Between Organic Reactions and Thermodynamics I stopped asking why
The teacher was halfway through an organic chemistry mechanism when I first realised it.
Marker moved across the board. Curved arrows, reagents, intermediates. Everything appeared controlled, almost inevitable, like the reaction had always been destined to unfold exactly this way.
“Step one,” he said, tapping the board, “nucleophilic attack here. Step two, rearrangement. Step three, product formation.”
The class copied without pause. Pages filled up. No one stopped him. The rhythm of explanation was too smooth to interrupt.
“Why does the nucleophile attack that carbon specifically?”
And everyone laughed, some sniggered at me, the others scowled, as if I had committed a crime just by asking “why?”
It was not a complicated question. It was not trying to derail anything. It was just a small attempt to understand what was holding the steps together.
“That is not required in the syllabus,” he said. Then he turned back to the board. “Focus on the mechanism.”
That was it. No debate. No elaboration. Just a quiet dismissal that placed the question outside the boundary of what mattered.
But something in me stopped moving the same way.
There was a time when I did not separate questions into allowed and unnecessary categories. I asked things that interrupted explanations. Things that did not sit neatly inside textbooks. Things that made answers unstable for a moment before they settled again.
Why does this work?
Why this way and not another?
Why is this assumed in the first place?
Back then, I did not think of these as distractions. They were the point.
Somewhere in that mindset, law started to make sense to me. Not as a career choice, but as a way of thinking. Law depends on questioning. It does not survive on memorizing outcomes. It survives on interrogation. Every rule asks to be justified. Every principle can be challenged. Nothing stands without being examined first.
I did not want certainty.
At that time, “why” was not something extra. It was the starting point of everything.
Taking the Science stream does not explicitly tell you to stop asking questions.
It just makes them difficult to keep.
Physics problems arrive with time pressure already attached. Chemistry mechanisms come with predefined steps. Mathematics comes with patterns that expect recognition, not reflection. Everything is structured for execution.
The first limit is time. If a question slows you down, it becomes a liability.
The second limit is syllabus. If a question leads outside the prescribed boundaries, it is marked unnecessary.
Over time, a third limit forms on its own. Internal. Invisible. Stronger than the rest.
You stop asking because you already know what will not be useful for marks.
Curiosity is not rejected.
But curiosity does not immediately stop,
It does not happen suddenly.
At first, you still ask “why” in class. Even when it slows things down. Even when it makes the teacher pause.
Then you learn what response usually follows.
Focus on what is important.
This is not required.
You will understand later.
Later never arrives in the way you expect it to.
You start asking only what seems safe. Only what fits inside the exam logic. Only what can be converted into marks.
Not because you lost curiosity, but because you learned that curiosity rarely has a place in the format you are being trained for.
Then there is a point where the shift becomes noticeable.
Earlier, the question was simple.
Later, the question changes shape.
How do I solve this quickly?
The difference looks small on paper, but it changes how your mind operates.
Curiosity becomes depth, and depth becomes risk. Speed becomes safety. Accuracy becomes survival.
You stop sitting with problems. You start passing through them.
This is where the contradiction becomes difficult to ignore.
Law depends entirely on the kind of thinking that Science slowly and unknowingly trains you out of.
Law asks:
Why does this rule exist?
What assumption is this based on?
Who benefits from this interpretation?
What if this premise is wrong?
It does not function without resistance. It does not grow without disagreement.
And perhaps, this was the reason I was drawn to it in the first place, it satisfied my curiosities, it led to me to valid and fair answers, not the usual “It’s not in the syllabus” statements often given in class.
Science, on the other hand, trains you to accept conditions as fixed. To work within boundaries without questioning why they exist. To treat the framework as given, not constructed.
The irony sits quietly in the middle of it.
I chose a path that trains me to stop doing the very thing that once made that path feel like mine.
You do not notice it when it happens.
You do not see the exact moment when questions start disappearing.
You stop challenging explanations. You stop pausing at assumptions. You stop interrupting certainty.
At first, it feels like efficiency.
Eventually, it becomes default.
The loss is not knowledge.
It shows up in ordinary moments.
You can solve a difficult integral without hesitation. You can balance complex reactions. You can apply formulas across chapters with precision.
But when asked why any of it works at a fundamental level, the answer feels distant.
Or worse, the question itself feels unnecessary.
It is realizing that understanding and solving have become separate skills.
It is not that I lost the answers. I lost the questions.
There is no dramatic recovery from this.
No sudden return of curiosity. No academic awakening.
You ask questions even when they are not required.
You follow explanations beyond what is needed for exams.
You allow yourself to sit with things that are not immediately useful.
Not everything has to be converted into marks. Not everything has to be efficient.
Curiosity does not need validation to exist. It only needs space.
And space is something studying Science in 12th rarely gives, but never fully takes away either.
The board was still full that day. Mechanisms, arrows, steps that looked complete on their own.
I copied them exactly as they were taught.
But I remember the sniggers after my question more than I remember the reaction itself.
Between organic reactions and thermodynamics, there was a moment I tried to ask why.
And somewhere between the answer and the syllabus, I stopped.
Not because I understood more. But because understanding stopped being the goal.
I did not become more certain. I became more efficient at pretending I was.
The questions did not disappear because they were answered. They disappeared because they were inconvenient.
And now, I can move through reactions, laws, and derivations with precision that looks like clarity from the outside.
But inside, it feels like something quieter was traded away.
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