incoherent ramblings

Organic Chemistry 242.. it shall be the exam that forever remains unnamed (after this post, of course). I fought valiantly, but realized yesterday morning that my training was grossly insufficient to battle such a formidable foe.

Note to self: TRY HARDER, SELF.

I am off to stuff as much inorganic chemistry in my head as possible.. and find out if it is possible to inject caffeine directly into my veins. I'm so hard.

If you show up on Friday and happen to view an inarticulate, incomprehensible new post on this site, do not worry. I am merely in the process of spontaneously combusting, and like Fawkes the phoenix, will arise from the ashes anew.

guitar

When I'm studying, I like to have music in the background. However, I find that when I have music with lyrics in it, I often get carried away with the words, and forget to concentrate on the notes in front of me.

Sometime in the fall of 2005, Andrew Smith came to Charlottetown Community Church to put on a show. It had a coffeeshop feel, with the couches in the Space pulled right up to the front, low lighting, and little white Christmas lights surrounding the stage. It was just Andrew up there, or I should say he and his guitar. He played like no one I've ever seen before.. it was like that guitar never left his side. I don't quite know how to describe it.. some musicians clearly own their instruments, and the instruments do what they tell them to, and they're very good at it, and everyone is happy. With Andrew, it was as if he was in conversation with his guitar - they were working together. He didn't strum the guitar, he plucked at the strings; no, plucked isn't quite right.. his fingers pranced along the strings, and sounds came out that I didn't even know an acoustic guitar could make.

As sorry a description as that was, I can assure you that the experience seeing him live was extraordinary, and at the end of the show I bought his self-titled cd for my roommate's birthday. I rediscovered it last night while studying, and found it most conducive to concentrating; he occassionally sings some lyrics, but for the most part it is instrumental.

For more info, and probably a better description of how he plays, check out:
http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.asp?epk_id=21096.

quote

This one time, my professor from my Research course emails me. Which is normal, because she's really cool, and I like to pretend we're tight. Anyways. So she emailed me to ask if I would mind if she could quote a piece from one of my papers for her first year class next year. I says, "Mind! Are you kidding! Read the whole paper if your little heart desires!" ..except, that wasn't quite how I said it. So I thought to myself, does this make me a quoted author? And then I got really excited.. not bad for writing it at 2:30 in the morning.

I wrote the paper on the ethics of growth attenuation therapy (google it). Here's the piece that she wanted to quote:

"One can never completely separate individual beliefs and science. Everyone who is involved in science is a human being, and therefore each person comes with their pre-conceived ideas, religious backgrounds, and individual beliefs. Regardless of how objective one tries to be, there will always be bias present, simply due to the fact that science is carried out by humans, and ethics and ethical dilemmas are interwoven as part of our being (and gratefully so, as it prevents us from doing many things that had we not been born with this inherent sense of right and wrong, would be considered extraordinarily inhumane and unjust)."

Now, I'm no literary critic, so this could be a piece of crap, but I enjoyed writing it. I never realized before this year how much I love putting my thoughts in written form. I just finished writing an exam in Religious Studies, and I said things like "fiery cataclysmic imagery" (which I think is fairly brilliant, myself). Who knew writing could be so much fun?

lament

More than anything I want to walk downtown and go to a used book store, buy a book or two (specifically, Darwin's Origin of Species, and Robinson Crusoe) and hang out in a coffeeshop, or read on the library steps in the fantastic sunshiney weather..

That's all.

Instead, I am here in my apartment, lamenting that I can't do that because I should be studying, when instead I am procrastinating and watching youtube.

Oh the perils of being a university student.. disgusting, really, that we complain about it.. when approximately half of the population of the WORLD doesn't have access to clean drinking water..