Almost finished week four of yet another semester of school with nothing out of the ordinary to report. However, the next three weeks will be the real test of time management and my goal of anti-procrastination (what is the antonym? working ahead/rush?) as the midterms, labs, assignments and term papers flood in one after another. Some things never change.
On the flipside, some things do. Probably the biggest change is that most of the people I know from the faculty of science are no longer here. Everyone has moved on to bigger, better things or switched faculties. It has definitely been a motivating experience once I realized that I don't want to be an undergraduate forever. Van Wilder, I do not envy you...I pity you.
Technically, this entire semester is filled with options since that's all I have left to complete my degree. I chose two chemistry classes to complete a minor (might as well) and the others purely for interest sake. But despite the option nature it feels a lot harder than previous semester. Anyway, here's how I will be spending my days for the next 3 months or so:
CHEM331 - Inorganic ChemistrySo far the lecture material has been pretty straightforward. A lot of review of molecular orbital theory from first year chemistry that I took oh so long ago. The weekly labs have been quite fun in a nerdy way. I always enjoy working in the lab, getting my hands dirty (literally) while enhancing my understanding of the material. In this course we perform simple qualitative chemical analyses on unknown samples to identify what they are. So we get some unknown solid sample (most of them are solids because we are focusing on transition state metals) and we have to figure out what it contains (ie. zinc, iron, silver, chloride...). The fun part is in narrowing down the possibilities and the satisfaction of arriving at the right conclusion.
CHEM373 - Quantum MechanicsThis class is definitely the most abstract and is
prima facie the most daunting course I have this semester. Not surprisingly it is also the driest. I've had to revisit my old friend calculus that I haven't seen since I was a froshie (lots of freshman review this term). We don't have to derive any of the equations but he shows us the derivations in class just for fun...oh goody. The one good part is that the detail from this class makes the brief trip through quantum mechanics in Chem 331 seem like a walk in the park.
HTST383 - History of the Cold WarThe name says it all. From WWII to the current War on Terror, this course will cover it all. Quite intersting so far with a great British professor. Love his accent and his sense of humour. Two term papers worth 90% of the course mark will mean i'll be doing quite a bit of reading in the next few months. Good thing I love war history!
MDSC501 - PharmacologyVery interesting class. It whets my appetite for medicine and also ties in with a lot of stuff I did in my summer research. Now I understand why my supervisor used various drugs like isoproterenol or simvastatin in her experiments. Every lecture is filled with interesting facts. For example, today we talked about the drug atropine as an antagonist (inhibitor) of muscarinic cholinergic receptors. These receptors control functions like central nervous system excitation, heart function, gastric and salivary secretions, smooth muscle contraction. Anyway, our prof referred us to the classic action movie "The Rock" starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery. He said that the nerve gas that Gen. Hummel had was some sort of irreversible anticholinesterase that overloaded muscarinic receptors and will, among other things like causing the victim to salivate uncontrollable, stop their heart. He said that the chemical in those large needles that Nicolas Cage has to stab himself in the heart with was atropine. The atropine reverses the muscarinic effects and acts as an antidote by maintaining heart rate.
The only drawback of this course is that the large amount of material covered per lecture will make studying for tests a real pain.
PHIL313 - BioethicsSo far we've discussed the morality around the abortion debate and we've moved into the area of surrogate mothering. Future topics include prenatal screening, cloning, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, human research ethics...all very interesting stuff. The philosophy style is taking me some getting used to. It's taking me a while to read a lot of these position papers and I'm not used to analyzing arguments and stuff. It has also gotten me thinking about where God fits into all of these issues. I'm finding that my reasons for taking a certain position on a lot of issues, like being pro-life for abortion, will not stand up to the tests of moral reasoning. You can't just believe something "because God said so". The reliance on human intellect to create a system of morals is very discomforting in some respects. Living a life without God and His standards scares me because of the overwhemling number of grey, unsolvable areas. Almost anything can be argued in a way to make it seem reasonable.
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