Halloween in Chemistry

So, my teacher told us that if we all dressed up (except for two people) then he would give us 5% extra points on our next exam. I wanted to dress up as a gypsy, but I didn't get some other stuff I needed in time, so I instead wore my pajamas, Winnie the Pooh sweater, put my hair in pigtails, and carried around Therapy Bear.

I really wished I had gotten around to putting a good costume together. Everyone who showed up today in chemsitry was dressed up. We had two missionaries, Cookie Monster, Donald Duck, a hippie, a mad Surgeon, and one of the students dressed up as my teacher, Ty. It was so funny, becuase he sat on the front counter, saying all the things that Ty says, and playing with the stuff on the counter. It was so funny, and Ty got a kick out of that. Ty dressed up as himself in the 70's complete with a blonde wig. It was great fun! And then, just because I have to mention it (I apologize because it is crude) a guy walked in wearing a box that said "Mammogram" and "Place here" under two circles. As crude and unnecessary as that was, it was worth a chuckle. We also got candy. It was great fun.

I likes Halloween! Happy Halloween!!

Pic of the Week

It'll probably now become pick of the month, becuase not only do I never visit my own blog but my computer freezes up when it's changing the picture. So, all of you who are bored with a sleeping kitty, tough. She's going to be there until I get around to change the picture.

So. . . er, that's about all I wanted to say. . . .Now I'm just rambling to ramble because rambling's so much fun. . . .

Book update because I can do it:
Finished The Dark is Rising, and am now reading Greenwitch (very interesting)
Finished Evolution and Mormonism, but I still have to finish outlining the chapters. Still, hooray! I would have enjoyed it much more if I didn't have to do stupid outlines. Still, it was an interesting read. . .I'll have to reread it when I have time, and just for fun.

Now, I have to start reading a collection of short stories for my final assignment in English. :P As interesting as it may be, I just want to read whatever I want to read.

*sniff* I just want to write my story!

Back to the Happy Past

Yesterday, being our Harvest Break recess, Mandi and I went to the elementary school to help Mom out with the book fair. Not only did we have fun in the book fair, but we bought the school cafeteria food and ate it with Stephanie and some of her other classmates. Then Nate and his friends came and sat down with us. We then went out to recess where we played on the jungle gym and teased Nate. Oh, we also played hopscotch. It was so much fun! I miss recess. And, the food was really good. Mandi and I concluded that the school takes care of you when you're cute and little, but once you become annoying and bigger they stop feeding you slop.

All the same, it was a lovely way to spend a break. And, I got a book too! The Lightening Theif, along with two bookmarks. One has this demonic worm on it that says book maggot, and the other says "Don't Judge a Book by its Movie" Lol. They make me happy. Well, off to do somemore homework that I didn't do over the break (only because I couldn't. It wasn't until last night that I got the assignment! You know, some teachers procrastinate just as bad as us students).

Tally Ho! The Defective Minion

Blah!

I may have ranted on this before, but I can't remember and I need to rant a little more on it now.

So, my lab teacher decided to be like all the other lab teachers and do a quiz on the lab that we are doing that day instead of last week's lab. WELL, before I was doing well, becuase I actually understood what was going on in the lab, and the questions at the end of each lab helped me to further understand why we did what we did in lab. As such, I did good on the quizzes. Now, I got back my last quiz, the one that we took on the lab-to-do-that-day, and I didn't do that great. I got the score (in the B-range) that I usually got on my quizzes in Basic chemistry, and I deserved those because I didn't even understand the material before or after the lab.

This is frustrating to me, becuase if the quizzes are set up as they currently are to make sure that each person does their reading, it's very pointless!!! You cannot carry out ANY of the experiments unless you have done the required reading before! It is a must! And I do the reading, but I am not a textbook reader. I do the reading, but I don't necessarily understand all of it. My understanding comes from the teacher explaining it in human terms (the textbooks use something else, whatever that is!) and then me doing the problems, or carrying out the experiment. I mean, if we, as new Organic chemistry students, are going to learn something new, shouldn't the quiz come after? In all of my other classes, quizzes were given AFTER you learned the stuff that the teacher showed/taught you.

I guess I'm just grumpy becuase I'm actually doing well in this class (instead of scraping for an A) and now this stupid set up is going to make it seem like I'm not as good as I really am. That's silly, I know, because I KNOW I'm doing good. I'm understanding everything we do in lab and class, and the points I miss are only because I missed one or two minor details. Does it even make sense to quiz people on something they don't really understand?

Okay, okay. Maybe I'm blowing it out of proportion. After all, that last quiz was set up so that it dealt with what the book says. But still! I'm doing good! I wouldn't be as annoyed with this current set-up if the quizzes weren't worth as much as the labs!!! Not to mention, doing the quizzes after showed to me that I understood it, and when we took our first exam I was confident in it. I walked out of there feeling good about it. Because I was able to do the quizzes, I was able to do the test.

Okay, I think I'm done. Thank you for listening.

A Pleasant Surprise

Finally, after thinking about it for weeks, I went to the library to write more of my story. As I was writing, flipping back and forth in my notebook to make sure I wasn't forgetting any minor details (a really sad thing for me to do because I haven't been writing), I got to a page that had a little note written in the margin:

"Look how far you are now!--Love, Debbie."

So, thanks, Debbie! That made me really happy. And so you know, I got three more pages written, but a whole lot of other things figured out, and a couple notes of parts I need to fix when I get around to typing it. Thanks a bunch!

And, yep, the library is a good place to write. I'm really going to try to do it more often.
Content and happy, Jekka G. Senoj

Mmmmm, food. . . .

Last night, I had the best dinner by far in little Cedar City.

The Meal:
Mandi's Pork Chops
Biscuits
Corn
Mashed Potatoes
Mandi's gravy

And to top it off, pie. Not just any pie, but apricot and cherry pie made by the house's host Junior. And then the night was wrapped up with some accordian songs that he played for us. It was great fun, and great food.

I think I'm going to go have some more leftover pie. I love pie. Pie is good. Pie is tasty. Pie is healthy. Pie makes me happy (but not as much as water!).

Off to munch, Jekka.

A truly good Friday

So, in organic chemistry, I'm paying attention to the lecture when I realize that I'm starting to get confused because he is showing us the same thing over and over again, and I'm wondering if there's something important that I'm missing. So, I'm paying even more attention to the lecture, when I begin to wonder if the reason it sounds the same to me, that all the reaction models he throws up on the board are the same, is because I actually understand the concepts.

Well, he throws up a particularly hairy-looking reaction and proceeds to show us how it happens. Without telling us a thing, he starts banging around in the fume hood in the lecture room, knocking over things, picking things up, and then balancing a box precariously on his hand (a big box). He sets the items on the desk, and then shows us that "size matters in a reaction". He holds up each of the objects to flourine, chlorine, and bromine, the objects getting bigger as the atom gets bigger, until he holds the box right up to the atom we're talking about (mercury, which I might add is very electron poor) and exclaims that it is a honkin' big atom. He then takes the box over to his two "carbons" that represents our reactant, and smashes the box down on top of the carbons and asks, "How is the water molecule (demonstrated by a weirdly folded tissue he named Casper) supposed to get in to donate electrons?" And I said to myself, "Self, the only way that water is going to get in is through the bottom." Which is what he pointed out.

I know none of this may make much sense, but I had to write it down somewhere. That demonstration of size with a 22.4 L wooden box answered a question I had on why some compounds form triangles (called epoxides). It was a big "Ah ha!" moment for me. On top of that, I talked to my friend as we were walking out of class, and she agreed that all the reactions he puts up are the same to her. She said that she just goes with what he keeps telling us, over and over, "Look for the electron-rich and electron-poor sites, and push your electrons" and that's what she does. It made me feel better becuase that meant that I was understanding what he was showing us. (Remember: Structure confers reactivity)

So, it's been a good Friday. I know now that I understand what's going on (forget Markonikov, that's so confusing), I understand how to push my electrons to predict a reaction--I just need to practice so that I'll be more than ready for the test--and I know that size does matter. Two crumpled up pieces of paper are going to get squished by a big box.

That's all folks! Well. . .for now. . . .

Weekends aren't just long enough

I wish there was a third day to go along with Sunday and Saturday. I went home this past weekend for Stephanie's baptism, and it was so crazy and hectic that I didn't get around to calling up Mastah and Fiend. Saturday was taken up with celebrations, and losing at chess to Nathan, and watching Mike and Chris run around in blankets "eating" all the kids; and then sunday rolled along with church, dinner, and then that stinking long drive home. That weekend just wasn't long enough!

That extra day should be called Nemsday, meaning the day of laziness. . . .

On a plus, I read a ton of Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper (first book of The Dark is Rising Series). 'Tis a good book. I like it lots and I can't wait to find out what happens next!