You may have noticed that I haven't been on this blog for a while. You can have three guesses for why, but only if all of them amount to "third year chemistry."
Ah, third year chemistry. I could write odes to you. But then again, I could stab you in the eye. I could take you on a nice picnic! But I could also poison your drink when you're not looking.
Suffice to say, I have conflicted feelings about chemistry. Since it now takes up a majority of my time and brainspace, perhaps it isn't so strange that my feelings about chemistry are largely dependent on what time of day it is. To best illustrate this progress of feeling over the course of an average day, I have helpfully constructed a graph. But before I let you see it, I'd like to give you some background so that you can best understand this graph:
1) I'm doing a research project in chemistry this semester in place of a more academic unit. It involves doing real research work under a supervisor.
2) This research project, intended to replace a single unit out of the four we do per semester, probably takes up about the same amount of time as all of the other three combined. My day is therefore generally centred around being in the lab.
3) The project I'm doing involves slow reactions that are left alone for about 3 days before I can even check whether they've worked or not.
4) Out of 10 reactions I've put on to date, I've had two successes and eight failures. Ergo, failure is common.
5) Research work is never done. Whenever you think that you're done for the day, something else will come up.
And now you're caught up. Enjoy the graph.
