Winter 2018: Academic Epiphanies in Review

After coming out of Fall 2017 moderately unscathed (my GPA only suffered a little bit) I was prepared for the next chapter in my academic career. This semester shaped up to be an interesting one when I registered in November. One of the gems on the docket was Organic Chemistry. If you know anyone who has ever gone through a Bachelor of Science program, walk up to them and utter the words “O Chem.” Watch as their shoulders slump and their face pales. Then listen for the sigh of resignation as they recall the nomenclature and reaction mechanisms.

            After seeing these reactions in the scientists around me, I made a decision that changed the course of my semester. After attaining a B in Intro to Quantitative Chemistry last semester, I decided that I would just be good at O Chem. Imagine my excitement when my grades reflected my attitude. Although I did have a moment of doubt in the lab where I was supposed to be synthesizing ASA.

I hovered over the ice bath, gently scratching the side of the Erlenmeyer flask which contained a mess of acetic anhydride, sulfuric acid and salicylic acid, questioning my life choices. I looked up to see my instructor walking toward me.

            “How’s it going?” she asked in her nonchalant almost bored manner.

            “I am not seeing any crystallization.” She took the flask out of the ice bath and started to scratch the side of the flask with the glass rod in a manner that would have made a BDSM dame blush.

            “So aggressive.”

            “You’re trying to seed it with glass you’re scratching off the side of flask. Here, I’ll add some acetylsalicylic acid.” She shook some of the powder into my flask. A beautiful wad of moist white powder was the expected result. It did not happen. She came back to check on my progress.

            “I am not a chemist.” I said with conviction. She almost laughed.

            “Well, I’ll put it in the fridge. What are you doing tomorrow morning, you could come and see if you have a crystallization.” I sighed. I value my giant break between lectures but I was determined to take home a tiny flask of white powder to show off my chemistry prowess.

            “Yeah, I’ll come in at 10:00.” After sitting in the lab fridge overnight, I still had a green-tinged chemical slurry that resembled nothing. I was instructed to get someone else’s results to report on. That was my lowest point in that class. As it turned out, it was the sulfuric acid, not me. My high point came when I successfully synthesized 100% pure caffeine. I was triumphant! I took home the tiny caffeine flake in a coveted tiny wee bottle. I bombed the lab final but other than that tiny blip was generally happy with my performance. The other science posed its own challenges.

            The one part of the Evolution of Eukaryotes that I was dreading was the Guided Inquiry assignment. The last one of those assignments I wrote was a shit show. The experiment I conducted with a partner was not in line with what everyone else did. The data sucked. And I did not fully understand that science writing does not equal creative writing. Fast forward a year and a half.

I had heard rumours that this course was heavy on the plant-based side of Eukaryotes and that the experiment was also plant based. Being a carnivore, I was not looking forward to the study of plants. I am not a botanist. Taking the word of the past occupants of the course was just bad intel. Rather than doing an experiment involving plants, we were treated to experimenting on little brown bean beetles, which look like lady bugs in conservative dress.

Unfortunately, there were not quite enough beetles for everyone so we had to split the lab down the middle into two supergroups. Which is like a Super Pac with less money and more annoyance. The fun part about this experiment was acting as a bug pimp. We placed two ladies and three gentlemen in three different petri dishes, with different sized dry beans, gave them a penthouse suite in an incubation chamber and let nature take its course. A week later, we had a shitload of eggs. The eggs were counted, which is where the annoyance counting inconsistency came into our super group. The slackers of our group counted the whole bean, rather than the top and bottom. This meant that the analysis that I had wanted to do was no longer valid. While it was disappointing, I still managed a decent grade on my paper entitled: “Does substrate size matter: a comparison of oviposition preference based on nutrient availability of the Bean Beetle (Callosobruchus maculatus).” Spoiler alert, it totally does.

 Bioethics was interesting insofar as the subject matter was controversial. We touched on hot topics like abortion, euthanasia, scientific experimentation on human beings and genetic engineering. This course was more controversial than my Controversies in Science class. I wrote a paper analysing and tearing apart a paper by David Orentlicher. I’ll spare you the details of his paper or the flaws that I perceived therein. I wrote my reflection in a paper entitled “Is David Orentlicher Wrong About Everything?” It started off as a working title, something I could save it as. But the reaction of my prof when I gave him the title was a bark of laughter. The name stuck and he enjoyed it enough to give me a sturdy A-.

There were a couple of highlights in the final of Bioethics. The first involved me quoting Ricky Gervais, although without remembering his name or where I saw the quote, about his analysis of science versus religion. The piece was given in his interview on Colbert. The second was the cartoon sized piece of cake that our prof came in with from a faculty retirement party upstairs. He assured us he would be in and out eating it, rather than sitting at the front smacking his lips and groaning with pleasure. The third highlight was a guy named Ryan. He has a quiet intelligence and I liked being in groups with him because he always had something to contribute. I was nearing the end of my exam essay when I heard the distinct sound of a carbonated beverage opening. I looked up, curious, because it had the pitch of a can that did not contain a G-rated beverage. Ryan had moved to hand in his paper and our prof was nowhere to be seen, most likely due to the fact he was making sweet mouth love to his cake. In Ryan’s spot was a can of Kokanee. I smiled at his boldness. He gathered his exam writing accoutrement and beer and started to leave the room. Our prof came back and said goodbye to Ryan. When he got to the back of the room, he turned to the front, and toasted the prof. “Are you finished?” the prof asked. Ryan nodded, so as not to disturb the rest of us any further. The prof gave him a thumbs up. I have no idea if that was his last exam for the semester or if he is graduating, but I silently wished him well.

The last course was English. My wheelhouse. My happy place where I try to work hard enough to get marks in the A territory. This semester I stepped outside of my comfort zone, away from writing into reading. Now, reading isn’t a challenge for me. I am pretty good at it, including the variety that involves critical thinking which allows me to roll my eyes and keep scrolling on Facebook. But this course was way outside of my comfort zone. The Graphic Novel. I know what you’re thinking, ugh. Superheroes. Or YAY SUPERHEROES! Whichever camp you fall in, kudos. The brilliance of my professor was to keep the course engaging by offering up only one superhero based graphic novel, Marvel 1602. As an added bonus, V for Vendetta, one of my favorite movies that was derived from a graphic novel, was on offer for the group panel project which was worth 55% of my mark. The paper I wrote for that was entitled “Drawing Expression on a Faceless Man.” This course taught me that graphic novels can be literature, how to read comics and the value of knowing the difference between DC Comics and Marvel in a room full of nerds.

My mid-semester epiphany was about the direction I am going to take with my degree. I had been trying to get into the Health Science major but have decided that maybe a general science degree is for me. I think that having a well-rounded, eclectic degree could put me into a unique position of having a broader choice of graduate studies once my undergrad is completed. The bonus of this decision: My dream of medical school is still alive. Worst case, I’ll become a Science Fiction writer.