Happy New Year!

Happy new year, everyone. Happy birthday to my blog, too, now that I think of it.

Thank you for the lone few readers who actually check in one in awhile, and comment. I truly appreciate it.

Slight recapitulation of what happened last year (something I probably should have done yesterday):

• January - April: School term and excitement. Life in probability class. Lots of RBOCs (hey, I didn't know what it stood for back then), and needless to say, procrastination too. Feelings about interviews begin with excessive enthusiam and end with virtual apathy over the course of a few weeks. Little flashes of chemistry: copper sulfate pentahydrate, halogens. This blog is a good place for me to vent and whine (often), too. Despite mostly great professors...first year sucks.
• May - August: Work term, and more excitement that rapidly degrades to boredom. Lots of titrations, some humour, and very much repetitive work. A tedious but necessary business-writing course - I will be taking another one next term. Facebook. Spectroscopy review that is not review. Laments on (my lack of) lab technique. And oh no, work report!
  
• September - December: school term! More classes, more interviews! First time TA-ing a university-level course. Second year is much better than first year, except for a lecture time conflict (curse the automated system at the Registrar). Getting buried alive under assignments as usual. Promises of posts that may or may not actually show up (after I unearth my lecture notes). Putnam. Evils of finals.

Things I hope to do this year:

• For work term: learn some quantum mechanics and classical mechanics. Review thermodynamics. Try not to forget organic or spectroscopy (or analytical).
  
• Schoolwork: get a 95% average or better. I know this seems to be such a sordid grade-grubbing thing, but I was spoiled in high school and first year.
• Academia: be initiated in the art of research. If the professor is willing to have me still.
  

Emo-side which one may feel free to ignore (i.e. "why am I posting this before 6:00 a.m. local time"):
Normally, during the winter break, I sleep. Alot. Call it winter hibernation. But now I am awake. My first waking thought, half-formed, was tinged with regret. Not of events concerning the past year, but of 2006. And now it is 2008. I apparently still cannot let go.

National Olympiad Finals. What wouldn't I give to try that again...more than anything else in my senior high school year, I had truly wanted to go for IChO. And now it is far, far too late.

So I suppose here is another new year resolution: do not dwell in the past - use the lessons learnt to look to the future.