Chemical Bonds

CHEMICAL BONDS

Some people tell me that I shouldn’t have made it out. But I did. It took everything that I had, but I was successful. I made it out.

*****

“Okay, class, today we are going to learn ... ”

Every time Mrs. Carter started with “today we are going to learn …,” I blanked out. Not literally. That would have been weird—sitting there, paying attention-ish. Then she says “today we are going to learn” and I’d be passed out at my desk. Like the words made me faint.

No, it wasn’t like that. It was just that Mrs. Carter’s classes were sooooooooooooooooooooooo boring, and I found it hard—really, really hard—to pay attention. No kidding—she opened the textbook and read aloud from it. Every class. It was bad. I thought we were supposed to do experiments, not read the thousand-year-old textbook. But Mrs. Carter believed in the textbook with all her heart … if she really did have a heart.

So, I spaced. But I was not the only one. Manny beside me usually stood his textbook up on his desk balancing on the bottom edge so it stood up straight, put an ear bud in and watched YouTube on his phone hidden between his chem book pages. Sometimes he’d get so wrapped up in what he was watching that he’d laugh. Out loud. Last time it happened, Mrs. Carter was reading about chemical bonds. Chemical bonds are not funny.

“Manny,” said Mrs. Carter, looking up from her own textbook, “Is something funny about ionic chemical bonds?”

Manny, not missing a beat, said, “No. It’s just the name—ionic—sounds like ironic, and isn’t it ironic that it applies to both metals and non-metals? You’d think they’d stick to one thing.”

He smiled that winning smile of his, and Mrs. Carter just narrowed her eyes, held his gaze for a moment longer, then returned to her recitation of pages 302 to 338 in the 1983 Grade 11 Chemistry textbook we used.

Chastity on the other side of me, always laid her textbook flat on her desk, propped her head up with her fist, and slept. I mean, really slept. Sitting up. Sometimes a bit of drool escaped and dribbled down her chin and I’d nudge her. Or she’d snore softly. Every once in a while, her head would fall off of her hand and fall to her chest. I’d gently poke her in the ribs to wake her up. She’d take a deep breath, look around, check her watch, realize that we still had forty minutes of class, and go back to sleep.

There were at least seven other students who scrolled on their phones during class. They’d lay their textbooks flat, open on their desks, and use their phones in their laps. They looked like they were praying. Stephan and Collin, who sat beside each other, texted back and forth all through class. I could see them look back and forth and smirk.

Some of the more engaged students did their homework—usually from other classes. Meredith told me she loved chemistry because it allowed her to finish her math homework, which was her next class.

I was not the only student who spaced out. There were a lot of us. I could identify them by the vacuous looks in their eyes, their thousand-yard stares taking in nothing, just waiting for it to end.

Then there was Carla. She always followed along with Mrs. Carter’s readings. Every day. There were a few others who, for reasons unknown, read the textbook along with Mrs. Carter, but never participated. Carla was different. She was engaged. She’d ask clarifying points. If Mrs. Carter asked questions about what she’d just read aloud, Carla’s hand shot up. Usually, Mrs. Carter called on Carla, cuz why not? She was interested. But not always. Sometimes, she’d ask a random student to answer the question. Nine times out of ten, she’d be met with a blank stare. Carla would almost jump out out of her chair, with her hand in the air, “I know, Miss, I know!” Then, inevitably, she’d blurt out the answer, which was always right. Seriously, we should have paid her because she saved our bacon more times than not.

That was the way it was for the first two-and-a-half months of the five month semester. My mark was in the mid to high seventies—not because I knew anything about chemistry, but because Mrs. Carter recycled all her tests, quizzes, and worksheets, and I had a friend’s notebook from last year, who had their friend’s notebook from the semester before that, who had another friend’s notebook …. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—back to, probably, 1983, when the textbook was published and Mrs. Carter developed her curriculum.

Then she went on leave. Some kids said it was because she had a mental breakdown. Others said she ran away with the janitor Mr. Crane, some said she killed a kid and was arrested, someone said she was a radical hippie and blew up a power plant. Regardless, Mrs. Carter was gone, and Mr. Abbot was in. The first day we walked in and saw him at the front, we were a bit surprised. I even checked that I was in the right classroom. We figured he was a substitute teacher, and Mrs. Carter was away for the day. Except Mrs. Carter was never away. Ever. We would have remembered a day not reading from the textbook.

Mr. Abbott was young—like really young. Not me young, but not Mrs. Carter’s old, either. Maybe in his twenties? And he was not all teacher-ly. He was pretty tall, like over six feet tall, wore a pair of black jeans, untucked shirt with a suit jacket unbuttoned on top, a pair of Blundstone’s on his feet. He radiated cool. His eyes were blue, his hair was dark with a bit of a curl to it, with one rogue curl falling onto his forehead. He looked like an influencer or someone famous. Definitely an upgrade from Mrs. Carter. Don’t get me wrong. There was nothing the matter with Mrs. Carter—she just wasn’t Mr. Abbot.

Then he told us that he was going to be our teacher for the rest of the semester. I’m not going to lie, I smiled. Maybe we’d do some experiments, and I’d get to actually create a chemical bond instead of just reading about it. A girl can dream, right?

After he introduced himself, the first thing he did was walk over to the garbage pail, and drop the textbook in. “We’re not going to use the textbook anymore this semester.” He walked back to the desk.

Stephan actually stood up and started to clap. Then Collin joined him, then Manny, then the whole class.

Except Carla. She looked stricken. “No!” she shouted. “No! You can’t!”

The class quieted and everyone stared at her. Mr. Abbot looked at her, looked down at the seating chart, then back up. “Carla, right?” he said. She nodded. “What’s going on?” he asked.

She blushed. I could literally see her face redden from across the classroom. “I like the textbook.”

Mr. Abbott smiled. “There is a whole bunch of stuff that you should be learning that isn’t in the textbook. I’m going to make sure that you’re ready for grade twelve chemistry when this semester is over.”

He wasn’t wrong. My older brother had Mrs. Carter, and he told me he was lost when he took grade twelve chem, and had to get a tutor. Mrs. Carter wasn’t the only teacher who taught grade eleven chemistry. She was just the least invested. That made the jump to grade twelve difficult for her former students.

So, Mr. Abbott was going to teach us five months of grade 11 chemistry in two-and-a-half months. Seemed impossible. Seemed like a lot of work that we were all going to have to learn.

First, he told us our mark for the first half of the semester wouldn’t count. Everybody was starting with a zero. I thought I was going to cry. Bye-bye seventy-eight percent. I saw Carla’s eyes water up. Then we did an oral review. We did not have a clue about most of what he was talking about. He’d ask a question, and crickets. No one would put up their hand to answer. Personally, I was so lost, he might as well have been speaking in tongues. Concepts, terms, general knowledge—nothing. Nobody did. Even Carla was overwhelmed.

Then he did a series five quizzes, each out of ten. He said they wouldn’t count, he just wanted a baseline of our knowledge and understanding..

We did five quizzes in a row. The quizzes were brutal. On the Matter quiz, class average was four out of ten. Me, personally, two out of ten. Energy—three out of ten for the class. Me, one out of ten. On the Structure and Function quiz, I got four out of ten, the same as the class average, so yay? On Change and Continuity I got a big fat zero out of ten. Zero!

Then came the Sustainability and Stewardship quiz, the last one. I read it over, realized it might as well be written in Esperanto. I was destroyed. I made it into a paper airplane, and floated it into the garbage can. I put my head down on my desk, and shut my eyes. After the quizzes were handed in, Mr. Abbott retrieved my quiz from the garbage and asked me to stay after class.

I stayed in my seat. Mr. Abbott walked over, and sat in the seat in front of me. “Jane, right?” I nodded. “So, I see you have aerodynamics figured out. Good form and thrust.” He smiled. “But, not so great for chemistry, right? How come?”

I just shrugged. I couldn’t tell him I took chemistry because I had access to last year’s class notes, and that I needed a science credit for university.

He looked at me. “So, before the quizzes, you had an average of seventy-eight point three. What’s happened since I got here?”

Another shrug. We sat there looking at each other. Then he said, “How ‘bout you walk me through a typical class, the way that Mrs. Carter taught it?”

Shrug number three. “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s not here, you know. I don’t want to talk bad about her.”

Mr. Abbott smiled. “I understand.” He nodded. “But, we’re not talking about her, we’re talking about how she taught the class. I need to know what we need to do to improve everyone’s grade, and get them ready for grade twelve.”

“I’m not taking chem next year. I just needed a science credit.”

“But, you still need this science credit. You don’t want to fail, right?”

“Right.” My parents would lose their minds if I failed, and I’d be in summer school before I could complain. I should have taken biology.

“So, help me help you to get this credit. Tell me about class before I came.”

So, I did. I told him about the oral reading of the textbook. I told him about the recycled notes, quizzes, and tests. I told him about zoning-out when Mrs. Carter read aloud. I told him about the complete apathy in the class. I also told him that Carla was literally the only student who participated in class. And, I told him, honestly, that I didn’t have a clue about grade eleven chemistry. At all. And that it was too late to switch classes, so I knew I was going to fail.

“You don’t have to fail,” said Mr. Abbott.

I snorted. “I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. I only have the mark I have because because I cheated.” I admitted, feeling the shame redden my face.

He smiled. “You’re not the only one. Just the only one who flew a quiz paper into the garbage pail.” He smiled again. “Let get you your credit.”

So, Mr. Abbott tried to teach us all chemistry. Quickly. It was a disaster. We had no basic chemistry knowledge. We didn’t know what we were supposed to know. I think I actually had negative chemistry knowledge, if that’s possible. I had an anti-chemistry brain. And my parents were losing their minds. I had always been a pretty good student. They couldn’t understand why my grade dropped from high seventies to somewhere in the thirties. What could I say? I couldn’t tell them that I had cheated for the first half of the semester. I just said we had a new teacher, and he was teaching us all the stuff we needed to know, so there was a learning curve. Ha! Learning curve! More like straight up, unattainable precipice.

It was like baptism by fire. The first unit test, I got a stellar thirty-eight percent. And I had studied! The same thing kept happening. I’d pay attention, take notes, study, then fail. Over and over. Mind you, my failing was getting closer to fifty percent and a technical pass, but I had yet to crack that mythical fifty percent. I stayed for extra help. I started hanging out with Carla, trying to absorb some of her chemistry knowledge through osmosis (I told you I should have taken biology). It didn’t work. I had an anti-science brain. Then, Mr. Abbott introduced the concept of mnemonics—you know, little tricks to help you learn the subject matter. Like, HOMES for the Great Lakes—Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. There were a bunch of them—acronyms, sayings, rhymes. Then he mentioned songs. He sang a little diddy about ions and cathodes, and it clicked. Here was something I could get behind.

So I started creating songs about chemistry. I sang them all the time. My parents were annoyed at the constant stream of weird coming out of my mouth. My friends asked me to please stop. But I kept practicing the songs. I made up lyrics to songs I already knew. I sang the periodic table song to the Can Can song. I sang the Polyatomic Ions song to the melody of Drake’s God Plan. If there was a concept that I needed to understand, I made a song about it. It didn’t matter—I used classic rock, rap, country, classical. They all worked.

Then, it happened. I received my first passing mark in chemistry since Mr. Abbott had taken over the class. A very impressive sixty-one percent. And I didn’t cheat! Then it happened again, and again, and again. My grade was creeping up into acceptable territory.

We had our culminating activity, worth fifteen percent of our final mark. Carla and I were partners. We went with developing a design procedure to determine the percent yield of … never mind, you don’t need to know. The important thing is we killed it—ninety-eight percent. I might have cried. I know my mom did.

Then the final exam. Another fifteen percent. But instead of having a partner to bounce things off of, it was all on me. Mr. Abbott gave us a pretty comprehensive study sheet, and we had a couple of review classes. Carla and I studied together. I busted out all the mnemonic songs from earlier in the semester. I studied hard.

The day of the exam came. I was so nervous. I needed to get at least a seventy-five percent in the course to make it usable for university. I sat down and started. Questions about the periodic table, I hummed the tune for the Can Can. Nailed it. Atomic theory—Happy by Pharrell Williams. Solutions--Changes by David Bowie. Gases—Birds of a Feather by Billie Eilish. Organic chemistry—I Knew It, I Knew You by Taylor Swift And, chemical bonds—We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

As one point, Mr. Abbot had to come over and ask me to stop humming and mumbling, because I was disturbing the rest of the class. No problem. I was in the zone.

After two hours, I had finished the exam and felt good. But was it good enough? I had come into the exam with a sixty-nine percent. To get a seventy five in the class, I needed a perfect exam—actually, I needed to get more than perfect. Impossible, but …

On exam answer day, Mr. Abbott handed back our exams. I got ninety-six percent, weighted to fourteen point four out of fifteen. Add that to my sixty nine percent, which was fifty-nine out of eighty-five, and I calculated I had seventy-three point five percent as my final mark. So close.

So, decisions, decisions. Do I keep my “so close” grade, or do I redo the course in summer school. I wasn’t sure that I could do any more chemistry without exploding—add more chemistry to an already over-loaded brain, and the chemical reaction is complete mental breakdown.

Then Mr. Abbot handed out our grade updates. I looked at the sheet, checked the name, looked at it again—eighty point one percent. Probably a mistake. I loved the eighty, but I was a reformed cheater, so I had to tell him. I raised my hand.

But before my hand got completely up, Mr. Abbott explained, “Because of the changes that we had to make since I joined the class, I dropped the two lowest marks on everyone’s grade sheet, and weighted the other marks.” He smiled. “So, those are your final grades.” My hand dropped to my lap.

I exhaled, leaned back in my desk, relief washed over me. Two and a half months ago, I was sure that I was never going to make it out of this class with a passing grade. Now, look at me. I smiled.

But there was no way I was going to take grade twelve chemistry. Enough was enough.