CHEM

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail

Last night, I stayed up until mid­night with some clas­sical music and Agatha Christie just to wait for my marks to be released. I’m far from dis­ap­poin­ted but I know there’s room for improve­ment; I’ll just have to work harder! It’s been a great year though – I can really reflect on courses now:

  • BIOL 200 – This course was actu­ally quite inter­est­ing (con­sid­er­ing I’m into cells and all) though it was a little poorly com­mu­nic­ated exactly what was needed to do well. My sec­tion (Berger) did cata­stroph­ic­ally on the section-​specific midterm so we were scaled up. I’d advise reg­u­lar study­ing for this course – it’s a lot of con­cepts and pro­cesses to understand.
  • BIOL 201 – I really dis­liked this course for the sole reason that what was taught was not dir­ectly trans­lated into exam­in­able mater­ial; far too much mater­ial was expec­ted to be gained by doing the prob­lem sets. It almost seemed like lec­tures were extraneous.
  • CHEM 233 – Difficult but reward­ing if appro­pri­ate (i.e. lots) time invest­ment is alloc­ated for this course. It’s easy to fall behind so stay ahead by study­ing early and often.
  • CHEM 205 – Straightforward and simple – there aren’t any tricks to this course. Learn the mater­ial, and learn all of it. Practice the prob­lem sets, they’re harder than the actual exams.
  • CHEM 235 – Fun and easy but decept­ively tough on mark­ing. Take the time to watch all the pre-​laboratory videos and study hard for your writ­ten final.
  • ENGL 221 – Easy, peasy and fun elect­ive course. Covers Romantic era to modern-​day lit­er­at­ure. Should be pop­u­lar with those who dis­like older literature.
  • ENGL 348 – Absolutely amaz­ing. This class is by far my best class at UBC – sym­path­etic instructor, enlight­en­ing class and inspir­ing people. There isn’t a lot of work either, just walk in with an open mind and do attend as many classes as possible.
  • ENGL 357 – Enjoyable read­ings and a great instructor made this one breeze by. I wish it were longer but I’m happy with the fair mark­ing overall.
  • PSYC 100 – Biggest mis­take ever – this course sucked my soul from my body and left me an empty shell. Entirely rote mem­or­iz­a­tion – the exams test on ridicu­lously minute trivia. Would not recom­mend to any­one who has a pulse and a brain unless it was abso­lutely neces­sary. UBC Psychology, work on your ped­ago­gical devel­op­ment! Doing those psy­cho­logy stud­ies was fun though; espe­cially for credits.

I woke up a bit earlier today to have break­fast with my dad and grandma. It’s always nice spend­ing time with them; I find that I’m typ­ic­ally out of the house for most of the time dur­ing the school/​work year so meals are good fam­ily times.

Afterwards, I promptly went to cam­pus to return my boat­load of books on col­lab­or­at­ive author­ship and the Augustan authors (evid­ently, I received 88 on my paper and 90 on my exam where I wrote two essays — one on the char­ac­ter of the Rake and the other on the char­ac­ter of the Coquette through the Restoration and eighteenth-​century). I then met with J where I was a tad on the gar­rulous side, talk­ing about OpenCourseWare and First Year Seminars. I know he’s still look­ing for an Associate Vice President Academic and sev­eral com­mis­sion­ers so I’d look out for those oppor­tun­it­ies. J is driven, smart and dip­lo­matic – I think he’s poised to effect real change this year. I hope he reaches out to S and J for their great ideas though.

Afterwards, I bumped into S at the Minischool office where we’ve got…let’s say…a pickle to sort out regard­ing book­ings for Fall courses. While it will be a phys­ical night­mare (can one of the pre­requis­ites for my assist­ant be that s/​he must be able to lift their own weight in wooden stages?), I’m cross­ing my fin­gers and pray­ing that the book­ings people can help us out. I found out that she might be head­ing to Edmonton which sad­dens me a little, but she’s doing what she’s always wanted to do so more power to her. We joked a bit, had a free lunch cour­tesy of the AMS (who says there are no free lunches in this world? mine had penne car­bon­ara today!) then par­ted ways.

I went to go pur­chase my BIOL 334/​335 text­books which were exor­bit­ant but thank­fully K has assured me that I may bor­row her set for the sum­mer. I get to return my books and get my money back! Hurray.

All in all, not a bad day at all. I’ll be spend­ing my day with S tomor­row doing Minischool turnover stuff. I’m still wait­ing on A to fin­ish his turnover so I can begin Director of Finance duties at SUS.

Seems like I never take vacations.

On a happy note, I found a video of “My Boyfriend’s Back.” It brings back memor­ies of ball­room les­sons with L. Weren’t those fun, L? See the video after the jump.

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Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 AMS, BIOL 200, BIOL 201, BIOL 334, BIOL 335, CHEM 205, CHEM 233, CHEM 235, ENGL 221, ENGL 348, ENGL 357, Family, Food, Literature, Minischool, Music, PSYC 100, SUS 3 Comments

morituri te salutant

Today’s CHEM 205 exam couldn’t have gone worse! Everything I stud­ied in-​depth (i.e. enzyme kin­et­ics, Donnan equi­lib­rium, etc.) wasn’t even covered. Utterly cata­strophic by any meas­ure. I can only hope that BIOL 201 will go a lot smoother, but some­how I sin­cerely doubt it.

Today I dropped by school early-​ish to study and stud­ied with J, N and V at Ladha. It was nice catch­ing up with old friends, but just as nice to sip my Starbucks Doubleshot™ on Ice while return­ing L’s solu­tions manual.

I think I might briefly review PSYC 100 before Wednesday – I don’t want to be utterly unpre­pared but I don’t sus­pect I will do ter­ribly well. Oh well, this term has been some­thing of a dis­ap­point­ment, on the sci­ence side…we’ll see how I did on the English courses.

More light­heartedly, I noticed this link on Lifehacker this morn­ing. I abso­lutely agree that Comic Sans ought to be banned in its entirety. It’s so utterly inap­pro­pri­ately used. And yes, I know, fonts don’t kill people – people kill people, but that never stopped us from ban­ning cer­tain weapons of mass destruc­tion any­way. That’s how I feel about Comic Sans! Ban it for good­ness’ sake, ban it now.

Additionally, I watched a cool 3-​minute talk by Renny Gleeson at TED the other day, and thought about how I’m hyper-​connected (i.e. blog­ging, Twitter, Facebook, MSN, etc.). During this exam period, I’ve become sig­ni­fic­antly more dif­fi­cult to track as I’ve fallen off of MSN and Facebook chat (I still visit Facebook, read Twitter and read my emails though – and, obvi­ously, write in here). It’s been nice! I think I’ll try to be a little more scarce from now on. Enjoy the talk after the jump!

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Monday, April 20th, 2009 BIOL 201, CHEM 205, Food, Music, PSYC 100, Technology 1 Comment

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour

I’m sit­ting at my desk, fin­ish­ing up some review of Thermodynamics in CHEM 205 and frantic­ally hop­ing that I won’t fail.

Nothing really happened today – I’m sur­roun­ded by the soft hum of my com­puters and piles of study mater­ial. The cur­tains are drawn closed, thank you very much, I don’t think star­ing out­side into the gloomy rain­clouds will do me any good. I still have a pile of books leftover from my ENGL 357 research paper – I should go return those.

My brother came home today from lead­er­ship train­ing. It was quiet, too quiet, in the house without him. I won­der how he found it? I think I read some­thing about advanced kayak­ing on one of his itin­er­ar­ies. He was so thought­ful – he clipped me a few coupons before he went. I won­der if I’ll get a chance to use them? I’ll have to remem­ber to check the expir­a­tion dates on them.

I watched Desperate Housewives from 9-​10pm today. It’s a lux­ury, con­sid­er­ing that my exam is tomor­row but I don’t mind. I’ll get by this exam, I think.

I spent some of my breaks read­ing blogs of people I know and sift­ing through their words. I want to know more about people, I find. Everyone’s got a story; I want to read them all!

All this study­ing has made me ter­ribly mel­an­choly. I hope when exams are done that the sun is out and I can “sport in the wind.”

My par­ents brought me home brunch and din­ner today – some­times I won­der if I should mind eat­ing takeout meals alone – whether they’ll be the norm when I get older. I do enjoy fam­ily meals but my sched­ule is just pro­hib­it­ive some­times. I hope I won’t have to eat too many takeout din­ners alone. Though it’s some­times quite nice – gives me time to think and to muse…I do that a lot.

I’m cur­rently listen­ing to “My Skin” by Natalie Merchant. It’s nice and sooth­ing. I’d best be off to study more.

Edit: Is there any­thing Youtube doesn’t have? See what I mean after the jump.

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Sunday, April 19th, 2009 CHEM 205, ENGL 357, Family, Television 2 Comments

hickory dickory

My dad brought me home a Tandoori Wild Salmon Salad for din­ner today, but also went to Sushi Garden for a fourth-​meal with my mum. They brought back some leftovers!

Spicy Tuna Rolls, Dynamite Rolls and Aloe Juice

So I took a pre-​emptive break (pre-​emptive because the break would have snuck up on me any­way) and gobbled down the food with glee while listen­ing to Rogue Traders.

I guess I’ll be stay­ing up late study­ing again tonight.

Saturday, April 18th, 2009 CHEM 205, Family, Food, Music 3 Comments

Or surely you’ll grow double

My desk has taken on a most unkempt appear­ance since the begin­ning of exams which thor­oughly dis­ap­points me. Nevertheless, I think it’s some­thing that ought to be documented.

Or surely youll grow double 2009041820090418img 01121

There are sev­eral things to note:

  1. The coaster sit­ting at the top right corner of my desk – I drink a lot of gin­seng tea now and I hate leav­ing stains on my desk. Anyone who will one day own a home, please – I implore you to invest in coast­ers! Otherwise, you’ll catch me uncon­sciously wip­ing the bot­toms of tea­cups as they con­dense little rings of liquid on wood.
  2. My dual-​monitor setup (thanks to my Dad for the new video card and mon­it­ors!). I can’t get by without them! They’re so use­ful and multi-​functional. I’m a dork, I know.
  3. My Altec Lansing speak­ers. Love them so much – adore the bass I get from them from the sub­woofer sit­ting near my foot, hold­ing up the defunct flat­bed scan­ner. I’m no audi­o­phile but my fam­ily knows I love to study to music.
  4. The mul­tiple USB keys dangling from my desk­lamp. At any point in time, I could have at least three of them there…I use Sandisk, Toshiba and Kingston drives.
  5. My laptop cooler. Anyone who’s used an HP laptop knows what I’m talk­ing about – they’re cheap and mildly attract­ive (why do I make them sound like strum­pets?) but they run hot­ter than the sur­face of Mars. My laptop cool­ing pad (again thanks to Dad!) keeps it fri­gid (so I can run on High Performance and not scald myself or melt the plastic enclosure).
  6. The mul­tiple com­puter mice. One of these days, I’m going to fig­ure out how to use Synergy cor­rectly. Until then, I could always use VNC to con­trol two com­puters with one mouse, but I’m not a big fan of it because my dual-​monitors don’t trans­late well to my laptop screen. Ah well!

Oh! By now you can prob­ably fig­ure out that I’m pro­cras­tin­at­ing study­ing CHEM 205. Why yes, I am.

Saw another video of Susan Boyle, singing “Cry Me a River.” It’s amaz­ing. I always assume everyone’s watched it, but I may as well post it! See it after the jump.

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Saturday, April 18th, 2009 CHEM 205, Television 7 Comments

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