Addition of Alkenes: The Formation of Vicinal Dihalides

I am so happy that I am finally learning new stuff in my Organic chem class. We have been going over the basic stuff and I have been bored out of my mind. Today though we started going through the mechanisms of different types of Alkene addition reactions and it is really interesting. I love learning about chemistry and I'm glad that the class is more learning based and less memorization based than I had thought it would be. I mean, sure, you could just memorize the 100 plus reactions that we are going to learn during the course of the semester, or you can do as he suggests and actually think about the material, make connections, and be able to come up with those reactions from information that you know. If you know the characteristics of a set of reactions and you have learned the concepts behind the mechanisms of the reaction then you should be able to infer the mechanisms and predict the products of almost any given reaction. For instance, I had known about Markovnikov's Rule, but I just learned about the anti-Markovnikov reactions that occur in the presence of peroxides. It is very useful information because if you know the mechanisms you can set up reactions to get a specific structural- or stereoisomer of the product.

Also, I am so entertained by the fact that I can sit in the balcony for that class. I guess that says a bit about me, but being easily amused makes my days much more fun than they otherwise would be.