Organic chemistry is perhaps one of the most difficult classes offered at most colleges. It is a comprehensive, year-long course overviewing the chemistry of carbon-containing molecules, required for all biology and chemistry majors. Although the early material seems manageable, things rapidly get out of hand. Although memorizing thirty different reactions for one test or spending eight hours trying to complete one homework assignment seem bad enough, lab is even worse. Once a week, orgo students don their goggles and labor at their benches for four hours straight.
J.K. Rowling must have had a friend that took organic chemistry because the Potions class Harry, Ron, Hermione and the rest of the Hogwarts students take is eerily similar to orgo. Though no one knows where exactly Professor Severus Snape earned his PhD in Potions, there is no doubt that he would be a perfect orgo professor. His absurdly in-depth knowledge of the interactions of any two given substances is both awesome and imposing. He has little patience for students who can’t comprehend the subtle art that he practices. Brewing a potion or synthesizing a molecule is an art: complex, intricate, and beautiful to those who can appreciate it.
The student who walks into class just trying to escape with a C- makes a mockery of everything he stands for.
So, it’s established that Snape is obviously an orgo professor. The similarities don’t stop there; the entire potions class is nothing more than the average college student’s lab period. At the beginning of class, the students walk in to see their professor looming over them, and they squirm with slight anxiety as he or she explains to them the task at hand. They scribble furiously into their lab notebooks the minute deviations from the procedure that their professor says will ruin the entire experiment.
The only difference is the ingredients and the equipment. Instead of adding 20 mL of acetone to a round bottomed flask, a Hogwarts student adds dragon’s blood to a cauldron. Instead of refluxing the reaction mixture for one hour, the potion is allowed to boil until no vapors are produced. All the while Snape (or your pleasant organic chemistry professor) skulks behind the students, watching as they mistakenly add water to acid instead of acid to water. Explosions are a real threat, and they don’t just happen to Neville Longbottom. You could go through three hours of work only to find that your final product is bright purple, not colorless like its supposed to be. Probably stirred it clockwise instead of counterclockwise …
So be empowered, orgo students. Even witches and wizards share the same struggles as you. Wizards. They can charm a teapot to fly around the room and transfigure a pillow into a poodle, yet they still have to scrub out their cauldron at the end of class.
