Day 29 - Clockwork

Hey - Sunday evening, 10:50 pm as I write this post. There's a few things I wanted to discuss tonight.

(Scroll all the way down to see two brand new problem sets - this is a long post!) 

I've been thinking a lot about how I should partition my time this summer. Summer school is a really interesting period of time because you have just one or two courses, and nothing else. It's completely different from when you're in school and you've got five courses to juggle. I've started to wonder, and you might have too:

How much time should I be putting in? 

The organic chemistry summer course is spread across four months, keeping the work load identically distributed as it was during the school year itself. Except, now you have nothing else on your schedule except maybe a part time job and hanging out with friends. A real dilemma emerges.

There are two ways to answer this question and I think it really depends on what your goals are for the next four months. My current challenge has been partitioning my time to make progress on all my summer projects every single week. Sometimes I feel as if I'm not doing enough for chemistry because my days feel so empty.

Looking back now, I realize I put in less work across the four months (due to five courses) and still did great. I'm faced with a choice: Do I put in the same amount of work now and allocate the rest to everything else I'm doing? Or do I go even harder in chemistry with the extra time?

If you're someone who strives to do great things in chemistry (or any class!) because you really feel like you have it in you, then I would really truly recommend that you take advantage of the fact that it's summer time and that you have 16 hours of sunlight and barely anything else to do - this will not be the case during the fall semester, I promise you. Take the extra time to build your foundations if that's where you're lacking, read the textbook, do extra problems. You're lucky that you're in Organic Chemistry over the summer, because it's a much harder ball game during the year - fact.
---

With that being said, here are two great problem sets for you to complete: 

Michael Additions (CH25. Conjugate addition to enones) - Answers

Thermodynamic or Kinetic Product? (CH20. The big bulky base vs small strong base) - Answers

Goodnight!