Maybe because I didn't do as well as expected in HSC Chem
It's perfectly okay to sound doubtful
And that's the attitude for doing science subjects
Umm... The way I see it (and many people I talked to) is that to do HSC Chem you need the minimal amount [slightly exaggerated] of problem solving skills because in many parts of the course they make you remember things without asking you to find out why.
For example, what's the point of remembering a few paragraphs regarding the properties and uses of a biopolymer without knowing the underlying organic chemistry that gives rise to those propertise? Yes, it does sound cool to be able to regurgitate the cool things [without knowing what is going on] about a biopolymer in front of people who know little to nothing about chemistry - but that's the first and last cool thing you can do with it.
Since we are at it, I might as well go on a rant about the board which sets the Chemistry syllabus and, as usual, the goverment. The last time I asked about someone-in-the-know I discovered that the board is not consists entirely of Chemists - it is in fact influenced by the government and people who don't know about Chemistry. I'm inclined to think that the copious amount of ethanol-related dot points in the syllabus (at least when I did it) has at least some governmental influence.
Our government thinks that science is dangerous, at least to our country's economy, and it has all sorts of weird and wonderful regulations on it. Science may be dangerous, but politics is definitely so.
After all that's just a superficial comment on what
I personally think and I'm sure most politicians and economists will somehow prove that I'm wrong by either imposing more regulations on workplace safety (I know, it's good for us) OR give a detailed estimation which
proves that scientists are very
valuable and the country can't afford to lose them (so we might as well not have them).
Sorry about that
