Thursday, May 15, 2008

Why I don't feel bad writing this post instead of working

So I had anxiety dreams earlier this week because I was supposed to give the seminar for the analytical chemistry department today, followed by a class on Friday about using UV in structure elucidation (Sarah pointed out to me once that I start all my stories with "so"... guess I start my blogs that way too). I was worried about the seminar because one of the professors is the kind of scary German that would make you sit in the back seat of the car if you were late meeting him in the parking lot for the trip back to Savannah. I watched him last week and he asks a series of confrontational questions about methods minutia. And I was worried about the class because I don't really have anything to say about UV absorbance. At least not enough to say - I'm not sure how much people really use it (and if you're reading this Julia - I have the lecture notes from your class, and planned to discuss the Woodward-Fieser rules but I'm not sure I can fill 1.5 hours with that).

Anyway, I went back over my slides from my defense this morning, then biked to work. When I got here (sort of sweaty and with line from my helmet across my forehead) Georg came to my lab.
"We have a problem," he said. "You are forbidden to do your seminar today."
"Oh" I replied. At this point I was trying to decide if the Germans had discovered so horrible secret in my past and would no longer allow me to research at their university. "Why is that?" I asked.
It turns out that it isn't a big deal. The University is celebrating it's 450th anniversary this year, and there will be festivities this afternoon (and, since I've decided to overuse the parentheses in this post, I'll take this moment to point out that there have been many official celebratory events since I've been here). No one is allowed to schedule anything else during this time - just in case we wanted to go to the official ceremony. I'm not sure what the punishment is, but George seemed worried, so I suspect it was something horrible like bamboo shoots under the fingernails or a mountain of official forms to fill out. My seminar was rescheduled for June 10 - but only for our group, so I don't think scary guy will be there.

After rescheduling my seminar, I checked my e-mail. One of my students (Tobias) informed me that this Friday is der Chemikerball (translation: chemistry ball - you could probably have figured it out, but those words don't seem to go together, so you might have been confused). Since one of the students in the lab persuaded me to attend, I knew all about the ball (don't worry - you'll get a full account this weekend), but since it starts at 8, I didn't think that my class at noon would interfere. But apparently there will be a funny lecture and beer and sausage starting at 10. And since I like beer and sausage as much as the next guy I rescheduled the class.

So basically, I'm free for the rest of the week. Yay! To celebrate I'm going to start considering how to teach 2D NMR.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am very curious about the chemistry ball, and will need to hear more after it's over. Mostly, I would like to know what kinds of people are there, and do they dress like chemists, or like molecules, or like Germans? And is this better or worse than if we held a chemistry ball here? I think I would prefer not to hear about the dancing, if there is any. Good luck with the 2D NMR, I know you'll do great.

Anonymous said...

Also glad that the anxiety dreams were about something other than me. You are moving on!

Reforming Soccer Mom said...

Hey Emily, why aren't you commenting on my fun blog? Selfish. http://emotionsonmycar.blogspot.com/

Just kidding. You should dress as a milkmaid and sing "Riiiicooollaaaaa", except I think they are supposed to be Swiss or Austrian, which is like German, but in complicated sort of way, I think.