Why Chemistry?

Enrico Jesus Palma
Sep 6, 2018 · 5 min read

Note: This is part of the past essays I wrote back in college to help with beating boredom. I’m merely editing a bit and reposting them to lessen the strain towards your eyes. Hope you enjoy!

Let me begin by pasting a response from me to my friend who’s still at high school at this moment, wondering whether he’ll take up the same course as me (BS Chemistry with Material Science Engineering) in the Ateneo de Manila University. I will add a few notes on why I said such things as you continue reading down.

Snippet of my piece of advice to a friend

In addition to the things I have typed above, Chemistry for me is basically a PASSION that you’re willing to take, a WONDER that you’ll learn to fight for and an ANSWER to most of the puzzling questions you ask yourself everyday.


“Chemistry is for nerds.”

That’s the often line I keep hearing back in first year whenever I hear my batchmates complain as I go to my classroom in Schmitt Hall (home of the Chem Department). In moments like these, I end up asking myself whether did I really end up invisible to everyone else or not. I take pride at the fact I understand how complex relationships work among the bonds as they bind with each other but will it be able to affect others that Chemistry is not just for show?

Most of the time, being a Chem major anywhere deals with being pressured to do something spontaneous. Whenever I hang out with my friends from high school, I have to deal with the fact that I get a lot of praised even in the simplest of things I do. Dealing with the fact that I have to be the only guy from our high school who ended up taking a Natural Science course while 90% of them ended up with Management, I find it hard to relate with them at times especially when they talk about random things that doesn’t quite fit to the way I think. Whenever I try to help them with something, they instantly exclaim that I’m a genius or the usual “bright man kaayu ka!”. In these moments, Chemistry became questionable to me. What can a man, despite his knowledge of the complex world, do to help out others without being mistaken as boastful? After two years in Ateneo, I learned that it has to be passion that motivates and guides you in doing so. When you begin to appreciate the subject beyond the thoughts of cramming into your cranium hoping to get a least a grade of B, you develop that sense of passion for it. To go beyond what the book dictates that is the aim for any man who’s willing to be passionate for the course he signed up at the start. From the desire to know more about it, your actions will be translated in allowing others to know more of the things you do to help the world somehow.

Chemistry deals with the interrelated science that changes lives.

Everywhere you go, Chemistry is present. From the moment you smell the scent of coffee in the morning, you end up smelling more than a thousand of compounds that trigger the chemical response in the nose to produce nerve signals to the brain. The colors you see around you arise from the excitation of molecules from an energy state to another emitted the color you now see in front of you. The air you breathe in comprises with different compounds ranging from nitrogen gas to the faintest in composition, Argon or Xenon. The food you partake is made through various processes that end up being converted into substantial compounds for your health to sustain. Though this may seem quite few, chemistry promises a wonder-filled experience for those who yearn for it. The passion for the discipline is fueled primarily by the wonder it possesses. To be able to appreciate the change of color to illustrate the change of pH or the reaction yielding is what determines a passionate student. I, being a chem major for three years, found the desire to wake up the next morning thinking what else to learn more about in the discipline. I honestly can say that to anticipate the reaction to yield a color change or to effervescence during the reaction is what I await the most during laboratory experiments. As what an upperclassman jokingly said before, “MSE = Make Shit Explode”. (sorry for the word used though; this was done in verbatim).

Seeing the amazement in myself at how things are at both the macro and nano levels answered part of the many questions I tend to ask myself like how does the soda can if placed in the freezer will not freeze only until you open the cap. It yields most of the answers in the ideal state. What made me realize that in the real case of matter, we cannot really be sure of what the outcome will be. In this regard, chemistry is a possible solution to some of the real problems we have in this world. A good example will be the worldly revolution of Haber into formulating the Haber process that allowed the production of ammonia easier than in the past. This created a huge impact in the industrial sense as ammonia now serves a whole lot of purpose. Events such as these remind me of why I always wanted to be a chemist someday to have an impact on the world.

Calling & Challenge

As for my friends and acquaintances who are determined on me taking up a degree in Chemistry, I say that it is somewhat a calling and a challenge. It is a calling for me as one of the funny reasons on being a chem major is that I always wanted to create my own oreos someday. I remembered myself back in grade school happily looking at the different product ingredients hopefully to find a way to create my own oreos. In this manner, I was somewhat called to chemistry. The calling doesn’t attest to getting high grades but rather it points out a clear path to your life. Chemistry is also a challenge as you will face your professors in defending your thesis, your competitive blockmates who actually bring out the best in your ability, your friends who never understand how you really are, your family whenever they will assume that you know everything about the structure of anything and even the people you don’t know as they will someday be informed in what you’re trying to do. It is a challenge from the bottom of its core but it will yield so many things worth that your sleepless nights, crammed study sessions, and your numerous piles of scratch paper will actually reveal the amount of passion that you’re willing to risk you. The passion guided by the wonder is now the answer to most of the many problems we look forward to.

I hope that you as the reader will gain insight as to what Chemistry is about and perhaps discover why I’m taking up a natural science as my college degree and what it implies.

=dasleepyguy=
March 4, 2014

Enrico Jesus Palma

Written by

'90s kid|Chemist & Materials Scientist by profession|Gamer & Geek by heart|Sleepyhead with a bit of philo by action

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