Life is a chemistry experiment

Chemistry between two people is like chemistry between two molecules. This thing called love, requires an appropriate environment and an appropriate time for it to bloom. Love does not conquer all if these two factors do not exist. The same thing applies to my molecules, my BODIPY scaffold and alkyne are supposed to love each other and click instantly as implied by the process that it undergoes called ‘click chemistry’. Love between this two is supposed to happen at first sight. However, it doesn’t! Leaving me, its creator to find the suitable environments, temperature and length of time for the experiment to happen through trial and error. Love requires a catalyst at times, to speed up things which might never happen for a certain activation energy barrier prevents it from so. It might be a matchmaker, a turn of events that leads to that realization or something else. And it’s the same for my experiment, how important is copper catalyst for my reaction or else it will never happen even if you leave the solution mixture reacting for days or even years by which time the reaction mixture would have degraded into nothing-ness as how love will if you do nothing about it.

Life is not a straight road, there are various forks in the road of life, you never know what you get. The future is completely unpredictable. We might plan to go one way but circumstances take us another way. And it’s the same for my experiment. For two whole months, I’ve been working towards synthesizing a certain library of molecules. Yesterday, I synthesized my very first molecules. But alas, one pyrimidine group has displaced the chloro side chain making it slightly different from my intended molecule which makes a whole lot of difference as they are two different entities no matter how similar they are. Yet, this unexpected shock of a surprise might all be for the better as it makes the molecule more polar such that it makes entry into cells easier as it’s more soluble in water. And then, maybe life is like that too, life very often does not go the way we want it to be or expect it to be, but it might all be for the better in the end.

Studying is comparatively easier now that I have started doing lab work. For studying, its just a matter of understanding the material given and apply it onto exam papers when the time comes. There is a definite answer. Its not exactly the same in lab. There are many questions, but few with answers. Perhaps, that’s the same in life, where there are few answers and even fewer satisfactory answers to the questions we ask ourselves everyday.