During my junior year of college, I waited in line with classmates to use a chemistry lab scale. We held fragile containers with an unknown white powder and had to identify the mystery powder using techniques like chromatography, distillation, and recrystallization. It was the most important lab of the year in organic chemistry.

Suddenly the girl next to me dropped her container. Her grade, her future, her hopes depended on that powder falling to her feet. When the container hit the floor, sending white dust across the floor, a nearby classmate pumped his fist and blurted out, “Yes!”

This is what it’s like to be pre-med.

By Nathaniel P. Morris on May 12, 2016

See the article in Scientific American here.