Hello wonderful people!
The past few weeks have featured some exciting adventures in getting used to having labs in my schedule again. I don’t think I’ve ever had a fully dedicated laboratory class before, and it’s been ages since I last did a lab in a class. Getting back into the swing of lab work again has been quite eventful!
My organic chemistry lab has been particularly exciting, and I feel like I’m starting to relate to the case studies on “labs gone wrong” in the safety section of our textbook disconcertingly well. For instance, on my first day in the lab, I earned the distinction of being the first to break glassware; then I blew up my experiment in the first explosion of the semester. Then I burned myself while trying to grab an aluminum heating block that hadn’t cooled down all the way during my efforts to clean up the lab. Whoopsies!
One week later I accidentally pricked myself with the tip of a hypodermic needle I had just used to pick up a few milliliters of highly toxic chemical for another experiment, thus poisoning myself and causing me to call poison control for the first time in my life. Thankfully I hadn’t been exposed to enough to cause any major problems, but I felt tired and loopy and woozy all that day, much to the concern and amusement of my loved ones.
Overall, the start of the semester has been a humbling experience. I am learning that there is a lot more for me to learn before I really become super useful in my career. But at the same time, I’m starting to see just how powerful all of the principles I’ve been learning really are. For instance, today I wanted to figure out a way to use my phone camera to take underwater videos without damaging it, and I was able to use the lessons I’m learning in my classes to sketch up a few designs for a glass vessel built from materials around my apartment, and I knew the idea would work! Though I didn’t end up having enough stuff in the sizes I needed to build the device, I know that I can in the future. It’s so exciting to know that I can put my education to work solving practical problems now!
I am a firm believer that learning how to be more beneficial to the people around me is worth all of the explosions and poisoning I may end up going through during my education. While I will, of course, take steps to avoid those particular incidents, I am not going to let them stop me from pursuing my field of choice; the ability to be useful by shaping the world around me is too important to me. I know that education is worth the sacrifice it takes to obtain it and I am so grateful for the institutions around me that allow me to pursue my education- even if I have to sleep off a poison needle or too along the way.
Thanks for reading and talk to you later!
Best Wishes,
Ezra
