One Elementary Step at a Time by Ghaille Kaitryn

One Elementary Step at a Time by Ghaille Kaitryn - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

Broken glassware, spilled solutions, inaccurate measurements, these are all the things at least one lab group has trouble with during a lab day in chemistry class. The sounds of panic settle in, and you realize your team messed up the data in a chemistry lab! This scene is familiar for a student taking chemistry, for chemistry is known as one of the most dreaded school subjects any student goes through. I always found the subject interesting, but chemistry can seem quite abstract when you learn about it for the first time. It is a subject about making the unseen into a conceivable concept. However, it also taught me how to see the natural world and phenomenon in a new light.

I always remember one of the hardest topics for me in my AP Chemistry class being Kinetics. The study of kinetics involved understanding rates of reactions, elementary reaction steps, and the factors that impact whether reactions even occur in the first place. Kinetics is a shared struggle for many AP Chemistry students, and for me, it was a wake up call for how to study Chemistry in a new way. Up until that point, I breezed through the first semester of AP Chemistry, as most concepts were repeated from the Honors Chemistry class taken the year prior, just with more depth. I was one of the students who did not study for the class too intensely. I would just pay attention in class, do the homework, usually just one late night “cram” session would do the trick. Kinetics was the first brand new topic for us, and it made us all take that class more seriously than before.

Then, it was the day of the kinetics unit test. I had followed my habits of studying the night before, doing the homework half-heartedly, and I thought I would be fine. While taking the kinetics unit test, it became apparent that everything had changed. I remember sweating, anxiously guessing answers, and being extremely unsure of how to answer the free response questions. I had not experienced this before in AP Chemistry, and it was chilling. To say the least, I was humbled by my test results. In fact, it was the first time I failed a test in that class.

However, failure did not deter me from making progress in that class. I understood now that I had to take studying for the class as a serious ordeal. I began to understand that I needed new methods of studying, and I needed to actually apply what I was learning to the real world. After the topic of kinetics, learning the following units, thermochemistry, equilibrium, and electrochemistry, went a lot better for me. Taking the topics learned outside of the classroom amplified my understanding of what I was learning. For instance, walking through the park one day, I thought about how thermochemistry related to how quickly different things heated up, such as the difference between how water in a lake heats up slowly compared to the concrete sidewalks, relating to the specific heat capacity of each substance. Furthermore, I loved the equilibrium units, especially the topics of buffers, because it helped me understand how chemistry reactions in our body maintained the proper pH of our blood, keeping us alive! Finally, electrochemistry was especially interesting, as I could now truly understand how batteries actually functioned, which are used in our daily lives!

As the cumulative AP Chemistry College Board exam approached, it was time to revisit studying kinetics. I studied for a whole month in advance, attending tutoring after school 5 days a week, and attending Saturday school to study too. It was important for me to do practice problems and talk about the topics with my study groups, who soon became some of my closest friends. Kinetics became way less intimidating once I revisited the subject, as I understood how it was connected to almost every topic we had learned before. Every reaction has its own rate which makes every process unique. From combustion of fuels, medicine expiration dates due to their half lives, and enzymatic reactions in our bodies, kinetics gives us a greater understanding of how these processes react differently. Overall, it is actually a beautiful topic, showcasing the nuances of every reaction happening around us.

Now, I look back on my days studying kinetics quite fondly. I even continued studying kinetics as part of one of my Science Olympiad events and helped many students out with the topic as a Co-Teacher for AP Chemistry the following school year. As an aspiring psychiatrist, it is important that I maintain my fervor to study difficult concepts and persevere no matter what. AP Chemistry class will always be one of the best experiences I had in high school because of how it changed the way I study, see the world, and I even created new connections with my peers. Chemistry certainly altered the way I think to be more nuanced and to appreciate the world because of the way science is always around us. I will always be grateful for the challenges I faced, and even more proud of the ways I overcame them. Ultimately, AP Chemistry was a great elementary step in my journey, building me into the student I am and will continue to be.