Category Archives: Education

Back to the books

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In the last week I’ve managed to let my study drop a little bit, but I was back to it tonight. I managed to finish the next chapter of my study, and most of it made sense too, hooray! Trust me, when it comes to chemistry that’s a pretty big achievement. Tomorrow night I’ll watch two lectures just to make sure I’ve really cemented the topic in my mind before I move onto the next chapter.

I’m also going to have to make myself some little flash cards to help with my memory, and maybe even stick up some print outs in the wall in my bedroom. I have four a4 pages of common functional groups for organic compounds to remember, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to that without constant exposure! If anyone has any tips on how to remember copious amounts of information I’d love to hear it!

The main thing is to make sure I don’t end drop everything until the last second again, where I end up looking this sexy when I try to cram it all into my brain before the exam:

She's totally rocking the glasses/pencil in mouth look

Not to mention I have a good friend (no names, ahem…Jo) who can’t wait to say “I told you so” when it comes to the first assessment piece and I’m struggling to catch up. Being able to prove Jo wrong is all the motivation I need to keep up with the study load…thanks Jo!

Somehow I managed to pass

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If you’re new to my blog, you should know that I work full time and study part time via flex at home at night. It can be incredibly draining. Also, this year I became newly single and began to discover myself at the same time. As a result my studies took a back seat and were neglected in a major way. At the end of the term and over the course of 3 days I attempted to learn an entire semester’s worth of content in preparation for an exam worth 60% of my overall marks.

It was a big ask.

Back at the start of June and at the conclusion of my exam I blogged about how thankful I was the term was over, and that even if I failed I really didn’t care. I had accepted that I had completely and utterly pushed my luck this time, and that cramming wasn’t going to pay off. I decided that I was destined to fail, and that it was payback for letting myself lose sight of my long term prospects. It’s quite possible that reaching this level of understanding and accepting responsibility for my actions saved me…if you believe in karma and that sort of thing.

I passed.

Just barely, but I passed. I got a grade of “P”, and after spending some time googling grading levels I discovered that P was indeed a pass. Initially I thought “p” for “pass” was a bit too obvious and therefore couldn’t be right. But alas, it proved to be the case, and I immediately celebrated my results on twitter.

I passed!

Since then, after chatting with a fellow classmate I found out that the subject has a fail rate of 40%, which makes my achievement even more formidable in my mind. I know wholeheartedly the reason I didn’t do better in this subject is not because I found the content beyond me. It’s purely a case that I left everything to the last minute, I didn’t apply myself, and I was incredibly lazy. In my mind, learning a semester’s worth of knowledge over the course of a long weekend combined with passing a topic with a high failure rate proves that my mind isn’t too shabby at all! In a sick and twisted way, I’m almost proud of myself.

Let it be said though – this is the scare I needed. I’m not ever going to put myself under that same amount of pressure ever again. I didn’t enjoy it, and I reached breaking point.

Never again.

Thank god that’s over and done with

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Today I sat down for my end of term chemistry exam, worth 60% of my overall grade for the term. I’m pretty sure I failed.

I should care, but I don’t.

This term has been bloody hard on me. Chemistry at the best of times is a tough subject, and has an incredibly steep learning curve. It demands time and dedication to simply grasp the concepts before you even begin to expand upon them, otherwise your brain will explode. I’m sure of it. No doubt there’s some way to explain that the covalent bonds in your brain would be severed due to the excitement of other atoms that then cause the entire thing to simultaneously combust.

That’s probably why I failed. I just tend to make it up and hope for the best.

I have probably gone through my biggest life change in the last few months, all while attempting the most difficult subject of my uni degree thus far. As a person I have grown tremendously, and I have learned a heck of a lot about myself. Unfortunately, the other side of it was that I had no motivation or desire to dedicate the time to chemistry that it deserved. Not to mention the fact that I work on computers for 8 hours a day for a full time job, coming home to sit in front of a computer again is often the last thing I want to do.

At this stage I’m not sure what I’m doing next term. I’m seriously contemplating giving myself a term off and just taking a break. I know I’m not good at the “break” thing, I”ll be bored within weeks, but that might be exactly what I need right now in order to build up the motivation and desire again to sacrifice so much of my time towards uni again. It’s definitely something I hope to achieve at some point, but personal development could quite possibly be more important right now. After all, I’m not going to succeed if I’m not happy and settled, am I? I don’t want to find that in 6 months time I’m in the exact same position again and I haven’t learned anything. I’m not a fan of the whole “failure” thing, it doesn’t look good on me.

Plus it doesn’t match my eyes.

Tonight I’m seeing a friend who I haven’t seen in a LONG, long time, and I’m totally excited. We’re simultaneously toasting the combination of seeing each other for the first time in years along with the conclusion of my uni term. Needless to say, there will be plenty of drinks consumed tonight. After spending almost 24 hours studying chemistry in front of the computer over the last 72 hours instead of having a weekend, I definitely need to let my hair down.

I think now is a good time to turn on the stereo and open my first drink. Why wait?

Massive fail in the chemistry department

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Chemistry for the average student can be pretty challenging. Imagine someone that has been pretty slack in the dedication department, and who tries to learn content weeks after the lectures plus a week after an assignment was due, and you would have me.

I failed my last assignment.

I’m not sure what the case is, if you need to pass all assessment pieces over the entire term, or if you just need a total pass mark out of the entire term. It’s the first time I have ever failed an assessment piece, and I know it’s not because I’m stupid.

It’s because I’m lazy.

I’ll cut myself a bit of slack. This year I’ve gone through some pretty dramatic things – the end of an extremely long term relationship, moving into a new place, endeavours with the opposite sex, getting a social life etc. I will admit that I have pretty much let my education drop in a huge way. I went weeks there where I would only look at one or two lectures, when in fact there were three or four that had been released for the week. Once you fall behind, it’s incredibly difficult to catch up.

I have an exam next Tuesday which is a closed book exam and worth 60% of the entire semester’s marks. It’s a big big one. I’m still about 3 weeks behind in my course content, and I could have caught up by now but instead I started re-watching all of the lectures from the start of the term. Why? Because I clearly wasn’t grasping the content, and there’s no point moving onto the more advanced stuff if you don’t understand the basic formulas and concepts.

This weekend will be entirely dedicated to uni study, bar one or two minor social engagements. Every night this week I’ve been spending countless hours in front of the computer each night watching lectures. Tomorrow night I will give myself one night to be free from the desk, but that’s all. Next Tuesday night I will be celebrating hard, because for the next 7 days I’m going to be pushing myself hard. Needless to say I’m looking forward to it all being over and done with.

I still haven’t decided if I’m going to take a 6 month break next term, or just hope that the month off between subjects is enough for me to gather up my energy and find some motivation again. I dont want to find myself in the same position next term, especially since I’m thinking of doing the next chemistry subject – inorganic chemistry. Ever since starting uni I’ve been progressively growing worse at meeting the deadlines and dedicating the required study time.

Hopefully this is me at my worst, and I only get better from here.

Res School done and dusted

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Just like that it’s over.

Thank friggin god.

After 4 days of mind-raping chemistry work, I’ve handed in three lab reports and finished with my lab manual. I have learned about covalent bonds, titration, using pipettes, d, s and p-orbitals, and many other exciting things that will put you to sleep. I wanted to sleep  just learning about them.

Today we managed to finish just after lunch, so a few friends from class and I decided to head down to the tavern for a bite to eat and a few beverages to celebrate. They will actually be here for another 5 days as they are doing their degrees full time and have some more classes to do (separate degrees from me though). As for me, I’m free to go home. Woohoo! I did toss up the possibility of driving home this afternoon directly after class, but given that it’s a 6 hour drive I didn’t really want to push it. The drive gets tiring, and mighty boring after a while, not to mention the fact that I had already paid for tonight’s stay, so I may as well use it rather than fuss about trying to organise a refund.

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