Tag Archives: university

Thank god that’s over and done with

Posted on by
Reply

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?

Res School done and dusted

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Continue reading →

My hand is cramping…

Posted on by
Reply

…and if your mind went straight into the gutter, it’s not what you think.

I am so sick of writing lab reports! For every experiment we write up in class we have to do a lab report, consisting of a title, aim, theory, method, analytical data, results, discussion and conclusion. The experiments we have been doing so far are pretty basic, and they’re still taking up to approximately four x A4 pages to complete. All of that is handwritten notes on paper, which is then passed in to the teachers for assessing.

I haven’t written this much in years!

Thankfully today I managed to get the lab report done so I didn’t have any homework, but I’m still thinking about getting a head start on writing up the report that we have due first thing in the morning. Cause, you know, the first thing you want to do after two days of straight writing is to do more writing. Argh!

Two more full days of this and then it’s back home to the coast for me. Beach, big bed, and umm…no chemistry? Oh, except that apparently our exam block is in about 3 weeks and I’m several weeks behind in my lectures.

SHIT.

The winner is my prison bed!

Posted on by
Reply

I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do tonight. My options were to either retire to bed early, or to go out on the town in Rockhampton. I chose an early night.

Today was my first full day at uni, and my brain has been absolutely fried. We were in the lab from 9am through to 5pm this afternoon, with only one hour’s break in between. Other than that, we were either discussing chemistry laws, or conducting experiments.

Nitrite solution

The pink colour meant we had added too much of the HCl solution, but I didn't care, the colour was awesome!

Continue reading →

Living it up College style…kinda

Posted on by
1

“I wanna go home!” I cried into the phone only mere minutes after having arrived at the university campus. “It feels like a jail cell, and I don’t want to go and get dinner because they will look at me funny!”

First day blues, just like out of a movie scene.

As well as working full time, I study a Bachelor of Science part time via long distance education. Generally this means that I spend far too much time in front of a computer or staring at text books, however, as I’m studying chemistry this term it actually requires some on-site laboratory work. Lab skills is part of the overall assessment for the term, thus I now find myself on uni campus preparing to go to “school” for the first time.

To say I’m nervous would be an understatement.

Continue reading →