Perhaps that was it. I've also talked to my chemist friends in grad school and they admit they didn't really start liking chemistry until their junior year, wh

Perhaps that was it. I've also talked to my chemist friends in grad school and they admit they didn't really start liking chemistry until their junior year, which is when they felt confident they could work in a lab and figure out an experiment on their own. I noticed this is different than my engineering classes where they got us working on open ended lab problems from the first semester. Obviously our solutions were poor, but it got us feeling like we were able to apply what we were learning right away.