Clayden is Heavy!

As a matter of fact, so is Housecroft and Sharpe. Ah, the joys of the first day of lectures. Obviously, not much new material is covered today, but still, it's nice to be back on campus.

Group Theory - Fairly simple stuff today, defining what a group is and whatnot. However, the professor is, so far, pretty awesome. (All bijections on the empty set still constitutes a group; imagine that...)

Combinatorics - Also a pretty good professor thus far; the first assignment is already out (woo!). As this is going to be mostly new material for me, the course is going to be fun.

Organic 3 - Again, a knowledgeable professor. Crappy material, however - nomenclature?! Boo, hiss. (Yes it has to be done. No it doesn't mean that I have to like it.) Also, some of the nomenclature was redundant (really, at this point, if we don't know what a phenyl group looks like, something's wrong*).

Kinetics - I've had the professor before, although he probably doesn't remember me (it was a large class). Anyway, apparently this course begins with gas properties and statistical mechanics rather than kinetics outright, which is just fine. Lots of math, I am hoping.

Organic Lab - Check-in, of course. I should've taken a picture of my microscale glassware kit! It was adorable! Sigh. On the other hand, some of the glassware in my locker were...um. Gunky. Nobody expects pristine glassware in undergraduate labs, but still, it's not good when mysterious, not-necessarily-white solids are flaking off from half the glassware in the drawer. Fortunately, some of it came off with judicious application of acetone. Still, eww.

Apparently I am also going to be TA-ing/marking two courses (TA for one, mark for the other), as well. Fear me, first-years! (Or something like that...and some of the students won't be first-years, either.)

Stay tuned tomorrow for more first-day stuff.

Incidentally, I took a peek at my computational chemistry lab material (class later this week); the reaction? "Ooooh." (There'll be a final project. Despite not knowing much, to say that I am excited about it is to put it mildly.)

Meanwhile, there's paperwork and some assigned work as well. I need to review stereochemical assignments, i.e. Cahn-Ingold-Prelog and D/L stuff (oh noooooo). To work...

(Reminder to self: Talk to research supervisor. Talk to program supervisor.)

*On the other hand, since the professor makes biomolecules alot, he probably assumes a knowledge of "(small) biologically relevant molecules" with respect to nomenclature, e.g. amino acids. Needless to say, I've forgotten all of them. What does glycine look like again? :P