I have lived through days that were determined to suck before, but yesterday was the first time I felt the full force of the cosmos align and zoom at my face, claws extended, cackling like an insane witch on acid and a shiny new broomstick.
It started when I walked into Cell Bio. I was joking around and fake yelling at John for wearing a beanie when I had just given him my old hair glue and dyed his mohawk a beautiful and shocking shade of blue when I hear Das Uberbittchen say "Wren, good to see you awake!" I finish my sentence to John, wonder quietly to myself exactly when I became the star for the National Lampoon's-style sequel to Groundhog Day, and turn to reply to her. I was going to be polite, but something in me snapped when I heard her say to one of her friends "Wow, she NEVER hears me! Tee hee!"
My eyes narrow and become angry, so the rest of my face naturally follows ("I've seen your eyes try to kill people, Wren."- My chem lab partner. But I get ahead of myself.) She sees me, and begins to turn pale as she feels me hate at her with every cell in my exhausted little body. "Will you stop saying that to me?" It was not a request.
"...B-but I've only said it TWICE!"
"And it wasn't funny then, which magically makes it less funny upon repetition." With that, I storm to my seat and start a second day of notes on enzymes out with the phrase "STAB. FUCKING STAB STAB STAB."
After that, however, the day seemed like it was going to improve. Cell Bio was uneventful, lunch wasn't bad, and chem class was more review of stuff that had been pounded into my head Freshman year. So I figured I'd breeze through Chem lab, come home early, and work on my MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF HOMEWORK.
Okay, in all honesty, assuming that was probably my first mistake, but that doesn't make Chem Lab any less hellish in reality. It just means it was EVEN WORSE in the confines of my head.
It sounded like it was going to be fun. It was an acid-base titration lab which used common household products as the analyte, and it seemed pretty laid back...even, dare I say, interesting. (Which should have been my second clue. Ah, hindsight.) This was also the first year anyone had ever done or taught the lab.
Here's where the Chem jargon comes in, so bear with me: We had been told in class that we were supposed to use just enough analyte to get an equivalence point between 20-40mL of titrant. Under no circumstances were we to use more than 50mL of titrant because he didn't want us to have to refill our burets in the middle of the experiment. Unfortunately, he knows both my lab partner and I have taken the chemistry class that is ENTIRELY TITRATIONS. When it all started, though, we assumed we'd be operating under the same set of rules.
We chose two products to analyze: Coke and Tide. We've been told that if we dilute ~25mL of Coke to 50mL with DI water we'll get the equivalence point where we need it. Aaaand, we don't. We get one at 10mL. So we call over the professor. "Huh. He says. Okay, you need to use less. Try ~5mL." It never occured to us that he was going to be dead fucking wrong, so we remade out solution, reboiled some more Coke, and did the titration again.
And got an equivalence point at ~3mL. =_=;
So we tell the prof, and he says "Why didn't you tell me I was wrong?" "Because I assumed I could trust you, Nesh." So we do the titration yet again with straight ~50mL of Coke. By then, the first hour of lab has gone by, and we're getting a little stressed. This time, we get an equivalence point at ~10mL, so Nesh decides that no one is allowed to use Coke for titrations and tells us to start new with something else. Which means that we have just completely wasted our first hour of lab and have two hours to basically start from scratch.
At this point, the bitter internal monologue kicks in, and I start wanting to ask why not only were the recommended values useless, but was there an analyte that was impossible to titrate under the required conditions in lab AT ALL? I mean, seriously. If you're making a new lab, shouldn't you test it out before letting the students dive on in?
So we move on and titrate vinegar, which luckily happens uneventfully. At this point, it is four o' clock, and we have 50 minutes left in lab. We should be done, but because of the Coke fiasco we have to analyze one more product. So we take the recommended value of Tide, mix it into the DI water, and let it heat and be all stirred so everything mixes up properly. I'm sure you can imagine that it takes time to prepare the solution.
So it gets done, we run a test, and get an equivalence point at 45mL. The recommended amount of Tide was wrong again. So we had to mix up another solution using .50 grams less than previously, let it cook, and try again. At this point my eyes start trying to kill people for the second time that day, and I am so angry that my chemistry goggles keep FOGGING. Luckily, we get an equivalence point at 30mL this time, so we set up for our careful titration. It's 4:30, but we figure we'll be out right at the end of lab, no problem.
Well, we run the titration and get a short, but shallow equivalence point at 30mL. Nesh sees it and goes "No, no, you need to keep titrating. I want to see the pH down around 2." At this point, the pH is about 11, we're stuck in a buffer zone, and we have...5mL of titrant left to dispense?
"Refill your buret and keep going." My lab partner and I want to DIE, because it is now 4:45, and we should be cleaning up. But we do as he says and keep titrating, but the solution is EVIL. Finally, at 5:10 we have finished up the titration. There are no fewer than THREE equivalence points and we have used 100mL of titrant, and the pH is still above 2. Our graph looks like hell because every time we dispense some HCl, the pH of the solution will drop, and then spend the next 30 seconds to a minute slowly rising again. Unfortunately, we have to wait until the pH has stabilized to proceed, so we're stuck sitting there, STARING AT IT WITH HATE.
"I want to DIE," I muttered at one point, curled into a fetal position on the lab bench, goggles fogged, 400mL beaker of .10M HCl dangerously close, staring at the slowly rising pH on the computer screen.
"Why?" says my chem professor. I try not to fling the HCl at him-- or worse, cry. To him, what we were going through was oh so very fascinating, but all I could think about was why didn't you idiots test this shit out beforehand?!"
He finally lets us clean up, and before we go, he asks us about what we analyzed and takes notes. So we tell him that not only were the initial values we needed to make the Coke solution absolutely WRONG, but that it was also completely useless in the experiment. "We won't be using that again, then." Oh, and the Tide? The initial value was .50 grams too high, and there are three equivalence points, only one of which happens between the 20-40mL mark. You have to refill the buret to complete it. He writes on the chalkboard "3 eq pts?". "What, do you not trust our work," I ask? "No, it's just that I don't want to get yelled at if someone else does it and doesn't get three."
Oh, so it's just that you don't trust our work. Okay.
Then, as we're leaving, he says "I know you guys didn't want to stay late, but just think: You've made sure that this will go so much more smoothly for the other labs."
I am ashamed to say that hearing that made me even more angry.
So I went home, collapsed, and ended up playing KOTOR for three hours instead of doing homework. I woke up early today to get it done, and I'm skipping chem class to eat pizza and blog this.
And that, boys and girls, is the backstory to explain how it was even POSSIBLE for me to come up with "Darth Brooks."
NOTE TO SELF: Update this banner.
