Tis the First Day of Classes, and All Through the Campus...

...are students. And professors and grad students and postdocs and staff and sundry such people. And high-school kids on tours. But you know that.

As usual, I like posting how the first day of classes went. So here goes. The general pattern is not surprising: half an hour is spent talking about the syllabus, and half an hour on random introductory information.

Organic 2
Somehow, I scraped by organic 1. I really don't know how Organic 2 is going to turn out. (And, goodness, there's still Organic 3.) The professor seems pretty nice so far, though, which is nice, except he seems a little mistake-prone as well. Sadly, the first topic of the term is IR, and there was very little new information in the lecture. (But I don't wannna memorize the wave numbers at which this specific bond stretch occurs!) It didn't help that I kind of sat in the course before, of course...

Inorganic
The professor in this course seems decent as well, although he did spend 45 minutes on the syllabus. The remaining 15 minutes was spent on "introduction", also known as "Inorganic chemistry is very important. Yes, very important.". The professor made quite a few references to organic versus inorganic chemistry as well (e.g. "unlike organic chemistry..."). I wonder why. I can predict that the first few lectures is going to be bad: Lewis dot diagrams and VSEPR, anyone? (Yes, people still use those things. Just not in "real life"/research.)

Real Analysis
Finally, some math! Wheeeee! A few minutes on the syllabus, and the rest on more useful things. The class reviewed the properties of countable sets today: very familiar territory, but also undoubtedly useful. This is the course where I realize that, crap, I forgot far, far too much calculus. You know it's bad when it takes more than a second to remember what "onto" (surjective) means.

Analytical Lab 2 (tutorial)
The lab itself is 6 hours a week. And that probably isn't enough time to do the experiment. This may give rise to ideas as to why we have an external tutorial as well. The professor spent the entire time discussing syllabic material, as well as the importance being prepared in the lab. And good advice it is, too; in this course, unpreparedness spells certain doom. Doom, I say!

The student gets to pick certain experiments out of a list to do. I think I'll have trouble deciding (ooh, GC! LC! Voltammetry! And other cool gadgets! *squeals*), although I don't think I'll do ICP or AAS because I've been running those all work term. But this will be the subject of another post.

Intro Differential Equations
I skipped this class to attend the analytical lab tutorial, sadly. The course looks good, though. Mmm. Differential equations. Also my only other math course this term, which makes me sad because I have been math-deprived all term last term, and this term doesn't have nearly enough math to remedy the lack previously.

Unfortunately, I will have an integration quiz next week. Need to get all those rusty, gunk-encrusted integrating gears into action soon: my idea of integration involves more limits and summations than, well, actually integrating a given integrand.

TA-ing
No TA-ing this term. I don't know why. It's probably a good thing, though, all things considered; no marking means lower probability of going insane.

Project
Amazingly, the professor who agreed to let me work for him remembered! Thus I got a crash course in special relativity today. Despite of being physics, it was surprisingly good: a decent amount of math. Example: Lorentz transformation as an operator that satisfies certain requirements, ok. Lorentz transformation as this weird physical thing, not so much. Screw all the paradoxes, just give the math to me straight. Well. Maybe one paradox or two. No chemistry yet, but we'll get there.

My job isn't that glamourous: I make pictures. Well, figures. Graphs. And not particularly extravagant or pretty ones. But the process of producing those figures will be interesting, since it involves more math than physics. The downside is, I don't think I can dodge the use of a CAS this time. Oh well, it's time I learned. Yay for half-decent help files?

My Social Experiment
Funny. Nobody noticed that I was a little better-dressed than usual: I wore a blouse instead of a t-shirt. Admittedly, I still have jeans and sneakers on, because there's alot of walking with heavy stuff today. And admittedly, my circle of acquaintances are not known for noticing attire (mathematics and chemistry majors, yes?). Hmm. It's too early in the season for a skirt (which is a terrible idea in a lab, anyway). So blouses and jeans it'll be for the next while. I'll give irregular updates as time goes on.

Another post will be up tomorrow: thermodyamics (redux), biochemistry, and analytical 2, the lecture. This is going to be a busy term.