I suck at Analytical Chemistry!

I had my first official practical session for Analytical Chemistry today. Judging from today's title, you can see that everything is not smooth. It's a complete disaster and I was the last to leave the lab, again. The lab session was supposed to end at 5pm but I took 40 minutes longer to complete. One of the tutors, a ph.D student, had to stay back with me and I was really grateful to her. She's really nice and I feel so bad for dragging her time as she had to travel around an hour to get home. She even helped me search for the required instruments and washed a few of it for me at the end.

Actually, it's kind of embarrassing to admit it but I had done dozens of similar experiments before. Then again, it had been five years since I had done any practicals so my techniques are a bit rusty now. Furthermore, in polytechnic, practicals were done in groups of four or five so work was split and it took less time to complete an experiment. Here, practicals are done individually and you are expected to prepare the required reagents yourself. Unlike in polytechnic, all the reagents were already prepared by the lab technician. I should have prepared all my reagents before I start doing the experiment. However, I had already start preparing my samples before I heard that bit of 'news'. Imagine the shock I got when I heard that. I was totally unprepared and went into a mad rush after that. And to make things worse, I was new to the lab and totally had no idea where everything is. I couldn't even find a simple measuring cylinder and had no idea where to top up my distilled water bottle! Everyone else were like so familiar with everything. I'm the only third year student in that class who is also a new student. Guess that's the only disadvantage of getting exemptions.

By the end of the practical, my haphazardly tied hair had come undone and I think I looked like a mad woman. I expect myself to get very low marks for this experiment as my accuracy was not there. I overshot the make-up mark a couple of times and did not bother to re-do the sample. My only aim then was to complete the experiment and get some results.

The sky was already dark when I left the school compound at nearly 6pm. I gave my housemates quite a scare as I did not inform them that I'll be late. They called me on my handphone but I did not answer because I did not hear it ring. Next time, I better inform them if I'll be late. Then again, I hope there won't be a next time. I aim to finish earlier for the next experiment.

By the way, my hot water tap is still not working. No one came to see to it yet. Sigh...