It’s May, so it’s officially the season of college final exams. I’m preparing for my own while also thinking about packing and moving back home for the summer. I have two exams, one in biochemistry and the other in physics… and can I just say that their scheduling has me more than a bit frustrated. I’ve got my biochem exam on Saturday night (!!) and my physics exam on Sunday morning, with less than 12 hours between them. It’s definitely going to be a long weekend. My other task is a French paper which isn’t due until next week. So now that we’ve gotten a handle on what I’m facing for the week, let’s get into how I spend my time!
This morning, I woke up early for a 9am meeting with my organic chemistry lab group. Our last task of the semester was to organize our lab and clean up from our experiments over the course of the semester. Never too late for spring cleaning! I function as a project manager for the group on occasion, as per my background, so I was in charge of setting our tasks for the day. We started out by doing dishes! The dreaded task of an organic lab is washing up all of our glassware and disposing of vials that don’t need to be kept any longer. We accumulated a lot of small samples over the past few months, and it was sad to throw out some of the results of our work, but when we come back next year we’ll have a fresh, clean workspace to look forward to. We did keep samples of our final synthesized products, so those will live in our fridge over the summer. Next, we returned some equipment which had been generously loaned to us from other labs in the department while our own has not yet arrived. As a new lab (I am part of an inaugural group of students under our professor who has newly arrived this year) we are so grateful for the collaborative atmosphere that allows us to perform experiments while we’re still not completely set up. Thanks to other professors and staff in the department, we were kept well stocked. Various other cleaning tasks took up the majority of the morning, but I’m glad that we could leave the space clean for the summer, and I’m excited to be back next year! Next, I grabbed a brief lunch. Today our dining hall had a beach carnival special for the end of semester, so I walked out with a cup of funnel fries and fried pickles. It’s been so long since I’ve had fairground foods, and this lunch definitely has me longing for summer. I can’t wait to be out in the sun again. I spent the afternoon studying for my biochem exam and drafting my French paper. For biochem: We’re provided with problem sets on each topic for homework, so I worked on several of those and reviewed readings in my textbook. For French: I had previously chosen an essay topic and I sat and thought about it for days before deciding today that another topic would better suit me. I’m a passion writer, so I feel stuck until I’ve hit upon a thesis topic that truly speaks to me. I’ve loved the previous essays I’ve written for this class, so I feel some pressure to live up to those standards and truly engage with the material in this final work. Thankfully, I think I switched gears in time and I can pull out something great before the deadline. Working under this kind of extreme pressure always amps me up, sometimes for the worse. I struggle to find time to take care of everything on my to-do list, and procrastination is my eternal enemy. I’ve been making a lot of to-do lists to combat this, as well as acknowledging that sometimes it’s okay if I don’t accomplish every single goal I’ve set out for myself. I’m definitely excited for finals week to be over since I have some fun plans for the summer, but it will be sad to leave my friends. I’m still processing much of what’s happened this semester and the end of this academic year has been a long time coming, so I’m optimistic about my summer plans and can’t wait to bring you all along for the ride.
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The BaronessHey, I'm Shreya! I love to read, write, travel, and drink tea. Disclosure: I am an affiliate of bookshop.org and I will earn a small commission if you click the above link and make a purchase.
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