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Jul. 20th, 2004 02:14 amWhy in heaven's name am I still awake at this hour, having spent the last 2 hours poking around online, reading about organic chemistry?
Orgo... I thought the pain of one semester of you would have been enough. Lab on Thursday mornings at 0800 (with Bob Paley, thank goodness, not Dr. Roth). Waking up to that dreadful-smelling 4-ethyl-pyridine or whatever it was that was our group's unknown to be determined by chemical tests and spectroscopy. Hours poring over McMurry, struggling not to fall asleep. Struggling not to fall asleep during Prof. Rego's lectures. Those Rablen supplemental problem sets (although some were fun). Impossible exams. And that final: I can't go into Sci 101 without recalling those three hours of hell. What was the class average, 50-something percent?
And somehow, I enjoyed reading online about various lab techniques: extractions, refluxes, etc. Chemistry has a coolness aspect, in the lab, that physics sometimes just doesn't have. As eager as I am to tackle the IDL issues tomorrow promises, doing a multistep organic synthesis is a lot cooler, at least in terms of equipment, than trying to coax a computer program to work.
I must sleep. My advisor wants the upstairs lab vacated tomorrow morning, so there's already half a day gone. I'm going to skp the Physics GRE informational lecture at 1300 as I don't plan to take it for at least a year.
Several hours hence, I will be in great need of caffeine.
Why do I do things like this to myself?
Orgo... I thought the pain of one semester of you would have been enough. Lab on Thursday mornings at 0800 (with Bob Paley, thank goodness, not Dr. Roth). Waking up to that dreadful-smelling 4-ethyl-pyridine or whatever it was that was our group's unknown to be determined by chemical tests and spectroscopy. Hours poring over McMurry, struggling not to fall asleep. Struggling not to fall asleep during Prof. Rego's lectures. Those Rablen supplemental problem sets (although some were fun). Impossible exams. And that final: I can't go into Sci 101 without recalling those three hours of hell. What was the class average, 50-something percent?
And somehow, I enjoyed reading online about various lab techniques: extractions, refluxes, etc. Chemistry has a coolness aspect, in the lab, that physics sometimes just doesn't have. As eager as I am to tackle the IDL issues tomorrow promises, doing a multistep organic synthesis is a lot cooler, at least in terms of equipment, than trying to coax a computer program to work.
I must sleep. My advisor wants the upstairs lab vacated tomorrow morning, so there's already half a day gone. I'm going to skp the Physics GRE informational lecture at 1300 as I don't plan to take it for at least a year.
Several hours hence, I will be in great need of caffeine.
Why do I do things like this to myself?
