Frustration

Frustration is when...

Your chemistry lab partner is so incompetent that the person is incapable of performing simple, trivial stoichiometric calculations that any mediocre grade 11 high school student can do, much less undergraduates in their second term. Is it so difficult to read the lab manual? It's not as if the author used any big words, and the author was most explicit on what -ΔS₂O₈ meant (the lab was on kinetics...).

And of course, one must be kind to one's lab partner lest the other wrecks future labs. Not that the said lab partner can pipette particularly well...and the lab next week is on titration. *Sigh* Oh well, at least it's not difficult to use a pH meter. And my partner definitely better have titration experience, since that was covered in last term's lab. (Aside: I want nice 3-valve pipette bulbs...but of course first-years don't get to use them.)

The worst part is, my lab skills are not particularly wonderful, either, where "wonderful" is defined as the skills of that friend of mine who could add partial drops with ease using a burette, got perfectly consistent (and reasonable) results every single time, and works faster than everyone else. That speaks volumes about the competence of those around me.

I miss decent lab partners...aren't universities supposed to have more capable people than those in high school?