Hello everyone! My name is Shivasuryan Vummidi, and I am an incoming freshman at Stony Brook University's Class of 2022! Before I fully introduce myself, I'm just going to put out there that I love organic chemistry!

Organic chemistry is the branch of chemistry specifically concerning carbon and carbon compounds and is typically taken by chemistry majors or those on a pre-medical track. It upsets me that it's commonly seen as a pre-med weed-out class when it surveys such a beautiful science that is the basis of what biology is founded upon. I'm currently taking the class in high school, and it is by far the best class I've ever engaged my brain with.

Before I first set foot in the class, I was shocked that organic chemistry was seen as a weed-out class. It didn't make sense to me as to why organic chemistry was so important that every medical school closely examined your grade. I was under the impression that the entire purpose of the class was to filter the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

When I entered the class, my teacher immediately showed us two samples of carvone, which is a compound found in both caraway seeds and spearmint. I took a whiff of each sample and was shocked at the stark difference in smell, considering that the only difference came from one bond and how that one bond was oriented in space.

The (R) and (S) forms are enantiomers, which means that they look like mirror images of each other. To the average person, they look like the same compound but drawn slightly differently. However, the different orientations are so significant that they're easily discerned by our nasal receptors to generate different smells (if you're curious, the R form smells like caraway and the S form smells like spearmint).

That first-day introduction to organic chemistry absolutely changed my initial impression, and to this day I have a profound curiosity as to what carbon's full potential is. I ended up sticking through my high school organic chemistry class, and I'm looking forward to what more Stony Brook has to offer me!