University general chemistry introduced all these wonderful rules the universe followed and everything suddenly made sense and all was right with the world. Then organic chemistry spent class after class explaining how it was all BS and how every rule had so many exceptions that they weren't actually rules anymore, and the walks back from class were gloomy and sullen.

Organic chemistry in a nutshell.

As someone who had done grad school in chemistry.....yes. You thought MO theory could explain most things but then there's reactions that (presumably) go against Woodward-Hoffman rules. Then there's other rules that go against other theories.

Maybe we just need to solve the Schrodinger equation. Haha.

A scientific model is valid within its limits of applicability. We will likely never be able to establish natural science models that escape this, even in physics.

Chemistry is just the peg and hole game children play with for adults

I would've learned chemistry a lot better if someone told me up front that the rules were just heuristics

weeps in physical chemistry

That shit fucked me up....

That's true of pretty much everything. As John Von Neumann put it, "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations."

And that's why I dropped Chemistry at the last minute my first semester

My brain would short circuit. The irony of just getting something right to, then, realize it's complications.