Why do people hate organic chemistry?

Yeah, so there's not like a traditional chemistry lesson, but there is something that I think most chemists will be able to get from this, and people who are interested in learning about science and the way research is done, that those people will be able to get out of it.

And actually, a lot of our listeners have pretty consistently asked me, um, what research you can do outside of the lab or how you can be a chemist and not be in the lab.

Uh-huh.

And this is another way to do that, where you can actually explore chemistry and do chemistry research, not using actual chemicals.

And I think there's a lot that's interesting here.

I don't know everything that Melissa's gonna share, but when I was watching her defense-

Yes

... and her presentation and stuff, there was so much that just me, regular person, not a chemist, very interesting to hear, to learn about in this chemistry education field-

Yes

... and some of the data that specifically Melissa found and some of the things that she asked people about and stuff.

Mm-hmm.

So I think if you're like me, and then you'll be able to understand it, get it, and enjoy it, just like the whole goal of most of our episodes.

Yes.

So...

And actually, this one's a little bit different because Jim did come to my defense-

Right, right

... as a civilian, and some of our listeners did too, but I'm gonna share a little bit more about the field of chemistry education research and what that is.

So even if you came to my defense, you'll get more information out of this.

Nice.

Nice.

So a lot of people I th- I have noticed think chemistry education research is essentially getting you ready to be a good educator, and I do think it's important for educators to be up to date on the most current research, but it's actually not quite about that.

Many of us are educators and many of us care a lot about being good educators, and I think doing research in education prepares you to be a better [laughs] educator in some ways, but it actually is focused on the research.

So I'm not trying to learn about how to be the best educator I could be necessarily.

I think I get some of that out of it, but what I do in my research is I try to understand how students are learning chemistry.

Hmm.