random drive-by college post

[edenfalling]

In my various attempts at academic learning, the only thing that straight-up defeated me was visualizing stereoisomers in organic chemistry. A few other things could take a lot of time and concentration, but that was the only one I flat out could not do. And there isn't a good mathematical workaround, which is annoying. I wasn't great at visualizing inorganic quantum chemistry operations, either, but you can do that stuff with numbers and matrices, and math makes sense.

But enough tangents.

The point is that I am now damned glad I never decided to major in economics, because apparently I can't read more than about twenty-five pages of economic theory at a go without putting myself to sleep. Literally. I mean, this afternoon I was nearing the end of an excerpt from Malthus's work on political economy, and he mentioned the word "clogs" -- as in, things that obstruct a smooth rate of flow -- and I drifted off into a vivid hallucination of reading a paragraph wherein he began ranting about shoemakers. It was illustrated, too, with a very nice green ink line drawing of him hurling a wooden shoe beyond the drawn frame of his portrait.

...

I took a five minute nap after finishing that excerpt and before starting on the next one.