The Destruction of Equilibrium

During second period Chemistry, the room should have been a quiet reaction vessel–stable, controlled and ready for learning. Instead, constant side conversations bubbled around me like unwanted by-products of a messy reaction. While my teacher explains how activation energy determines whether a reaction proceeds, the whispers beside me rose in volume, disrupting my concentration like impurities destabilizing a perfect solution. I tried to focus on the periodic trends she charts across the board–the increase in electronegativity, the shifts in ionization energy–but the nonstop chatter pulled electrons from my attention orbit, leaving me unfocused and frustrated. My understanding, once close to reaching equilibrium, kept getting knocked out of balance. By the time class ended, I felt like an incomplete reaction: all the potential was there, but the conditions were not just right. I just wished people understood that side conversations don't only interrupt the silence–it weakens the bonds that hold our learning together.