ACS Meeting 1

It has been a while since the last post.  Primarily because, in addition to the pre-spring break rush I was preparing for the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco.  But, I got the exam to be given in my class written and my talk prepared and was off to SF on Saturday morning.  My hotel has internet access, but it is so slow that until this morning when I got up at 6 I was unable to really get much interneting done. So, lets begin reporting.

Sunday: I attended the Aromatic and Heterocycles talks in the morning and New Reactions and Methodology in the afternoon.  The morning talks were very diverse in nature which created an interesting situation where the audience appeared to be having trouble connecting to many of the talks.  Often there were no questions after the talks.

I may be odd in my opinion but, when I give a talk I want questions.  For me, the point in presenting my results is to elicit feedback.  If you can't think of a question because my logic is impeccable and the work so complete that there is nothing left to do, stand and applaud while shouting "genius" and throwing wads of cash.  (Sorry, slipped into my fantasy life for a minute there.)  My point is that it disappoints me to spend the time to craft a talk only to be met with crickets afterward.  I felt sorry for those this happened to.  Of course, I couldn't think of a question since their work was so far from my experience that I was not sure I really appreciated the material, which goes back to the diversity of talks issue.

One interesting PUI/MCU issue that came up was a speaker who lamented the lack of some final data to make his case.  He noted that he is performing much of the multistep synthetic work himself and had not had the lab time to complete the final steps.  I am with you brother!  As organic chemistry has matured the skills necessary to create new science just don't come from the one-year organic lab.  By the time students have the skills to move a synthesis forward they are leaving.  This means that we faculty must step into the lab.  With our schedules and responsibilities getting something to publication requires heroic effort.

A recent seminar speaker commented to me that in her MCU organic faculty are the only faculty who still go into the lab.  Everyone else just has there students do the work.  She suggested that we are all crazy, killing ourselves trying to be laboratory scientists in an environment which clearly doesn't match our needs.

I will leave you to think about that, as I need to head to this mornings sessions.  More from the ACS meeting when I can get back on the web.

T.S. Hall