When identifying the factors that students credited with thermodynamic stability or instability, the choice seemed to be binary, either there was a stabilizing or destabilizing reaction. In example, 50% of students chose step 2 as the slowest step. This is incredibly telling as students see a loss of resonance 185 as a fundamentally destabilizing interaction. In this instance, an enolate is noticeably less stable than an alkoxide, but since the enolate had a resonance form and the alkoxide did not, students overwhelmingly believed that this step was unfavorable thermodynamically.