Organic chemistry: one of the most dreaded classes on my list of classes to take in order to meet my dual admission requirements for pharmacy. I'm currently attempting to take a five and a half week course for this during the summer.
Twice a week I go to the campus for a two hour, 30 min. lecture and a lab. That's five hours of lecture and two labs per week.
5 weeks? Really, administration?...Really?
I happened to mention the length of the course to my academic advisor a few weeks ago. When I uttered the words "5 weeks", her jaw dropped. She even had that expression on her face that said, "Really, administration? REALLY?"
Even my professor complains constantly about it. He'd rant, "When I taught this summer course in UM, I had 8 weeks and 10 hours a week. 5 weeks is NOTHING! I don't know what the hell they were thinking when they made this course".
Good Lord...this course is intense. He rapidly jots down mechanisms while lecturing at a minimum speed of 200 mph in a somewhat understandable Spanish accent. Wanna review the concept in the textbook? Well too bad; you're gonna have to go for a two hour hunt for it because he teaches them OUT OF ORDER. That's my major beef with this class; there's no set order to the madness. One reaction would be in Chapter 10 while the next five are in Chapter 8. "It's on alkene reactions", he says. Alkene reactions are ALL OVER THE PLACE!!! *rages*
I usually have pretty high standards when it comes to taking a course, but right now I just trying to pass with a C. Man, how I've fallen...good thing each of the two exams we had in this class were only worth 15% of the total grade. The average for these sadistic torture fests were always around 30. As in...30/100. *dies*
Ironically enough, the labs, for once, are actually saving my grade. Those quick two page analyses are easy points, plus the labs are actually *gasp* fun! Waaaay better than those 14 page monstrosities that I had to conjure for Gen Chem I and Gen Chem II.
I guess this is pretty much all my fault. I could've saved money, sweat, and pain by taking the 3 year dual program instead of the 2 year program. Advantages to the 2 year program over the 3 year? Less time in undergraduate school, which saves money. Well screw that. I have a full scholarship that I'm 72% sure won't transfer over to graduate school. Sadly, the scholarship doesn't cover summer classes, so I just lost $3,000+ paying for a class that I could've taken for free had I done the 3 year plan.
Never mind that I have $6,000 in outside scholarships that completely pays for this class...never mind that I'm still taking this class for "free". That's $3,000 that could've gone towards food or textbooks or somethin'...
Ah, NOW I remember why I'm in this mess. I stared down the invite to the two year program and literally said, in my head, "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED", fully knowing that I could turn it down and go for the three year program instead.
If I ever get ahold of a magical ocarina or a functional phase distorter, I'm gonna use it to go back in time and dropkick myself for thinking that.
Hmm...I do get bragging rights for finishing undergraduate school in two years...
...*thinks*...
Nope, I'd rather have the $3,000 and a less stressful workload over the bragging rights that I'll most likely never utilize. Welp, too late for that--the final exam is in exactly one week and the PCAT is less than a month.
... emotion_facepalm
Heh...despite all this, I still find this class way more interesting than Comp 2000. emotion_awesome
/rant
I'm not done. I'm editing this later. Right now is dinner time and I'm hungry. My lunch was a granola bar; too busy finishing up a lab to eat a proper cafeteria lunch. :U
------
6/15/12
Pollo Tropical tastes 10x better when you're hungry~
Just my luck. I was going to get some ACS studying in tonight, but a storm knocked the power out for the whole night. I went to Barnes and Noble earlier yesterday to look for some study materials and found Organic Chemistry I for Dummies. Amazingly enough, a three hour read of that book re-taught and reinforced two weeks (uh, four lectures?) worth of content in a way that I completely understood it. Equilibrium reactions favor the highest pKa value? Jeez, knowing that could've earned me an extra 14 points on my first exam. Those acid base reactions are going DOWWWWWWN. And they better--the ACS final is worth 45% of my final grade...*shudders*
I was really looking forward to tackling some ACS practice problems while my parents were raging about not being able to watch the Heat game. I think they won...I could honestly care less at the moment (but I'm still rooting for them~). Instead, I spent the last 40 min. of my laptop's battery life starting a new game of Earthbound since the SNES emulator takes up far less power than the GBA emulator. Bummer...I wanted to name my favorite food "Omeletes" just like in Mother 3, but there were only six letter slots and naming it "omelet" would've been weird. I don't wanna go through the game reading, "Eat some omelet and go to bed" or "Ness started craving some omelet"; it's grammatically awkward. :/
The power started fading after I beat the first Starman Jr., so I spent the rest of the night playing Nightmare in Dreamland for the first time in several years. Ah, it was one of my favorite games for the GBA. When I was in 4th grade, it took me an hour to beat the final boss because it never occurred to me that I had to jump up and hit its weak spot instead of standing in the corner and spamming A. Too bad my DS batteries only lasted about an hour. I promptly went to sleep after that.
I guess the power came back sometime this morning since the ceiling fan was rotating when I woke up. Guess it's time to get back to my semi-hiatus from Gaia. I really can't have that much fun on this site (or while playing videogames) with the constant threat of failure looming above me. After I complete the ACS in six days, I'm gonna play zOMG for the first time in months and do something fun. Well...after that I have to go into PCAT study mode, but at least I know most of that material. Four chapters of PCAT review a day isn't that bad compared to the derp that is Orgo I.
Oh yeah! I should also go buy SSBB next week to celebrate. Convincing my parents should be easy; if not, I could buy it myself using leftover lunch/textbook money in my wallet. (Not sure how I'm gonna explain to them how I got the game, though...) I rented it from the library a month ago and I gotta say: it's all the fun of Melee, but with more content and more to do. I've heard that Melee is superior to Brawl due to the mechanics or something like that, but I could care less. My inner completionist is itching to clear the Kirby Air Ride-styled checklist. I could rent it from the library, but it has these obnoxious scratches that prevent me from doing Classic Mode or anything past The Lake Shore in SSE. Gotta get that game...it's been four years and it's about time I owned it.
And now, for a completely irrelevant gif:
