Nightmare Chemistry Project

This has been a rough day. This morning I was really busy at work, and then I went to school and it got way worse. My chemistry project is going to be so much harder than I thought. Our professor ended class way early, after only about 40 minutes. So I was thinking I was going to have lots of free time. It didn't really turn out that way. Our group used the time to get together and plan our experiment. We have to present a detailed plan to our professor tomorrow morning at 9:30am. After about 90 minutes, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do, but we had a few holes to fill in. So we went to Dr. Verl's office and asked him a few questions. It turns out we had maybe 20 percent of our project figured out. Between this evening and tomorrow morning, we had to do a ton more research. We found a patent with very clear instructions on how to make the reverse osmosis membrane that is the main part of our project. But our professor wants to know WHY. We have to explain why we are using each reagent, why in that order, what temperature, how much, how long... it goes on and on. He asked us questions today and we all kind of stared into space in silence. We had no idea how much more research we needed to do. So we left about an hour later with our brains completely fried and a long list of questions to research by tomorrow morning. So, it's 9:30pm and I'm still at school. And our group is meeting at 9am tomorrow morning to discuss what we are going to tell our professor at 9:30am. Less than 12 hours away. I will be so ready for this weekend. The good news is that I got incredibly lucky with my group members. Every single one of us is pulling our slack. Everybody is committed, everybody is doing their research, everybody shows up to meetings with information to contribute. I know that's not the case with other groups because I have heard friends complain.

This quarter is going to be really hard, and not just because of that nightmare chemistry project. The way Daniel's schedule is, we hardly ever see each other. He has class in the evenings and works during the day. I have class and work during the day, and most evenings off. So although we have committed to eating dinner together every night, it's usually cook, eat, and run. We never go to bed at the same time, and we never wake up at the same time. In fact, usually one of us is already out the door before the other one is out of bed. So we see each other in passing, during meals, and on the drive home. But we don't get to spend any meaningful time together. Normally the weekend was our time to catch up, but Daniel is working on Saturday. At least we have the Martin Luther King Day holiday to spend together. I thought Daniel was going to go skiing, but it looks like he is going to be teaching a lesson that day. Maybe we'll go out on a date or something. From past experience, I know that as the quarter goes on it will only get more busy. I'm already counting down: 8 weeks until the end of the quarter. And then 10 weeks until I GRADUATE!! And then two more years until we can have a baby! Maybe it's a little early to start counting down for that.