I Still Have PTSD From Organic Chemistry

That moment when chemistry class shatters your reality! After years of seeing that mysterious H+ symbol in acid equations, finding out it's literally JUST a naked proton bouncing around is mind-blowing. Your brain refuses to accept something so complex-looking could be so simple. Like discovering the monster under your bed is just a sock puppet! The ultimate "wait, that's it?" moment in chemistry that makes you question everything else you're learning. 🤯

When your knife is so sharp it cuts through cellular structure, then molecular bonds, and finally splits atoms! That little lab mouse just wanted to slice a cucumber but ended up triggering nuclear fission. This is why lab safety protocols exist, people! Einstein and Oppenheimer are literally restraining each other from witnessing another atomic catastrophe. The progression from macro to micro to nuclear devastation is what happens when you buy your lab equipment from the "extra sharp" section.

Oh my periodic table! Someone's finally cracked the elemental code of bathroom signs! Fe (iron) for female with its circular symbol and Mn (manganese) for male with its triangular sign. It's the perfect chemical pun—nature's way of saying "hold my beaker" while designing gender symbols! The irony is that iron is actually one of the strongest elements, while manganese is more brittle—which completely shatters gender stereotypes. Next up: discovering whether carbon and oxygen are just really good friends or in a covalent relationship!

The periodic table never lies. This chemist has cleverly arranged elements to spell out "FINaNCIAl SUPPoRT" while holding what appears to be blood (or a suspiciously red solution). It's the scientific equivalent of passing a note in class asking for money, except with atomic numbers instead of notebook paper. When your research funding runs dry but your experimental passion remains, you resort to the universal language of chemistry to make your plea. Periodic begging—it's elemental, my dear.

The struggle is REAL with real gases! Physical chemistry students everywhere are united in their frustration when ideal gas equations get crashed by reality. The ideal gas equation (PV=nRT) is that perfect friend who never complicates things - pressure times volume equals the number of moles times the gas constant times temperature. Clean. Simple. Beautiful. But then real gases show up with their molecular attractions and finite volumes, demanding complex equations with correction factors. It's like expecting a straightforward calculation and suddenly needing calculus, three extra variables, and possibly a small sacrifice to the thermodynamics gods. No wonder these students are throwing up the universal sign for "give me back my idealized mathematical models!"

The classic academic bait-and-switch! First panel: innocent student thinks they'll major in math until they step on that rake of reality. Second panel: the realization that math is actually HARD sends them running for cover. But wait—it gets better! The bottom panel reveals the full academic hierarchy trap: Biology majors discover they need chemistry, chemistry students learn it's just applied physics, and physics majors realize it's all applied mathematics anyway. It's the circle of academic life! Basically, no matter which science door you choose to enter, mathematics is waiting at the end with a sinister grin saying "you thought you could escape me?" The universe's cruelest joke is that we're all math majors in the end—we just took different routes to the inevitable.