MiSURA

Here's how my day went yesterday.
I hopped on the Greenie (the campus shuttle bus) because I never walk to class since I have no motivation and it takes a good 15 minutes for me to get there. Yes, it's probably the short legs. >_>;; I went to stats and amazingly stayed awake in that class ! minus 10 of the minutes. Afterwards, had lunch with Alice and a bunch of other freshies. Printed out some stuff for Case in Point and headed over to Hovorka Atrium. That's the entrance I always come in from. Actually, there are many entrances into the atrium, but that's the view of the entrance I like best. =) Then I take a seat in the hard-rock, uncomfortable chairs to look over the lab. It's a continuation from last week and I was pretty confident that I'd be able to carry out the stuff in the lab b/c it was mainly distilling stuff that I already did in Dr. Lee's lab. We're basically working on purifying our solution and lots of steps are taken in order to purify it. Including extracting water from it using anhydrous sodium sulfate. And that's what it looks like ^ ^. Then after that, all that yellow, urine-looking solution was filtered through a vacuum. So far, Jing and I were doing very well. We were like high-fiving each other and the TA & prof. were like, "good job!" [pats on the back]. But.... now came the most difficult part (which I thought would be the easiest part for me). We set up our hood just like it is there. And once the fraction distillation began.... the most important thing is not to have the solution "bump". My setup is perfect. The vacuum is working. It's condensing... and then suddenly ! around 130celsius, my yellow solution bumped like CRAZY and my product was basically contaminated and still impure. So I started over again. And waited patiently. Jing's just sitting there watching her reaction happen. So I'm thinking, "Alright. It'll work this time." The TA and Prof. assure me that now it's all better. It won't bump again. And waddya know. it does !!! And that was around 6:10pm. And the lab ends @ 6:15pm. So do you think I got out of lab on time? No way. I walk back to Northside (another 15 minutes) in time to get dinner with Amy (my new little sibling ~ wheeeeee ^ ^). Then right after that I head over the worship practice for the Koinonia Retreat. Finally get to my room around 10:45pm. did you catch that? 10:45PM !!!!! I was absent from my room for over 12 hours. That's just ridiculous. I hate the month of February.

Lookie. I straightened my hair, too. Didn't turn out exactly straight. But for the most part it is. =)

Haha. But at the same time I love it because this keeps me busy and not bored and wasting time. I hate that, too.

btw.... I really like my ochem lab professor. I hear that he'll be a real mean person when you really screw up in lab. But I screwed up kinda bad yesterday. Sure, I didn't break anything. But I definitely did mess up. I was afraid that he was gonna bite my head off because of what other students said. But he was really assuring and helpful. And because I looked so worried and scared, he just told me one more time, "Don't stress. It's normal to have your solution bump." =) Yay. Maybe I'll ask him for a recommendation. ^ ^

And yes, I do take pictures during lab. Sometimes I forget like what color things were, how to set this/that up. So taking pictures of it is a reminder for me. =) I did that in research last semester, too. Very helpful. I could write a scientific journal with just my pictures! Haha.

I am SSSOOO loving all the snow here in Cleveland !!! I love walking from classes in the shining sun and having the snow blind my eyes. Haha, okay maybe not the latter part. But definitely I love feeling the freezing breeze and being able to feel so clean. Just b/c the snow is sssooo white! I know I won't shut up talking about the snow. But I really like the wintertime. Every winter there's more memories. Even more than the summertime. Weird, huh.