chicca's soup for the soul

It’s been a while

Hey there tumblr. I’m back. Not sure if any of my followers (or random visitors who just happen to stumble upon this page) actually read my text posts, aka blog posts, but I feel like blogging today. So I’m gonna go ahead and type out whatever comes to mind. 

Today is the last day of term two. This sem has been another one of those OMG-it-feels-like-i-just-started-but-hey-it’s-over semester. Seriously, I really felt like this semester went by so fast. I mean, I am still 10+ lectures behind Biochemistry and I still don’t understand half of what’s going on in Computational Chemistry. But it’s too late to panic (or maybe it is time to panic) since finals are just around the corner. Right now the best I can do is ‘keep calm and carry on.’

What triggered this blog post (much like how Grubb’s Ruthenium complex catalyzes olefin metathesis) is something that happened today in my last Biochemistry class of the term ( I cannot overemphasize how happy I am that this class is over). When the professor posted a clicker question, some random guy, whose face was slightly red, started walking down the lecture hall towards the front, and slowly, he started talking, as if he was about to deliver a speech a la Mark Antony:

“I just wanna say something. Enjoy life. Live it with no regrets… No regrets… If you fail a midterm, screw that, just ace the final. Have fun. Enjoy. I just want to say thank you. Professor, you - you are a goddess of knowledge and beauty. Thank you.”

And so shortly after he came back to his seat, the professor asked him for his name, and he shouted it out loud, to which he added with pride and conviction - HONOURS CHEMISTRY. I looked back to see his face again, and being in Honours Chemistry myself, I cannot help but be a tad bit proud of this guy - who clearly is graduating, and probably today was his last day as an undergrad, and Biochemistry was his last class. Though he might be a little bit intoxicated, the guy had some inspirational things to say, and I am sure that he is getting a mix of feelings right now - from happiness, relief, feelings of accomplishment, to sadness and feelings of uncertainty. 

It got me thinking, what am I going to do on my last day of undergrad? Because, around this time, exactly a year from now (and if things go as planned), I will be attending my last undergraduate class, listening to my ‘la ultima leccion.’ Would I visit all the classrooms I have been to since first year and reminisce? Would I sit in a BIOL 140 lab to torture myself and remind me of those painful memories when I timed how fast woodlice run away from light? I do not know. I am excited to graduate, but thinking about it scares me. 

Anyway, I’m gonna go bury myself in my desk and study - I gotta focus first on my final exams and actually PASS third year, before I start thinking about graduation. Haha. :)

what should i do?

i think i wanna be a professor too.

useful tip#1

I recently had a conversation with one of the fourth year Honours Chem students, and I asked her if she has any tips or advice she wants to share regarding Inorganic Chemistry… she told me, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Just make sure you know everything, EVERYTHING, for that class before you write the midterm.”

what is EVERYTHING?

in this competitive world

I asked someone what motivates him to work so hard. He answered, “Every time I don’t work, I remind myself of other people with the same goals as me, who get up that day and start working; then I start working again.”

this isn’t goodbye, after all.

“Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.”

- William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude (an epigraph from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)

R.I.P. Sheila Mae. You will be dearly missed.

dead end

I feel like I have reached a dead end.

Or maybe I’ve just reached my diminishing marginal utility.

Almost three months I have worked in the lab, and I feel like I have done so much, but really I do not know what I have done. I learned a lot though - both laboratory skills, and some chemistry knowledge as well. I feel unaccomplished, however. I guess that’s what real chemistry is about; some reactions fail, some go, and some take a week to finish, only to be left with an insignificant amount of final product that’s only enough to make yourself an NMR sample. I don’t know how the graduate students do it, I mean, I know chemistry is the coolest science ever, but running the same reactions do get tedious, and if waiting around is not your thing, it might be problematic for you. One post-doctoral fellow I have talked to actually told me to “find [my] significant other as soon as I can, possibly during undergrad, and afterwards get a job and get married.” He told me not to be like him. Oh well. Who knows what I’ll do in the future. I find a lot of other graduate students and PDF’s who actually enjoy their jobs.

I’m almost nearing the end of this summer research work, and I am pretty sure this summer would be hard to forget. I might not be as productive as I hoped I would have been, but the drying skin of my right hand serves as a reminder that I handled a lot of solvents, washed a lot of glassware and spilled a lot of chemicals- both expensive and cheap; somehow, it makes me feel that I actually worked hard. Although I don’t really know what’s wrong with it. My left hand is perfectly fine, I don’t know exactly why skin is peeling off the right one like there’s no tomorrow. Yeah I know, it sounds gross, and believe me it looks a bit gross. 

Apparently we get 2 or 3 weeks off before school starts, kind of like a mental health break. I don’t know how I’m gonna spend those weeks, but I’m excited. Excited for what, I don’t know yet. My passport has already expired, so I can’t really go anywhere (not that I have the money to actually go somewhere). Actually, I’m really excited for school to start. I think I’m gonna like the school year that’s about to come. I mean, I start it off by turning 19 (legal!) on the first day of classes. How cool is that? (I know it’s not that cool, really). Third year, here I come!!!!! 

I think I’m gonna go hit the hay now. I actually feel a bit light-headed. It’s because of some person on the bus who put on too much of a very strong perfume; in fact, it’s too strong I can still smell it even now that I’m home, and to think that I have already taken a shower myself, to brush off the smell. 

I find it funny how I start using Tumblr more as a blog, I notice that I have had a lot of text posts recently. And no one’s actually reading! Ha!