Playing the Game
Mar. 15th, 2006 22:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillTomorrow is the second OChem exam of the semester.
I've studied all week for this one, every day since Saturday. I spent two hours between classes today poring over my notes and arguing synthesis problems with Salim. I've spent what feels like days creating the notecard I'll be clinging to, like a shipwreck survivor with a board, tomorrow morning. I'm too burned out to study right now, and too tired -- so I'm about to go to bed, and spend maybe an hour tomorrow morning doing a quick once-over review.
Sure, I did poorly on the last exam, but everyone did. Really, everyone did. I need this exam partly to bring up my grade, and partly to reassure myself that I really can do this stuff. So I should put in some effort on it.
But it does not escape me that what I'll be doing tomorrow is going head-to-head in a competition with the professor, trying to see whether she can outwit me. I have a feel for how well I can perform, and I'll be looking to vault that bar too. It's all a game, all of it, and I get really sick of it sometimes. I don't care whether I can get benzil to react in acetic anhydride and hydrochloric acid and get a decent yield, or whether the zinc catalyst will stick like tar to the gunk I'm making. What the hell will it matter in a year?
But if you want to continue in the game, you have to play along. And I want to continue -- I like the battle of wits, against myself if nothing else, and the prize is good at the end.
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we synthesize 2-chloro-4-nitrobenzylic acid. Or something.
I've studied all week for this one, every day since Saturday. I spent two hours between classes today poring over my notes and arguing synthesis problems with Salim. I've spent what feels like days creating the notecard I'll be clinging to, like a shipwreck survivor with a board, tomorrow morning. I'm too burned out to study right now, and too tired -- so I'm about to go to bed, and spend maybe an hour tomorrow morning doing a quick once-over review.
Sure, I did poorly on the last exam, but everyone did. Really, everyone did. I need this exam partly to bring up my grade, and partly to reassure myself that I really can do this stuff. So I should put in some effort on it.
But it does not escape me that what I'll be doing tomorrow is going head-to-head in a competition with the professor, trying to see whether she can outwit me. I have a feel for how well I can perform, and I'll be looking to vault that bar too. It's all a game, all of it, and I get really sick of it sometimes. I don't care whether I can get benzil to react in acetic anhydride and hydrochloric acid and get a decent yield, or whether the zinc catalyst will stick like tar to the gunk I'm making. What the hell will it matter in a year?
But if you want to continue in the game, you have to play along. And I want to continue -- I like the battle of wits, against myself if nothing else, and the prize is good at the end.
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we synthesize 2-chloro-4-nitrobenzylic acid. Or something.
