pre-Meds, and throughout their four years preparing for med school, the most infamous class they must take is Organic Chemistry (commonly referred to as Orgo). 

While Pre-Med students famously bitch and moan about most of their coursework, their whining hits a remarkable high during their sophomore year when they take Orgo.  For an entire year, these students incessantly complain about how difficult the class is and how much studying they have to do for it.  By way of their complaints, these students make it known to the entire Notre Dame community how unrelenting the class is and when the class is giving upcoming exams. 

The level of whining wouldn’t be much of a problem for the rest of the student body if it wasn’t for the Orgo student’s insistence on telling everybody when they have an upcoming test.  An Orgo student would probably never know if their Political Science roommate had an upcoming exam, but this isn’t a two way street.  Days and even weeks before an Orgo test are marred by reminders that the test is coming.  Orgo students will continuously refuse to go out, or even eat meals with other students, and will make sure to use the upcoming Orgo test as their excuse.  

Orgo students mark their territory in the library, some sleep in study rooms; while others even make the crucial error of studying before football games in an attempt to be overly prepared.  The tension in the dorms on the night before an Orgo test is higher than any other night.  While Pre-Meds are tweaked out on Red Bull and RockStar drawing diagrams on whiteboards and spreading papers and textbooks around study rooms, their roommates and friends look for ways to avoid the madness for fear of causing bodily harm to themselves and others. 

Despite the fact that Pre-Meds spend an unnecessary amount of time preparing for Orgo exams, and make sure to let everybody know it; they perform remarkably poorly on said exams.  The students inevitably end up telling all their peers how difficult the class is, and how nobody does well on the tests.  A good percentage of these students take these poor tests as a sign and end up switching to a more reasonable major where students aren’t as psychotic, because as difficult as Pre-Med majors claim that Organic Chemistry is, one year later they will be making similarly apocalyptic claims as they study for the MCATs: a test that makes all students go crazy, even if they don’t take it. 

11 comments:

  1. Dead on. As a business major, I know how true this is.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Truth. As a former SCPP major, this was my entire sophomore year.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Truth. I'm a chem major and I'm glad to be done with orgo!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. When I read the title, I thought there a bunch of folks in SDH looking at a person sitting nearby and saying "Did you know that you have an Orgo exam next Wednesday?"

    Another thing ND students like... mocking other people's grammar.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is true. As a non pre-med major who took Orgo, it showed me how stupid some of these kids are. I pulled a B going to class less than 10x the entire year.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Haha, as so demonstrated Notre Dame students also like being d-bags. Thank you anon. for wonderfully illustrating this for us all.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I just hope everyone knows the Chemical Engineers take it as well and the Pre Med have nothing on us....you wanna complain about one class....imagine having 3 to 4 classes a semester of the same difficulty!

    ReplyDelete
  8. "OMG, my best friends & I are going to study at CoMo till 4:00 AM because it's the only place open on campus... then, we'll be sure to tell you all about it the next day over chef-carved prime rib at South Dining Hall, expecting both your admiration and sympathy because our lives are just sooo difficult." I'm guilty

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ha. It was kinda funny. As a cheg, I just went to class, took the damn tests and accepted my gentleman's C+'s. I would disagree with Anonymous, July 2. The other classes weren't as hard as orgo, they were harder! Thermodynamics especially. I remember explaining this to whining pre-med friends and watching their jaws drop. They had no idea such classes could exist :). They thought Orgo was That Than Which No Harder Class Can Be Conceived...

    ReplyDelete
  10. Our trained chemists work on custom projects designed specifically for the needs of each client. Dspiro-PO

    ReplyDelete