Even though this article is about math. It reminds me of my chemistry education. 1st year, you only learn about the basic concepts of general chemistry. For mo

Even though this article is about math. It reminds me of my chemistry education. 1st year, you only learn about the basic concepts of general chemistry. For most science and engineering majors, this is the only time that they'll be exposed to chemistry. 2nd year, you learn about organic chemistry. It is only at this point that you start to catch a glimpse of what chemistry is really about. It forces you to really understand electrons and how they behave in reactions and as part of a structure. This is where many pre-med, and chemistry students hit the wall and decide to change their major. Those that do survive through it with actual understanding instead of rote memorization can now look at chemical structures and reactions and know the exact number of electrons, charges and understand the flow like 2nd nature. Then comes quantitative analysis and physical chemistry. Now you're really forced to understand and analyze the external enviroment and the myriad of physical conditions because reactions rarely take place in ideal isolation. Next comes biochemistry, and it finally dawns on you that living beings are nothing more than complex machines put together by chemistry. Extremely complex machines, but still machine nonetheless. I had a sort of existential crisis after being through biochemistry. But with that knowledge, it is now possible to read neuroscience text and catch a small glimpse of meaning. Then finally, we come to advanced organic reaction mechanism. A course that is only offered every other year at my uni, taught by a guy older than Gandalf and Dumbledore put together. Total # of people in that class? 3. Now, we go deep, to the darkest pit of insanity. You realize that everything before was only a small preparation. Minding-bending subjects like orbital theory which makes no intuitive sense. The worse part was the professor and the book offered no consolation. "Learn to deal with it." "It is the best model that we have at the moment." "It just works." They say.