First thing in the morning, I got my chemistry mid-term back and I did really, really, REALLY bad on it. Way worse than I thought and way worse than most of the rest of the class. I tried to just not think about it the rest of the day because it made me feel so terrible. At the end of the day, I met up with my lab partner to weigh our product from Monday evening's lab. We also had to take the melting point. We were supposed to get at least 0.9 g of product, and we got closer to 0.5 g. That's not good. Our professor, Dr. Verl, was coming in and out of the lab, talking with some TAs and preparing for next week's lab. We just kind of ignored him, and did our work. Daniel came in to the lab to meet me before we drove home together. He came in with a drink, and set it on the bench next to our product. I told Daniel he wasn't supposed to have it in the lab. Dr. Verl walked in, and immediately said "what is that drink doing on the bench?" This is the chemistry professor that is very scary (see my post on March 22). He is really strict and expects a lot from his students. And is very strict about all rules- especially in the laboratory. Daniel put his drink away. Then we took the melting point. This involves putting a tiny capillary tube into a melting point apparatus- a metal box with a thermometer sticking out of it. Dr. Verl stood there for a minute watching and said "I'm just making sure you don't set something on fire." Great. We turned it on and turned the heat up. Dr. Verl left the room, and a few minutes later, it exploded! The thermometer shot out of the metal box and it shattered to pieces. My lab partner and I looked at each other and I asked him "Do we tell Dr. Verl, or just leave and pretend it didn't happen?" We are both scared to death of him, as is every single other chemistry student. But we didn't just leave. I decided we had to tell him. He would know it was us anyways. I went to find Dr. Verl and told him what happened. He was surprisingly okay with it. He just went and got us a new thermometer. As he was reassembling the apparatus, he asked, "so how did you do on the test?" I said not good, and he asked why. I told him I hadn't had time to look it over yet. I was so mortified. I'm sure he asked me because he knew I did so terrible and he wanted to know why. He left, and we finally took our melting point. It was almost 50 degrees lower than it was supposed to be. Which is also really, really not good. I wanted to go home and get into bed and stay there forever and ever. But I didn't. I went home, took a nap, and I woke up feeling slightly better. We went to the Rockies game that night which cheered me up and helped take my mind off such a terrible day. And they won, which was good. I'm feeling better about the whole thing today. It's one test, there will be others this quarter. And the whole melting point apparatus breaking wasn't that big of deal, or at least Dr. Verl didn't yell at us or anything. I just felt so embarrassed and incompetent. Like Dr. Verl must think I'm so stupid to do terrible on a test, and the lab, and break a thermometer! I guess it only gets better from here.
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