My Glamorous Life

In celebration of National Chemistry Week, I’ve decided to join a fun, little carnival!  Not the dirty carny type but almost just as fun.  You can check out the carnival at See Arr Oh’s blog.

Your current job.  I’m a first-year grad student in Chemistry.  I’m still working on picking my research advisor so I can’t give you any awesome, gooey details about my research.  I currently TA two general chemistry labs.  I have 46 students and they are all 18!  (Yikes!)  I wasn’t a typical undergrad student – I started college when I was 21, after a failed hair stylist/bartending career, and it makes teaching traditional students very interesting.

What you do in a standard “work day.”  Since I am not yet researching, a typical day includes going to classes, grading the never-ending pile of lab reports, lesson planning and playing my own version of survivor (going after a research advisor that is only taking one student, out of 10 that are actively pursuing him.)

What kind of schooling / training / experience helped you get there?  After high-school, I went to beauty college because I wasn’t college bound.  I barely passed my senior year of high-school.  The guidance counselor and teachers encouraged me to go to tech school because I would never make it in “real” college.     Jerks!  After realizing that those people were full of shit, (how is someone suppose to excel in high-school when the faculty at this small country school are more concerned with Friday’s game than teaching anything) I went to a community college to take random classes.  Long story short, I found chemistry and fell in love.  For the first time in my life,  I was AMAZING at something!  I have a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry & ACS degree certificate.

How does chemistry inform your work?  Chemistry is my work.  And my life.  I’d say it was a life-saver actually!

Thanks for stopping by to check me out!  I love reading these stories – if you haven’t written one yet, you better get on it – NCW is sadly only once a year!