My Struggles with My Organic Chemistry Professor

(Warning: This article contains some uncomfortable language, gets pretty personal, and talks about mental health and suicide. Please read at your own risk.)

As a chemistry student, one of the courses I need to take in order to get my degree is organic chemistry. That makes sense. This means I have an organic chemistry professor, but here’s where my problems lie. Organic chemistry, as anybody will tell you, is difficult enough by itself, but my professor makes it completely unbearable for me, and now I might have some decisions to make.

You see, my organic chemistry (abbreviated as ochem) professor is something of a “god” to some. By that I mean that he knows a lot and he’s willing to share that with people. That said, he is also the kind of person that thinks that these “god” powers (if you even want to call them that) give him permission to more or less be a d*ck. He thinks that he is the only one in the world that matters. He acts as if the other classes I have to take didn’t mean two sh*ts. I don’t really think he cares about any kind of other commitment I have, whether academic or non-academic. In fact, considering that his only two exams that were NOT the final exam that he had in his class were scheduled the same week as exams in my other two lecture classes (granted the latter of the two came from him moving it up so that it wouldn’t be in the same week as our ochem lab presentations, although I would’ve rather had my other two lecture exams (physics and inorganic chemistry, which are both other classes that I need for my chemistry degree, for what all of that is worth) in the first week and my ochem exam and ochem lab presentation the next week than all three of my lecture exams the first week, and then my ochem lab presentation the next week, but that’s beside the point), maybe he isn’t that smart after all, and don’t even get me started on the little things like how he makes videos before class where he’ll sometimes use yellow on the white background, meaning, that I couldn’t see what was going on, or how he used yellow and orange chalk right next to each other and, once again, I couldn’t tell which was which. All of this only proves my point as to how inconsiderate I feel that he is.

The first time all of my exams were in the same week, I thought it was OK because I thought it wouldn’t happen again, but when it DID happen again, I wrote something on the top of my exam that said that I had other exams this week. He saw that, and wrote that telling him that the day of the exam doesn’t do much of anything. I personally saw that more as reminding him than telling him, since I felt that something like that was something that he should’ve already known, but it doesn’t matter since apparently the world suddenly revolves around my ochem professor for some reason.

I feel that it’s also worth noting that, although I’m not entirely sure what happened with this, there are rumors swirling around from multiple classmates of mine, both in lecture and in lab, that this particular professor that I’m talking about is on academic probation because a lot of students fail his class. I’ve also heard a rumor from someone that in the second semester that, in lab, he will fail everyone in the first three labs (additional note: there are only four labs per semester) just to prove something, though I forget what exactly. To me, if this rumor is true, it wouldn’t surprise me because he thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips and he thinks he’s just the greatest, so he’ll be really hard on grading, so even if you think and/or know that you understand the material, he doesn’t see that.

All of this has caused my health to take a bit of a downward turn. Because of how poorly I was doing in class, and because I felt that I worked really hard and my professor didn’t see that and never would no matter what, I started to somewhat harm myself. I was (and still am) on a prescription drug called Zoloft, which is an anti-depressant, but also an anti-anxiety medication. This means that I already have problems with depression and anxiety. This whole thing has only made it worse. I was so afraid of failing that I really pushed myself to stay up later at night before the exam so that I could study. This meant that I had to stock up on coffee, soda, and Monster. I wound up purchasing about $60 worth of that stuff. As you can imagine, I really overdid it on the caffeine, which messed with my thinking because I wasn’t properly hydrated and also because I was lacking in sleep from staying up late to study. After my exam, and the harsh grading that followed, I found out that I did really bad (in fact, worse) than I did on the previous exam. Because of this, I thought that I had no choice but to punish myself for doing so awful on the exam and in the class as a whole, so I became suicidal all over again. I started to think of ways that I could end my life because I thought that my failure was a disgrace to my friends and to my family, and that they thought I would be better off dead. It was then that I decided that I HAD to go see the on-campus mental health counselor. She told me that it was perfectly normal that this class would do this to me, and she also gave me some additional resources that I could utilize if I had the time and/or money, neither of which applied to me. That following weekend, I decided to do something that I had considered doing in the past, but never actually followed through on for one reason or another. I decided to stop eating, which also meant that I had decided to stop taking my medication. I went that entire Sunday without eating or drinking a thing. I also skipped my medication that day. I went to bed, thinking that I would be perfectly fine, but when I woke up the next morning feeling like sh*t. I felt weak and nauseous and didn’t know why. I still had to go to class, so I decided at that point, that I just HAD to have some form of calorie intake. I had a bottle of coke near my closet, so, using whatever strength I could muster, I decided to open it up and take a couple of sips. It was at this point that my nausea got significantly worse, and I felt like I was going to actually throw up, so I went to the bathroom, sat down in front of the toilet, and waiting. After a very short period of time (I don’t even think 30 seconds had gone by) the odor of the toilet water (I was stressed and couldn’t clean, ok?) made me gag, which very quickly turned into throwing back up whatever coke I had swallowed.

(Fair Warning: The following picture may not be for those with weak stomachs.)

Here are some thoughts that this whole thing has made me have. If this class is causing me so much stress to the point that I’m risking both my physical health and my mental health, then trying to pursue my chemistry degree any further might not entirely be worth it. I want to tell other professor other than just my advisor, but I feel like, despite the fact that my professor might be such a bad teacher that my university finds it fitting to put him on academic probation, nobody will ever listen to me. The way I see it, if somebody and/or something is messing with your mental health, your physical health, or even both, then there is clearly an issue going on with that somebody and/or something. I feel like something needs to be done about this particular professor that I’m having problems with, considering his past, because he has serious problems if he’s making somebody legitimately consider/try to commit suicide, but I feel like nothing will get done because if putting him on academic probation has been the only thing that has been done so far, what the h*ll makes me think anything else will be done now? This man and his class have seriously made me cry much more than I ever have before. Now, classes have made me cry before, but ochem is a first for making me sick and causing me to think about, and eventually trying to commit, suicide.

Needless to say, I am most likely going to change my major. If I keep going any further, not only will my graduation be set back more than it already has been, but I will probably be dead by the end of it. I don’t want that to happen to me. I don’t know if anybody else wants that to happen to me either. I still want to do something science related, but maybe also mix some writing in with it. I’m just saying — I think I’d rather combine two things I’m interested in and blaze my own trail than stay on the path that I’m currently on and risk my physical and mental health and potentially try to commit suicide again, because I’d rather have my life than a chemistry degree.