Chemistry, Creativity, and the Art of the Assist

There are moments in life when you find yourself staring into the abyss of a teenager’s chemistry notebook, for example, and the abyss stares right back, full of cryptic formulas, half-erased scribbles, and the unmistakable scent of academic panic.

Yesterday, I had one of those moments. The son of my housekeeper, a bright-eyed Muslim boy, handed me his libreta with the hopeful expectation that I, the resident anthropologist-entrepreneur, could untangle the mysteries of chemistry. For a split second, my brain short-circuited. What the fuck am I looking at? I thought.

But here’s the thing about brains, especially those wired by curiosity and a lifetime of navigating cultural crossroads; they can rally when needed. In that nanosecond, as confusion threatened to tip into despair, a solution surfaced: If you can’t decode the problem, reframe the question.

So I did what any self-respecting anthropologist would do: I looked for a bridge, a metaphor, a way to make the abstract tangible. And there it was, hiding in his interests and my memories.

He plays lateral on the football field, always scanning, visualising the ball’s path before setting up a goal. Chemistry, I told him, is no different. Before you can score, before you can solve the big formulas, you need to see the pattern of passes, the movement of the building blocks. Think of a strong acid as a star midfielder: always ready to deliver the ball (the proton) efficiently to the striker. A weak acid? That’s the hesitant player, still clutching the ball, unsure whether to pass or hold. The whole game of chemistry is a series of passes and plays, each atom and molecule moving according to the rules, but always with a few unpredictable bounces, just like in football.

But even that wasn’t quite enough. I could see his mind drifting; the formulas were still strange marks on a page. That’s when inspiration struck again: music. I told him, “Pick a tune- a Muslim chant, or even a rhythm you like. Let’s stamp these building blocks into your head with a melody.” Suddenly, chemistry became a chant, the periodic table a litany, each element and formula reinforced by repetition and rhythm. The abstract became memorable, the foreign familiar.

And then, as I glanced at his notes, I saw “IUPAC” scrawled in the margins- the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the global authority on chemical nomenclature. My mind, ever the trickster, leapt from IUPAC to Tupac. If chemistry has its rule-makers, then culture has its rule-breakers. I thought of Tupac Shakur, poet, philosopher, and master of rhythm, whose lyrics, like a good chemical formula, distilled chaos into meaning. Tupac’s music was all about finding order in adversity, a kind of alchemy for the soul. I told the boy, “You know, there’s IUPAC for chemistry, and Tupac for life. Both have their codes, their rhythms, their ways of making sense out of confusion.”

As we worked, chanting, visualising, connecting, I was transported back to my own kitchen years ago, where the periodic table was stuck to the fridge door. For my youngest daughter, who chose chemistry for a year at her private high school, it was a map to the universe, a portal to the realm of magic and, in my mind, a gateway to string theory and the poetry of matter. That fridge table was more than a study aid; it was a daily reminder that the world is built from patterns, connections, and the occasional leap of imagination.

But not all classrooms are created equal. My daughter’s private school, with its flexible rules and tailored pacing, offered the luxury of exploration. On the other hand, public high schools seem designed for separation, Koren van het Kaft, as the Dutch say, sorting the wheat from the chaff. The rhythm is relentless, the support sparse, and the outcome often unfair. The social numbnuts rise to the top, building futures where they can bully their former bullies, while the private school alumni-those who could afford the ticket-run the world, or at least sit comfortably beside the bruised and battered.

And yet, something shifted at my kitchen table, with a football analogy, a chant, a memory stuck to a fridge, and the unlikely pairing of Tupac and IUPAC. The boy began to ask sharper questions, to visualise the play before making his move, to chant the formulas with confidence. The abyss became a playing field, the scribbles a playbook, the chanting a magic spell.

Sometimes, all it takes is the right analogy- a football strategy, a familiar melody, a moment of shared humanity, and a wink to Tupac and IUPAC- to turn panic into possibility.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S. For my lateral friend with ribs held together by sheer willpower and tactical mischief, eight goals in one match. Proof that, whether it’s chemistry or football, sometimes you just have to bend the formula and let the magic happen.