Amateur Chemistry

Become a professor and study/synthesize whatever the fuck you want. Thats my goal

>Chemfag here. I'm currently finishing up my sophomore year and preparing to enter into my upper division courses.
lol if you thought organic was serious shit, wait till you get a good beating from biochem where labs are nothing but titrations and other annoying shit

>>8706418
I didn't though, I honestly don't understand why people believe organic is the most hellish class there is. I had no problem understanding the subject matter, but it was a shit ton of work to do. I'm more worried about Pchem than anything, since I've heard that is the class that makes or breaks you.

>>8706418
Actually sounds like this dunce actually likes the titrations.

PubMed and the ACA are both very available. Bet you haven't read a chem textbook, OP

>>8706352
>...in an academic setting where I may have little choice in what I want to study

wat

>>8706591
Foo, if you join a research group, you often have to do the research your adviser wants. The only way to really research what to do is to do what >>8706404 said, and even then, good luck convincing the NSF or the government that your research project is worth it if it doesn't somehow make them money.

>>8706597
Dude srsly?

1. Why the fuck would you work for somebody who ran a research program that you didn't give a shit about?
2. You're got to be fucking joking about making the government money: cf. 85% of total syntheses in the literature.

>>8706603
>researching random obscure molecules because it's cool.
>government just gives grant money away without proposals nor approvals.

>>8706352
You should start doing research NOW, Im either getting my PhD in organic at Temple or Purdue, and research is probably what got me in, also do good on the GRE. But I want to teach, and go into synthesis of small molecules, natural products/drugs. If you enjoy organic synthesis, what allot of us do is create reagents, i.e. hypervalent iodine reagents that can make functional groups/pharmokenetic motifs, or reaction methods to make said transformations. The idea is that the reaction or reagent can be used to make biologically active molecules, and what not. I also know organometalic chemists synthesize ligands for catalysts and produce catalysts for all types of reactions. Physical chemistry is a huge field, and analytical chemistry kinda blends into gen chem and inorganic.

>>8706352
Sorry, im pretty drunk, but to get funding, it needs application typiccaly

>>8706352
if you are really bored, i suggest doing undergraduate research. it will help you realize how much cool shit you can do with chemistry and then you can decide if you want to go to grad school for it.

>pursuing chemistry as an amateur
I dont know of or have heard of anyone doing this where it didnt result in injury. playing with chemicals outside of a lab environment which, as you knows costs a lot of money, is dangerous.

>>8706608
People doing total synthesis write proposals and still earn funding... go find your favorite total synthesis from last year, go to the acknowledgements section of the paper, and it will tell you how exactly the work was funded. If you don't know how science funding works, please don't post as if you're an authority on the subject.