Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Not As Bad As I Thought

When the program started and I looked at my class schedule details for the entire three weeks, I was horrified to learn I had to do an independent project for the final. Of course, now that I think about it, I shouldn't have been shocked at all because I was already expecting something of the sort. But imagining having to create my own experiment when I still was so lost in class? Terrified!

Thankfully, it is not as bad as I believed. We were able to pick from five different experiment choices, which purposely reflected some of our previous labs. This way, we knew enough to do more and do better in conducting the experiment, but we still retained the essence of a scientific experiment, in which one must use the results to determine something else. In this case, we used the results to determine the products, and even the reaction, of a mixture our mentor gave us. The method we have been using is chromatography, in which one can identify and even separate compounds in a mixture by their polarities. I really like what we're doing, because I've been able to participate a lot, and I've actually been learning more about it.

Well, two more days!

1 comment:

Don Gosney said...

Jackie,

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin Roosevelt said that in his first Inaugural Address and it’s applied to so many things since then.

Your biggest problem, Jackie, wasn’t the project itself but your own fear of what that project might entail for you. Once you approached the project you learned that it wasn’t something to be afraid of at all. That’s the way things are a lot of the time. The fear of the unknown makes us reticent to move forward when, as it turns out, had we just moved forward the problems we perceived may not have even existed.

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