Memoirs of a Mustang: Bachelor Party

Four years ago, on this very day, I posted a thread where I would record my daily experiences at university. And now, the final rendition of that thread has begun. One more memoir before I get my degree in Chemical Engineering.

WELCOME TO THE BACHELOR PARTY

Fourth year is relatively light, course-wise. Only five courses per semester.

First semester:

• Business for Engineers (full-year)
  
• Chemical Engineering Project (full-year)
  
• Downstream Processing in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
  
• Catalytic Processes
  
• Africa South of the Sahara (non-technical elective)
  

Second semester:

• Business for Engineers (full-year)
  
• Chemical Engineering Project (full-year)
  
• Computer Process Controls
  
• Nanobiotechnology
  
• Engineering Ethics, Sustainable Development and the Law
  

I'm finally staying in one place for more than a year. And two of my old roommates are staying along with me. One of the new roommates, is, in fact, a Chemical Engineering student. A year below me.

Let's make this year better than the last two combined!

I mean, not that any of you are obligated to make my own year great or anything. You're not my fucking employees.

Except...wait...hold on, I gotta check something.









Yeah, no, you're not my employees.

Entry 001:
Not to Rain on Your Parade or Anything
Slept in. I don't ever have class on Thursdays until 2:30pm. And I get all of Wednesday off. It's great.

I left in the afternoon to go to my first Catalyst Processes lecture. It was so hot out. Just so hot out. I was soaked by the time I got to class.

Catalysts is taught by my old Organic II professor. This pleases me. He spent a bit asking us how we felt about the course: our expectations, our worries, etc. He also asked us questions about how much we remembered from Reaction Kinetics, a 3rd-Year prerequisite. To his (and my) surprise, most of the class was not comfident in their knowledge of that course.

I left after that one lecture to go home and cook myself dinner. It was so rainy out. Just so rainy out. I was soaked by the time I got to my house.

Dinner was pasta night, as it has been and probably will be for quite a while. I love me some spicy tomato sauce and some spicy cheesy sausage, but the new brand of sausage I got tastes too much like ham. I mean, it makes sense, but I don't like it so it must be purged.

In the evening we have a two-hour Chemical Engineering Project lecture. This is the Big Project, the one that bridges the gap between academy and industry. I mean, that's what the profs say. The lecture gave me a lot of flashbacks to 1st-Year Design. Fitting.

I missed this.

man final year already, crazy!

This is the end......of the end.

Btw, did you remember a lot from your Reaction Kinetics class?

Vyzor wrote:This is the end......of the end.

Btw, did you remember a lot from your Reaction Kinetics class?

Yeah, but I did get, like, take it twice. I'm the worst kind of expert.

Entry 002: Where is Everybody?
I had Downstream Processes in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing at 9:30 in the Spencer Engineering Building. I and a few other students mistook the lecture location to be the main lecture hall where so many other courses have taken place. Threw us off a bit when, ten minutes in, the professor (and most of the class, hadn't shown up).

I have the professor from Processes in 2nd Year, who also taught Mass Transfer and Particulates when I first did 3rd Year. Her course notes tend to be very lengthy and her tests tend to be open-book. Also, for this particular course, the assignments are gonna be research-based. Ehh, okay.

After that, at 11:30am, all of the engineers have the same Business lecture. The professor's pretty great, continuing the line of non-Chemical Engineering professors who majorly outshine the doctors forced to teach for their funding.

This fucking textbook has to be bought, new, or else Ivey will freeze your mark and refuse to let you pass. Apparently students were copying a single textbook for whole classes and the school couldn't afford to make the texbooks anymore.

See, that's one thing, but it turns out that whenever these witless numbnuts had to type an equation, it got messed up in the printing. The professor brought this up, mentioned that the equations looked like gibberish. To which, apparently, the textbook authors replied that all of those equations look like gibberish anyway.

And now they have my money.

Well, after that I got a few hours free to go home and eat lunch. At 3:30 I was scheduled to have a tutorial for the Big Project. I went in, and, again, no one was there. I was certain that I was in the right room this time. What the hell, is there another TEB 454?

So I guess my day ended early.

Entry 003: The Tragically "Hip"
8:30: A one-hour Pharmaceuticals lecture. I'd forgotten how pretty late-summer mornings are. I have time afterwards to go back home for an early lunch.

12:30: Two-hour Business case class. On Mondays we talk about actual exercises from the textbook. Although today was simply another introduction to what the case class will be like.

The professor filled in the lecture by going around the class, having each of us introduce ourselves and asking a unique question about ourselves. I appreciate this guy's enthusiasm and approachability, but he seems a little too...trying to hard to be hip. Either that, or he really does just like to talk about random pop culture interests of his.

2:30: This is new; a one-hour break. No time to walk back home, all I can do is sit around a library and study until

3:30: Catalysts. We reviewed Kinetics. Although the "review" included a good amount of new stuff. Shit like "potential energy surfaces" and "reactive trajectories". So of course we cap the lecture off with the definition of the rate of reaction, the very first thing we learned in Kinetics.

Tomorrow, for something completely different.

From Tuesday

Entry 004: AAAFRICAAA
There's a Pharma tutorial scheduled for 8:30am today, but it wasn't happening this week. So instead, the day started with my non-elective at 9:30am. Africa South of the Sahara consists of only one weekly two-hour lecture.

When I walked in to the classroom, I could hear this pleasant music coming from within. The professor was playing some African music off of Youtube. He said it was how he wanted to start off every lecture.

Oh, this. This is gonna be an adventure.

Being the first class of the semester, we spent the first half simply introducing ourselves (with descriptors, as that's how the professor best remembers people). Then the professor gave a typical rundown of the course. He asked if we had any questions regarding the marking scheme, and was surprised when we didn't.

Guys, the final exam is worth only twenty-five percent. Twenty. Five. Percent. It's so nice.

We drew from a raffle for the countries we's be covering for Weekly Updates. I got Namibia. It's close to the southern end of the continent.

During the afternoon, I shopped for groceries.

Then a Catalysts tutorial at 4:30. A main component of the course is a lab/research project where we test the effectiveness of various catalysts on speeding up the partial oxidation of ethanol into acetaldehyde.

But man, that Africa course. It was, just so relaxing. A great breather from all the chemistry and engineering.

From Wednesday

Entry 005: Weekbreak
And Wednesday's just fantastic. I get the whole day off. It's like another Sunday. A great time to catch up on all of my courses.

Oh, something I learned over the past week was that the reason new students will get three non-technical electives in fourth year is that Business is becoming a first-year course. So the two non-technical electives from first year just got moved to fourth.

Entry 006: Exercises and Teamwork
12:00: So, back last Thursday some Goodlife Fitness people were advertising one-week passes. I was pretty hesitant to take them up on it, but the marketing man was pretty eager to get me to come in.

In retrospect, I feel bad about it, because I must have given off the impression that I was at all considering buying a membership. Which I was not. I went in anyway, just to check out the equipment and get the free pass. I'm scheduled to come in Saturday to try out some of the stuff.

2:30: Catalysts. We reviewed more Kinetics, examining methods of empirically deriving rate laws. I formed a group for the lab/research project.

7:00: Plant Design. I formed another group. And one of the members is also in my Catalysts group! That's convenient.

From Friday

Entry 007: A Spoonful of Sugar
9:30: Pharmaceuticals. We spent a good chunk discussing the history of thalidomide use, how it halted fetal growth and left thousands of children severely handicapped.

Also the professor brought in children's gummy medicine for us to sample, as well as gummy bears as a control group. The medicine actually tasted a lot like Wine Gummies. Engineering is a serious and admirable profession.

11:30: Business. We began studying financial statements. It's pretty neat. Out of the five courses I'm taking right now, this course was the quickest to actually teach me stuff.

Went back home, had lunch, continued to be in 4th Year. As far as I know.

3:30: Aw yeah, time for PLANT DESIGN TUTORI--oh, no one's in the room again. I guess it isn't really a scheduled session, I guess?

That was a fine school week. As far as I know.

From Saturday and Sunday

Entry 008&009: Practice Exercise
Not much to do except study and work on assignments. I did go to Goodlife Fitness on Saturday to play with some of the equipment. The treadmill was alright, but what I really loved were the cardio and bike machines. I like being able to adjust resistance and slope/seat distance.

From Monday

Entry 010: Incoming!
8:30: Pharmaceuticals. Discussed the procedures involed in drug testing. No candy this time.

Went home for lunch. Luckily I was aware enough this time to not go to the neughbour's house.

12:30: Business. Monday classes require us to do homework beforehand. So nostalgic. We made income statements and balance sheets.

2:30: Managed to survive the hour between classes.

3:30: Catalysts. *Sigh*, still on Kinetics review. Still on emprically calculating reaction rate. I don't get it, I'm not any smarter than anyone else in the room, how am I the only one who remembers this stuff?

5:30: Oh, wait, no, 6:30, one group member for the Plant Project has an info session he needs to go to. Ehh, that's fine, just a little inconvenient.

6:30: My group and I haven't decided on a specific project yet. Y'see, we're split between recovering caprolactam from nylon-6 and producing industrial amounts of xenon. We're trying to find info on the nylon-6 but coming up real short. Our professor isn't helping us much, and we really need him to give us some sort of professional connections.

The one group member never showed up.

Entry 011: Quite the Journey
8:30: Pharmaceuticals tutorial. The TA didn't have a lesson plan, she only asked if we had any questions pertaining to the upcoming assignment. There was, like, six people there, including me. Okay.

9:30: South of the Sahara. We talked about African stereotypes and physical geography. Neat stuff. We watched a movie trailer for The Dogs of War, as part of a discussion on framing in the media. Do you folks have any idea how many times "dogs of war" gets spoken in the trailer?!

11:30: Went home for lunch. Yes I did.

1:00: Inwent grocery shopping. Two trips. Great workout. Carried too much stuff the second time around.

4:30: Catalysts tutorial. The professor's still trying to explain the Differential Method for empirically calculating rate law. He asks if we even did this stuff in Kinetics. The majority of the class says no.

Which is weirding me out, because a)I have clear memories of this shit from last year (and more vague memories from the year before) and b)THIS SHIT IS IN ONE OF MY OLD NOTEBOOKS. Like, I took Kinetics twice, and I guess the class is just full of people who spent the past year on Internships, so maybe we didn't learn it two years ago?

Whatever, I'm having dinner for home.

From Wednesday

Entry 012: Clubs Week?
It's that week, once more! But when I checked out the University Community Centre, the booths were all about, like, activist stuff, without the hobby-ish clubs.

Turns out they rearranged the schedule a bit, to have different types of clubs on different days of the week. I guess there's a lot more clubs this year?

I glad for the early send-off, because I had a joh interview to prepare for. Turns out Rona was interested in my application for part-time work. The interview went pretty good, I believe. Just a lot of questions about specific scenarios.

...huh, I feel weird...ah shit.

From Thursday

Entry 013: Clubs Week!
I have a cold now. That's good. That's not good.

But Clubs Week is still running. And all my clubs are there! Creative Writing! Trivia! W.A.R.P.! Familiar faces! Familiar hair! Familiar eyes!

And there's also Chem Club! First meeting of the year at 12:30, just introductory stuff. Oh, Jared's (new roommate, 3rd Year Chem Eng) not here. Does he not go. I can't ever remember him being at a meeting.

1:30: Catalysts, still on empirically calculating rate law.

4:00: Finally ended this fucking blood pact with Goodlife Fitness, no more meet-ups for me. Although in the end, I guess they've won; they're equipment is really cool.

7:00: Plant Design, pumps. Some good review of Fluids and Safety&Design.

It's dark out at 8:30pm now. Just like my pupils.

Entry 014: Never safe
No Pharmaceuticals this morning. Once again my risk of a woman poisoning me to death by shoving a pill down my throat descends to 0%.

11:30: Business, financial management. Learned about franchises and corporations and various financial ratios. But, wait...classes have WOMEN in them!! AAAAAAAAAAAAA

1:00: My home continues to refuse to leave me.

3:00: Plant Design tutorial oh okay no one is here once again I REALLY hope I'm not doing anything wrong.

So apparently Jake (new roommate) is allergic to gluten? And got real sick last night?? And had his friends take him to the hospital to get an IV because of how dehydrated he was???

Well tomorrow W.A.R.P. has a board game day!

Cephalo the Pod wrote:
The professor filled in the lecture by going around the class, having each of us introduce ourselves and asking a unique question about ourselves. I appreciate this guy's enthusiasm and approachability, but he seems a little too...trying to hard to be hip. Either that, or he really does just like to talk about random pop culture interests of his.

so what did he ask you?

gxiv wrote:

Cephalo the Pod wrote:The professor filled in the lecture by going around the class, having each of us introduce ourselves and asking a unique question about ourselves. I appreciate this guy's enthusiasm and approachability, but he seems a little too...trying to hard to be hip. Either that, or he really does just like to talk about random pop culture interests of his.

so what did he ask you?

He had a series of questions already set up, and simply went around the room as he went through the questions. Some of them were boring, others were great. It was simply by bad luck that I was asked "Coke or Pepsi"?

For the record, for me it's a tossup.

damn that's sad what were some of the good questions

Probably something like, what gender do you identify as, Cisgendered or Binarygendered?

or like; what would you rather do: play dota 2, or chase your dreams and become the person you want to be?

gxiv wrote:damn that's sad what were some of the good questions

Aw geez, I'm having a hard time remembering. I just remember really wanting to answer some of the other questions.