Potions Class?

Yesterday I had my first practical exam. Now to me, the term practical exam sounds like something out of Harry Potter, so I like to think of my chem lab practical as my OWL potions practical (Yes I know I'm a geek. No making fun). At 8 in the morning I got to go down into the basement of Klamath Hall (the dungeons) where I met my TA (not quite Snape) and was given 20 chemicals (potions) 1 at a time to identify. We were given 4 minutes for each chemical and our only reference was a flow chart that we had made earlier in the term for this specific purpose. Before the process began, 50 panicked students could be found outside the lab pouring over their notes/flowcharts and saying things like "What's the difference between zinc oxide and calcium carbonate?" and "If I get a white solid I think I'll kill myself." (About 15 of the possible 40 substances were white solids with no distinguishable physical differences).

I think I did pretty well. 4 minutes seemed to be too much time for most of the substances. When I got sulfur, tin, manganese oxide, ammonia, etc, I was instantly able to identify them either by appearance or smell so I spent the remaining 3:45 either lighting the substance on fire with my Bunsen burner or watching the guy next to me freak out every time he poured something in his waste beaker and it fizzed and almost bubbled over. My TA emailed us later informing us that her students' average was 62% so hopefully I was above that.

Most of my classes are done (until the final) so all I had left was Korean after which I took a very long nap. Upon waking I realized what a mess the apartment was (mostly due to my laziness) so I very thoroughly scrubbed every inch of the kitchen, living room and my bedroom. I am so glad I did because it looks amazing now. I had apparently lost track of the time because I realized it was almost 11:00 and I still had to write my introduction for my Korean oral final. Yikes! It took way longer than it should have because I was constantly distracted by my fish (who is apparently feeling amorous according to the massive bubble nest he is making), youtube, a cool new blog that I found, pretty much anything that exists other than what I was supposed to be doing (typical me). But because of my 3 or 4 hour nap, going to bed at 3:00 am was actually the equivalent of going to bed at 11 or 12, and I didn't even have to be up until 10:30. Perfection!