The latest on OChem with the Great Courses brought me back to the overall picture. Back in December 1976 I was still memorizing everything rather than stepping back as I actually did during the lower grades at t slower pace.

The clarity comes from understanding the vibrations of the organic molecules. Then the molecules absorb the light at certain frequencies. I suppose the lack of coverage of molecular orbitals with the physics of the vibrations would have clarified the concept.
Later I used ultraviolet light in a similar test for proteins and nucleates. It suggests that the former are more stable than regular organic molecules. There’s a hint for evolution.
While I do remember the so-called fingerprint region, I didn’t connect it with distinct organic molecules. Obviously the functional groups have the higher frequencies than the stabler fingerprint complexity.

Fri 5 Feb 21  11:08
My foray into the intensive and extensive reading of foreign languages has caused me to find use to apply the techniques in other subjects. How I used to apply it to history was both in the sense of grade school.
Today I intensely finished the Latin course in Duo Lingo, partly disappointed that it’s finished. But happy to finish the section. We never progressed beyond the present tense of verbs, nor even the passive voice or the subjunctive. The techniques that Luke Ranieri shows in Polymathy does go over the imagination of the content, which I used to do with the history textbooks, even at Penn State.