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!

Just Add Ether

Every “mistake” I’ve ever made in chemistry has, in some way or another, involved the separatory funnel.  Quite possibly the easiest task one should encounter in organic chemistry!  Want me to read the complex splitting on your NMR?  No problem!  Synthesize something that literature says “can’t be done”?  Been there, done that.  Use a separatory funnel without fucking something up?  Not going to happen.

At least the solution to most of my mistakes is to just add ether. 

A little about me –

• I’m a first year graduate student working towards my PhD in chemistry.
• I’m a married gal.
• I’m an older than normal entering grad student.  
• I’m still trying to pick an advisor but I do have my eye on one.  
• Forty-six students count on me to referee their lab each week (and I hate it!)
• I have a giant chick hard-on for all things organic.