I first became acquainted with the world of chemistry in the fifth grade while reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet. There, through Dr. Watson’s eyes, I met the great Sherlock Holmes, who dabbled in chemistry frequently whenever he was free from detective work. I immediately fell in love with the Sherlock Holmes stories and was very intrigued each time chemistry furnished the clues necessary for the cunning detective to reveal the identity of the true culprit. Seven years later, I am still intrigued by chemistry and furthermore, have become very passionate about the subject.

Thus, I do not believe it unreasonable to select chemistry as my major in college. It is a subject that I love and am quite good at, which I discovered during my two years in Chemistry I H and AP Chemistry. Although I exhausted my school’s chemistry curriculum by the end of my junior year, there was still one course that I could take: the lab tech course. Each year, the chemistry department selects one student to be the lab tech, and I was honored to be that student this year. My favorite task is making solutions, when I might sense the texture of a salt through a scupula or notice the blueness of a copper (II) sulfate solution that I had just swirled in a volumetric flask. Quite truly, I did suspect my love for chemistry in my AP course last year, but that love was only confirmed this year. It seems that being the lab tech gives me enough chemistry to whet my intellectual appetite but never enough to satiate it. It was only last September that I realized this emptiness inside of me without taking a conventional chemistry course; it is a void that only a major in chemistry can fill.

Of course, my infatuation with and knack for chemistry are not the only reasons why I’ve chosen to major in the area. I would like to become a doctor someday, and I believe that majoring in chemistry would not only facilitate my meeting the prerequisites for medical school admissions but also give me a more than solid grasp of the sciences (since chemistry is often called the central science), which would prove especially useful in medical school.
Nevertheless, chemistry is not an easy subject to learn. Even in AP Chemistry last year, there were times when I felt overwhelmed with all of the rules that I had to memorize, especially when I had to predict the products of a chemical reaction. However, I have found through the years that my love for something always outweighs the trials I would undergo to succeed at it. If I truly enjoy a subject, I’ll work harder to fully understand it, and taking that into consideration with my profound stubbornness, it would be impossible for me not to succeed.

Without a doubt, chemistry is my passion and forte and considering my career plans, a sensible choice for my major. No other academic subject that I’ve yet come across has met all three qualifications. As the greatest detective of all time would say, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth,” and the truth is, chemistry is definitely the major for me.