why i'm glad i took chemistry. finally.

It took me seven years, but I can finally say that I am glad I took chemistry in high school.

Really? Yes. I know, Mom, you remember all the tears. The panic attacks as I entered the classroom. Taking the final in my quiet paradise of my English teacher's planning period because I just couldn't handle it. The four chemistry teachers-- a long term substitute, a teacher returning from a nervous breakdown leave of absence, a student teacher, a finally normal teacher, and then the student teacher again when the normal teacher went on paternity. The sweating (yah, tmi, I know, but I had anxiety!) It was hell. It was the lowest grades I got in school, ever. I was pretty sure it was the end of my life as I knew it, the end of my self-confident easy learning skate through school. It took all I had left, made me gain ten pounds in Junior Mints, propelled me into a lazy senior year filled with crayons and ultimately, into community college, because I never, ever wanted to be that stressed out again* .

But yes, chemistry, I'm glad I took it. I am glad because as I sit here, trying to transcribe an oral history filled with a muddle of particles and helium and radon and six million electron volts, I am not entirely clueless. I don't care about it, it doesn't interest me, but I can at least understand what is being said by this eminent old theoretical physicist about the discoveries he made with another retired geriatric experimenter (which is, in and of itself, amazing that two eighty-eight year old men are still contributing to their field). Thank you, slew of inept teachers. Thank you, book that I threw across the room. Thank you, college prep classes, for not being as worthless as I thought you were.

*about which I have no regrets; my love for TCC is abundant.