Almost all of us go through a phase of course-hating during their degree; it's one of the unwanted side-effects of doing a degree at Imperial. The second year seems to be particularly bad for this (it certainly was for me), as there's new work/social pressures and you don't have the luxury of being a stone's throw from college any more.
Things *will* get better eventually; AFAIUI you should get more free time in the later stages of your degree, and it *will* be worth the effort in the end, even if that seems a long way off.
I know that I don't really know what your course involves or what life at Imperial is like, but as someone who went through something that at least sounds similar, is there someone you can talk to in authority about this impending deadline in particular? If you can explain the problems you're having with experiments, maybe they can help you out with an extension.
My only advice is, don't bury your head in the sand - draw attention to your issues. I didn't, and it all blew up in my face.
I second the advice given above - talking to lecturers about problesm with deadlines before said deadlines is a good tactic generally. For the notes you seem to be missing, is there no-one you can borrow/photocopy notes from? Good luck with this, but try not to let it get you down too much, as it will all be over and done with sooner or later
Synthesis lab at IC is a real drag - you do huge amounts of it for half the year and have regular write up deadlines that almost everyone finds hard to meet. Ian - hang in, keep going and you'll get through. The actual marks you get for the write ups don't count for much, it also doesn't matter if the experiment doesn't work (many of mine failed horribly and/or blew up), write up what you can, analyse all the data (even if only lightly) and *skim read the referenced papers*. The time in the library is annoying but I found it made the write ups much much easier.
Hope that helps and feel free to ask if there's naything I can help with. Just don't ask me to do retrosynthetic analysis ]:=8)
Something else - I found knowing a chemist from a year or two above you with access to their old lab notes/reports helped a lot. You sure as hell don't want to copy or anythign stupid but it helped me catch a few more obvious booboos.
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Almost all of us go through a phase of course-hating during their degree; it's one of the unwanted side-effects of doing a degree at Imperial. The second year seems to be particularly bad for this (it certainly was for me), as there's new work/social pressures and you don't have the luxury of being a stone's throw from college any more.
Things *will* get better eventually; AFAIUI you should get more free time in the later stages of your degree, and it *will* be worth the effort in the end, even if that seems a long way off.
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My only advice is, don't bury your head in the sand - draw attention to your issues. I didn't, and it all blew up in my face.
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Hope that helps and feel free to ask if there's naything I can help with. Just don't ask me to do retrosynthetic analysis ]:=8)
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