A Systematic Overhaul
I do not fall to sickness. It just does not happen, ever. Which is exactly why, now that I have ceased coughing for the time being, I am likely to forget the last week existed.
Keeping my health record clean much in the methods that Communist Russia kept its internal reputation clean is not the only reason this past week has been something to forget. I had what was perhaps the most confidence-shaking experience of my life two Tuesdays ago. That's right, it was nothing other than the often appropriately abbreviated Analytical Chemistry laboratory session.
My crucial mistake was the foolish assumption that, exactly like the organic chemistry lab I had later that week was, the first week of the lab would involve checking in one's equipment and not an actual experiment. So when I was greeted by a sample of an unknown chemical in a plastic vial, my question of what in tarnation I was supposed to do with it was not well met. I proceeded to borrow a laboratory notebook from the exceedingly generous president of my chemistry class with whom I am proud to say I am now on a 'Hey!' status with and went forward with the experiment as much as I was able to.
As it happened, to properly perform the experiment involved taking a visit to the lab at least a full day earlier in order to dry one of the substances in the ovens. This was impossible without time travel equipment, which was unfortunately absent from the spiffy cupboard of glassware and miscellany that my inner chemist rejoices to call its own. So I stood at my lab table and wrote equations with little to no direction, while observing my neighbour chemists, hoping they were somewhat less clueless than I, so that I might follow exactly one step behind everyone else. And indeed they were less clueless, but not enough so that they were able to finish the experiment in the time given. With no one having finished the experiment when the clock struck the half-hour which marked the commencement of the lab director's grumpiness, I shoved unmarked chemicals in my cupboard, cleaned glassware, returned glassware, and locked everything up except my teardrops. I dashed into the streets an emotional wreck, wondering where the justice had gone.
Moose: My name is Moose. I am a chemistry major.
I recited the words into a mirror, wondering if either sentence were even remotely true.
Jim: I don't think you really want to be a scientist. I think you see it as a way of paying the bills. I think you're a composer and a playwright.
Moose: You don't know what I want.
Jim: Fine, I don't. But when I walk down the halls of your high school, I don't see your name on the plaques for the science awards. Just you wait. Years from now you're going to be looking back on these conversations we had and say, 'Wow, I was an idiot. Dad was right about everything the whole time.'
After that thrilling conversation it's been difficult for those thoughts not to cross my mind, if for nothing but my inability to stop focusing on specific things people have said. It may or may not have been his intention, but it has, if nothing else, driven me to see this through. After all, it's only three years. I'm not truly rethinking chemistry as my major, and this week's lab may have even encouraged me to continue with it. The difference this week being that I knew what was going to happen during it before I showed up, and that there were people who, on occasion, said words to me.
Chris: Most mathematicians and scientists can write. Not many journalists can do calculus or astrophysics.
-----
Look, thou critic, I make my decision. How very unique of me. You receive this time, as before, exactly what you are so desperately asking for, reluctant as I may be to provide it this time. Except this time I'll let you go back on it.
To think that we reach a conclusion as such in but a year's time given these conditions, had the other been even a considered option, just think of the disaster that would have ensued. I hope you see the great justice your first decision put forth.
You haven't even read it, have you? Let it be known that I am thoroughly flustered with the matter, though I mean not to show it. It will go on, after all.
Signed, The Management
-----
How much time do you spend at your computer each day? If my computer use since the initiation of my university career has been any indication, the great lack of other things to do has placed many others in front of these portable screens for a large percentage of the waking hours. What has this meant for me? It means that, instead of going out to places around here and potentially meeting new people and finding things to do, I have spent time maintaining a large number of communication lines and friendships with people I no longer see face to face very often. I hesitate to call a good amount of this time wasted, but the sentiment goes unreciprocated disappointingly often.
Our generation is the first with this incredible social networking technology, with the likes of the websites that you are all reading this off of. And we can hardly help it: where there is a market, products will be shoved down throats. The iBandwagon is rolling, and if you're not on, good luck to you and good day.
But let's have a closer look at what exactly you are staring at right now. I'm assuming that will not be too far off from what I am staring at right now, as they are both presumably computers. If, rather, someone has actually bothered to print of this rambling of mine onto a piece of paper, then I am doing my job right, though that seems doubtful. If you are on an Apple computer, look for analogous comparisons, yours is probably worse.
I am running Windows XP. I don't want to get into a discussion about operating systems because not only don't I care, I would lose what meager audience I have. The point is, everywhere I look on the screen, there is shading. The silver bar at the bottom of the screen, the buttons representing the different programs I have open, and within this program itself, Microsoft OneNote, there is an especially prevalent shading aesthetic throughout the whole thing which inspired me enough to write about it. Just imagine how much these companies pay people, graphic artists I suppose would be their title, to simply coordinate the shading patterns on each portion of the display.
For those of you unfamiliar with OneNote, it is an exceedingly spiffy program that is like a whole slew of text documents packaged together in tabs and pages. Looking through the program is essentially like sifting through a portfolio. Unless the room in which you look through your portfolio is very dark with a very bright light on one side of it, however, it is unlikely that the tabs in it would look half so shaded and glossy as they do within this program. Which means that the intent was hardly realism, but rather to employ the most shading possible, because apparently shaded objects look better than objects of a solid colour. This was the valuable lesson I learned as a middle school art student that gives me what little power I have to make anything I draw look remotely like what it's supposed to be.
The truth is, computers and the programs within them are much more pleasing to look at than they were ten years ago. I guess this is because the ridiculous amounts of memory they have these days can be wasted somewhat on unnecessary graphic enhancement. But falling victim to the power of pixilated shading is what I like to call being a tool. If you believe in having lives outside the virtual world, you will join me in lobbying for less visually pleasing computers. Studies have shown that the colour red makes people feel more anxious, hence its use in fast food restaurants, where they want you to purchase and go, so plenty of red should be incorporated. Any combination of clashing variants of greens and browns, however, such as the colours of internal organs, should do very nicely. Want to get involved? Create your own custom design and send it in to someone who knows what they're doing with computers. Start a revolution! Just don't come to me when you've lost all your friends because they like their computers more than you.