All my unpublished work that is public: Part 1 (Dr. May’s Group)

I’m back. I feel rejuvenated and as I’m at the most peak I feel this cloud of judgment. People looking at me. Why the fuck do I feel this way. They tell me I’m not a real scientist, I’m just a coder. How do I know anything about chemistry? That my work is bullshit and made up.

Where I began: I come from community college originally, I didn’t even know what an SAT was until age 17. Long story short I started my Organic chemistry career at Austin Community College. It was a small class and I loved it. We spent a week on lewis structures and then 2 weeks learning to name things — IUPAC and common names.

…something under my brain …..

I started to read, and I read a lot. Rapidly, I gained some knowledge to start figuring out the flow of electrons. Where are they going? Quickly. I was judged, rejected, and I thought who gives me the right to do that.

I have been told I’m crazy, stupid, an idiot. That what I want to accomplish is not possible. My brain told me where to look, there’s a pattern. It wouldn’t shut up. I can’t turn it off. I have trouble sleeping.

I just wanted to be nice and they make me angry. Why, I am looking for something and my work and my opinion on how I perceive the universe shouldn’t impact you.

I am not smart. I cannot compete with mother nature or even COVID. Life is hard in baltimore and I haven’t done shit. Don’t give me praise. But now is my time to help. I have sat, listened, studied, and waited. Now it is my time to talk and my voice to be heard, and my tools to be implemented. The Sul I didn’t want to bring out but here the fuck he is.

I think the world is beautiful, I am hippie at heart, but I am not allowed to be who I am. Not yet. I can see the organic chemistry patterns fast. Faster the the machine. It comes from when I was a kid, I fell in love with organic chemistry. It risked life and they didn’t give a shit about safety. Artists and rebels creating our molecules. Natural product chemistry, complex synthesis routes, protecting groups, breaching into opioid synthesis from magnus, transport phenomena. I fucking loved it. I could only read. I had no access. Who gives a fuck about some poor brown guy claiming he can process organic chemisty. No one accepted me, but I believed in myself. I knew I knew something but how do I get it out to the world. Life was hard was pretty much bouncing couches at some point, trying to memorize the patterns, I would write them on index cards and surprised myself with the IUPAC name. My goal was if I wanted to be a true organic chemist, I need to talk like them. Unfortunately, no one chatted with me, I was too immature to explain to my friends about what I can see but actually, I think they can see it too. I need to test my knowledge with the organic chemistry community. But how?

GPA was my only chance, can’t do these stupid standardized tests, FAFSA loans are coming in (around 40K), I’m a teenager, I don’t know what I’m doing but I have no way to get money. Maybe with UT Austin transfer from ACC I can have the opportunity, got little pell grants. Rocky road making that work. Took 3 years. Fine, I’ll keep investing myself. I know I can see it. I trust myself. I was in but no one cared about me. Lots of people, lots of “competition”, I was alone. I saw everyone as competition. I didn’t want to make friends. I worked hard to get to this point, the work just started. I need to stand at the top here. I was quickly lonely and sad. I wanted to find friends that were just passionate about something then. Then I met a friend who gave no shits and just chilled. He just flowed through life, he would always wait in a car for a song to finish to make sure it played out before he left. A lot of my philosophy now comes from him. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have learned how to work as a team because I cannot do what I want to accomplish alone.

I found refuge in neuroscience club and formed a team at the neuroscience competition 2012. We got last place, we didn’t know anything, I think some alcoholic rats.

But here I found my favourite foundation molecule. Indole. This molecule attracted to me because it seemed to be a common pattern in biology and it was my way of talking to those types of scientists. I was an angry teenager at this point though and I didn’t know how to tell people of my ideas that there is a communication gap. My friends were actually mostly all software engineers. So here I was this organic chemist surrounded by all this “code”. They would show me what they learned, and I would try to do it myself but it was tough. At the time I was learning so much about physics, biology, business, whatever I could get my hands on. The grade didn’t matter, I needed to learn. This one is so common.

Just take the picture as whole and call it Indole. That’s the language. Made it easy for me to understand. Now how can I communicate that this means something to me? Why does my opinion matter? I kept walking the halls until I found the organic chemistry graduate seminar held at UT austin. No one would accept me but if I just sat and listened maybe one day a pattern will come across that I can recognize and I can speak the language and ask a question.

Finally, in 2014, someone did and I waited 2 years. Dr. May from the University of Houston presented on natural products. There it is. Someone synthesizing indole compounds. Now I can find out why they are so ubiquitous.

I tried to talk like him, and I went up to ask him a question. Later on I emailed him asking to join his lab for the summer. I’ll work for free. I need to get the experience first. He said yes. I lived on rice and beans, third ward, all I had was a mattress. I would go home for lunch and just eat rice. I would spend most of my time and nights in the lab. I had no one, the work was hard, I sucked at cleaning glassware, couldn’t get this biosynthesis to work. I had to run columns and purify, struggling. I cried. No one can say I’m not a scientist now. It hurts to be one. I learned NMR at an early stage my immediate mentor was hard on me. But I respect him the most. He needed to be hard on me.

I got better, I could create artistic reactions:

I saw beauty here. Late nights, all I had was these molecules. Bike home fast at night, and sleep on the floor. But I was happy. At least I could feel the molecules in my hand. No one can take that feeling from me. I can touch it.

I took my work with me back to UT Austin. I had experience and I had a letter of recommendation. Someone believed in me. I will never forget that.

I can do this stuff too, make my hands work. Make my body work, it needs to be operational.

Dr. May came by and saw me run my product through liquid hydrazine as the solvent cocked back at 120 Celcius. A reaction I pulled from the 1800s. Did it work. I think so, I remember results. I think I earned some credit points. I needed it to be a lone pair. The primary amine through with indoles are tricky. This is the adrenaline. My brain feels at ease. I’m in my element.

Excited about my work I presented my work at UT austin undegraduate conferences which ended up no one giving a shit. I worked hard. I stood in front of my poster for 10 hours (5 hours at each conference). No one cared or stopped.

I wanted to share my love for organic chemistry. I wanted people to see the beauty of manipulating patterns but everyone ran away from this subject. Why? I’ll get to that in Part 2.

My love for organic chemistry is innocent yet I get ridiculed for who I am. My story is not over. And where I am now will push the boundaries forward. But first, catch up with my history so you can understand my present.