The Worst and the Best and Thanksgiving

So I hit rock bottom with the 65% on the biochem midterm. Seeing the answers, I just wanted to bang some sense into my head. I didn't do that, but rather went on a Xenosaga marathon. I made it through an entire chapter, and probably played at least 10 hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday.

The best part was being able to escape from school for a while, to go to Chicago and just be with my family and know that they are there for me, and to be grateful for being blessed and being allowed to do so badly on a test without being killed, or losing scholarship money, or whatever, and being allowed to choose what I want to study (and even change my mind last minute)... In this way Thanksgiving is the best time of year for me to appreciate these things, because this time of the year is always a joy for me. For those people who can no longer enjoy Thanksgiving with loved ones, Thanksgiving time must be one of the most depressing times of the year. Parity isn't something that can be created though, and I just accept that I am better off than most people in the world and I must be sensitive to others without being too pitying. The best thing is to be honest with yourself, because lies hurt more than truths.

So, being honest with myself, I can still love chemistry and bomb a chemistry exam. I can still graduate in 3 years and enjoy my years in college. I can still foster my language obsession without being a language major, and not regret it. I can still have 5 billion crushes on people and yet still never imagine myself ever having a boyfriend/girlfriend (or crossdresser!). I can still be a ranter on Blogger and not have anything to say to you.

The Good and the Bad

I thought I rocked at life. Really. Everything was going so well, with the 100% on the Analytical Chem. exam, meeting professors who actually want me to work in their labs, having gas chromatography run so smoothly, a good grade on the sixth lab report...and then I hit today. And I still didn't get very far after working for 7 hours+ on my A-chem lab report for Monday, Mastering Physics hates me, and I didn't study any biochemistry today at all. And Michigan lost to Ohio State! Other sports news was pretty good otherwise.
Also my sister got into U of M! We can take over the world now! And Thanksgiving is on Thursday! If only I can make it until break...
I can't wait until next semester. Hopefully tons of cool stuff will be happening. I will also have FFXII and intermediate Orgo. And ballet. Woot.

I am stressed.

I haven't been sleeping well the past few days and I think I am worrying way too much about the future. If only I didn't get a B on that anthro midterm...I think that the practice test score of 60% for Analytical Chemistry freaked me out more. The true/false questions were treacherous. The saddest thing was that I had already gone through all of the HW problems for all of the 9 chapters beforehand, and I still got screwed over. Well I better study and become more anal.
The HPLC machine officially hates me. We spent 4 lab periods instead of 3 working on it, and we still didn't get good separation on our gradient. It is evil. At least gas chromatography works.
Today I was supposed to meet the professor I hope to do research under. It didn't happen because 1) he had recently moved out of the Chem building to the Med. Sci. building 2) I couldn't find the Med. Sci. building 3) I didn't receive the email that told had his phone number until after I had tried to look for him. Luckily enough he is still willing to meet me. Maybe he is in truth a scary person. Haha. I hope it works out because I only got one other response, and the person was retiring so she couldn't be my mentor. I could also look at the Biochemistry professor list instead of the Chemistry professor list for once. I am an idiot as usual.

Random Post: 10 things (1)

So since my life still isn't interesting, I decided that I would try to change things up. This idea is based on the "5 things" challenge or whatever they have at Livejournal. So here I go, hopefully it is enjoyable.

10 things that I shouldn't do that I do anyway (in no particular order)
1. Think to myself out loud, in public.
2. Talk to (or yell at) inanimate objects, such as my computer.
3. Run too many programs on my computer at the same time, causing it to almost blow up.
4. Pick at my pimples.
5. Try to harmonize while studying and knitting at the same time.
6. Eat by my computer (there must be so much shit in my keyboard).
7. Become obsessed with people and start "stalking" them
8. Download music off the internet (though I do buy CDs too).
9. Zone out of conversations frequently, many times forgetting what people say.
10. Hide in my room (and conjure up evil spirits, I wish).

10 things that I can do that I am proud of
1. Multitask.
2. Play multiple instruments (though not at the same time, which would be awesome).
3. Whistle.
4. Identify pitches by ear (though my ear for tuning has disappeared).
5. Read articles/stories/etc. in Spanish.
6. Knit/crochet things.
7. Make chinese knots. If you don't know what these are, they tend to be made out a slippery but thick string, and a lot of them have beads and tassles attached to them, and they tend to hang from doorknobs or car mirrors or as wall decorations.
8. Beat RPGs (I think I have beaten over 35 now).
9. Make oboe reeds that play.
10. Pass Chemistry courses.

By the way, I hear that they are offering Chem 420 next semester. I think I might die of happiness.

Happy November!

Somehow November has just crept up on us without us noticing. Really. I can't believe I have lived this long with the bad luck I had on Monday. It's probably because I locked myself up yesterday, or on Halloween, and protected myself from the evil spirits going around. Wait, I am evil. That doesn't make sense at all.
So Monday started off with a fire alarm going off at the Chem building before class started. I only saw the bunch of people outside and didn't hear any of the sirens or anything. Then there was the "everything that could go wrong went wrong" day at lab. First of all, we were redoing the experiment because our unknown sample read a fluorescence value above our standards. You don't have to actually know what this means since it isn't that important to the story. Anyway, while our lovely vitamin tablet mixtures were stirring in flasks on the lab bench across from us, one of the flasks broke and started leaking. The glass basically cracked from the impact of the magnetic stir bar hitting a bad spot on the glass. So we had to remake the three samples (yay for mortar and pestle and smelly vitamin tablet mixtures). Then we thought we were done when my lab partner noticed that some of the riboflavin in our standards did not actually dissolve. We had to remake all of our standards and retest those. Thankfully we didn't have to retest the unknown and the vitamin samples because we hadn't disassembled our fluorescence machine. By the way, those machines are impossible and like to torment us poor lab students by not working half of the time. We also found out that we could not get electrodes sensitive enough for our special project, so we had to find a new project. In addition, the GSI who was grading our 5th experiment lab reports couldn't give us our grades back because everyone failed the lab report because all of our results were bad. Then there was the biochem midterm that was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I really thought I got a 70%. Finally, my online physics HW website decided that it rather not take answers anymore and I just couldn't stop laughing. It was just so horribly funny.
Well today I got my exam back and I got a 84%! But I still have a physics exam and a horrible lab report to write up for Friday. I HATE STATISTICS! Oh, and there is always physics lab on Friday, which I hate more than analytical lab (which is saying a lot). Yay for another time-wasting endeavor.
Plans for November: Pass my exams, write a good paper for Anthro, play lots of Xenosaga, finish my sweater, find a professor for research, practice my oboe, try to remember the Croatian that I tried to learn, SLEEP A LOT