Still in Week One

I'm 2/3 through my first week of school, and I'm already lost in one class. My biochemistry class right now is a total mystery. The professor moves through the material so quickly, we got out 10 minutes early. When I try to read the textbook I can't get through one paragraph without my mind wandering because it's so boring! We're learning about all different types of sugars- sucrose, glucose, fructose, galactose, cellulose...... it goes on and on. They all look the same. I have no idea how I'm going to ever memorize the structures. And just as I predicted, the professor mispronouncing words is driving me crazy. It really takes away a lot of your credibility when you pronounce words wrong.

Chemistry Frontiers, however, is going pretty good so far. Our first class was yesterday. I discovered that the 3 hours twice a week that is scheduled is only a small fraction of the class. Those days are lectures given by different members of the Chemistry department. Outside of that we have to meet with our group of 5 and perform experiments and write reports and do research. The professor in charge of this class, Dr. Verl, is a nightmare. He told us multiple times that we better not B.S. because he will know. We better know what we're talking about before we come to him with a question or turn in a report. And not just on the surface- we better know everything in depth. He also told us that protocols are for idiots and we better not come to him saying we read something in a protocol (a protocol is directions- like a recipe you use when you're baking). He says that real scientists use their brains and come up with their own method based on knowledge- not on someone else's work. That is a bunch of crap. I work in a real research lab, and we use protocols every single day. In fact, we have had meetings in which the major topic of discussion is that you better read the protocol and use the protocol because that's how we make sure everything we do is standardized and can be repeated. If every scientist came up with their own method from scratch, we wouldn't make any progress. So I wanted to tell Dr. Verl that what he is telling us is B.S. But I didn't. He assigned our groups and our project. My project involves synthesizing a filter (the kind used in reverse osmosis to purify water) and figuring out how to manipulate the pore size based on reaction conditions. Seems simple enough. I've already started to do research and there's a lot of stuff out there. I've heard from everyone that this class is terribly hard. It's extremely time consuming, the professor is just plain mean and rips your report to pieces, and nobody finishes their project in time. But I don't care. I'll get through it, just like every chemistry and biochemistry major did before me.

I have begun to practice my piano piece and I'm afraid I may be in over my head. Debussy is very difficult to play well. And this piece has a lot of triplets in one hand with eighth notes in the other. It's so hard to play those right. It's nice to have some motivation to play again. I think Daniel enjoys listening to me practice too. What a reversal- Daniel isn't taking any music classes this quarter, and I am! He doesn't have to practice at all, and I do. Weird.

It's my last Week One of Winter Quarter ever. I hope I can push through until the end and stay focused.