While the first quarter of organic chemistry lab felt like jumping into the deep end, this second quarter felt like doing true research. Most everyone in the class had a mastery of the lab techniques, so we were able to more in-depth experiments, including research projects on efficient peptide synthesis and the infamous unknown lab. Feeling confident and flexible in everything we were doing was extremely refreshing, and I found myself looking forward to the six hours of lab every week. Professor Hopkins' lectures not only helped me better understand why our lab techniques worked, but they also solidified a lot of the principles I learned last year in the classroom component of organic chemistry. Though my future research will probably be mostly biological, I now hope there may be room to include some organic chemistry techniques in my own lab work.