The Dumbing of America (i mean, me)

Due to the fact that my technological ju-ju (the powers that control the entire universe, known to some people as "karma") is basically at about the level of the molten core of the earth (that's sub-terranian people), my laptop recently died. When i say died, i don't mean, just works really slowly or anything like that, it literally clicks and beeps at me like it's trying to communicate why it doesn't feel like working at all anymore...

That being said, i've been relegated to using my desktop as of late. This is both good and bad. Good in the sense that i can type alot faster because my big monster hands can fully reach most of the keys, and that i have a separate number pad, so typing things such as 42357981387651118 only takes me a couple of seconds. The bad part of it is that i can't surf the internet whilst pooping or doing other things, like taking my browsing out to my patio for some outdoor porn surfing... did i say porn? i meant to say... uh... porn... (crap).

Anyway, this leads me to my point (there's a point? yes there is.. just wait damnit): i've decided that i'm alot dumber since i got out of school. Not college per se, more like high school. Even though in college, apparently i wrote some papers that are completely unintelligible to me now. Here's an actual example of a title of a lab report that i wrote while i was in the undergraduate chemistry program at the awesome university of tennessee (of course by "awesome" i mean "not awesome" but anyway).

"Competitve Nucleophiles with 1-Butanol"

I kid you not. Need more? Here's the intro paragraph...

Chlorine and bromine are both nucleophiles that will compete for a substrate. The purpose of this experiment is to test the nucleophilicity of these two elements as they compete to react with 1-butanol. Both nucleophiles will be added together in the process of 1-butanol in the same molar concentration. To test the reactivities of these nucleophiles on the alcohol, we will measure the relative amount of alkyl chloride and alkyl bromide and we will try to determine which ion is a better nucleophile. Also a determination of Sn1 or Sn2 reactions will dominate will occur. The alcohols do not react readily in simple nucleophilic displacement reactions, because hydroxide ion is a strong base and also a terrible leaving group. Therefore such a displacement will not occur. However, the alcohol is protonated to convert the hydroxide ion to water molecule (which is a good leaving group). Therefore, this displacement is energetically very favorable, and the reaction proceeds in high yield. And once the alcohol is protonated, it reacts by either the Sn1 or the Sn2 mechanism, depending on the structure of the alkyl group of the alcohol.

Can anyone tell me if they understand any of that? The only parts of that i understand now are the words "the, this, therefore, is, very, and alcohol." I think when i wrote it, i was in some kind of mental zen-like state, either that or severe brainwashing, so that i felt that at the time at least, i knew what i was writing about. If my life depended on it, i couldn't tell you what the hell a nucleophile is, and why it needs to compete with anything. Here, i should state that after taking this class, i did change my major to psychology, most of which i still remember, so i may not be able to tell you what a nucleophile is, but i might be able to create a hypothesis about why they feel the need to be competitive. Perhaps it was a freudian thing, where they wanted to sleep with their mothers and kill their fathers. Who knows...

This just reinforces my point about school being relatively useless. I think after about middle school (where if you are an asian student you should have learned advanced calculus), you should just be allowed to enter the work force, where the most brain power you'll use in a day will pertain to something along the lines of "what should i eat for lunch today?" I've seen it happen alot people. People who work (you're probably reading this at work anyway), can attest to my being right in this aspect, that work requires little to no brain function whatsoever. All the knowledge you learned in college? Useless.

But i guess part of that previous statement has more to do with the fact that i'm jealous of people who actually retain any kind of knowledge from school and use it on a daily basis (although i believe that i'd be hard pressed to find anyone who is actually using said knowledge). That being said, i'd write some kind of witty ending article thing... but i can't... because i'm stupid...



Mitch Hedberg's QotD:

2-in-1 is a bullshit term. Because 2 is not big enough to hold 1. That is why 2 was created!