600 karma · joined September 1, 2019
As an adult these problems are solved for you by either human resources, the police, or being able to avoid the situation. Maybe that's why you don't walk around the rough part of town alone at night. As a kid you have no control over your environment.
Try to be forward thinking about what trends might be coming. It used to be easier to do this but now everyone hops on trends quickly so it's harder to maintain a head start.
I'm looking at my next venture right now and I'm mostly focused on the overall macro picture surrounding the growth prospects of an industry. Things like population dynamics are playing a bigger part of how I see opportunity. The best CEO won't accomplish much in a dying or flat industry.
Ignore people who say "X is saturated". Everything is saturated. What matters is if the market is going to grow.
Now I'm more focused on wealth deployment and preservation and trying to focus less on building new things. Building is where my passion is but it's high risk and I don't need to be taking risks anymore.
We're not smarter than everyone else. No, we're just more clued in to what's happening with our capital markets, vendors, competitors, and customers.
You could just as easily ask all the undergrads to train for a marathon and see who has the discipline to follow through. It would probably be more relevant because at least its health-related.
I think overall we want our doctors to have high general intelligence so we'll continue to demand o-chem. We all have our biases against the kids who couldn't pass o-chem.
A simplified organic chemistry course could cover the theory of SN1/SN2 attacks, orbitals, some ochem principles, some medical-focused examples of organic chemistry, and some basic mechanisms. It would not require students to creatively solve synthesis questions on exams or memorize long lists of reactions. To that extent maybe even the first of the two part classes is enough.
I never heard of anyone talk about organic chemistry as anything other than a filter class for pre-meds. It's a bit of academic hazing to wash out weaker pre-meds from the undergrad program. Maybe because it effects the university's match rate. Students care about their undergrad's medical school match statistics when they apply. From what I remember hazing does wash out the weaker students who don't have as high of general intelligence or work ethic.
Physics courses, at least at my alma mater, were separated in to physics for physics majors("honors physics"), physics for engineers, and physics for life sciences. A similar structure would be a great compromise to maintain the quality of education for those continuing on to perform organic synthesis versus those who want to be physicians. I was exposed to exactly zero organic chemistry in medical school or beyond.
For example, say you were in charge of a private equity fund with a close overlap of executives with a government bank. When investments go well you put them on the PE funds books. When they go poorly you put them on the bank's books. The bank gets a few government bailouts in the process. You now have billions in dirty funds in your PE fund that need to be laundered through investments. A few additional degrees of separation here can be very useful. I've seen this exact situation play out and met some of these guys while trying to do business in Africa.