A Crazy Past Two Days (Part 1)

I’d like to apologize for missing one of my blogging days, but the past few days have been really crazy. Everything seemed to be going okay Thursday until nighttime. It was my first chemistry lab, and from what I had heard from other students in my biology class, our first assignment was boring and tedious, but not too hard. The actual experiment part went okay, and I seemed to be working at pace or ahead of other students while still doing the steps correctly.

When I had to do calculations, I had to ask the teacher/teaching assistant for help and worked with other students on some steps. We were calculating for Avagadro’s number, which is the amount of molecules in a mole of a substance equal to approximately 6.022 x 10^23. Do you wanna know what my answer was?

286.

Most of the people who had done the experiment were only two or three magnitudes off (something x 10^25, for example), but I was literally as far off as possible.

I should have asked someone for help, inquired if I had made a mistake in my calculations and tried to fix it. But I didn’t. I didn’t care. I wrote a quick conclusion, admitting my results were horrendous so I must have done something wrong, and hurried to the bathroom.

And cried.

I started crying at first because hadn’t cared, which was a huge deal for me. Why had I lost the will to care about school, about anything? Then everything else began piling up-depression that won’t go away, anxiety that prevents me from accomplishing tasks, lack of friends, etc. I started texting my friends, hoping they would help me calm down. However, as I began speaking to them, I became frustrated and confused as to why I was crying. I was crying over absolutely nothing; I had no right to cry. Furthermore, my friends were  not succeeding in assisting me. I was afraid to venture out of the bathroom because our lab instructor was grading our lab notebooks as we turned them in and I didn’t want to see him.

When someone else came into the bathroom I hurried out, eyes wiped clear but a snot stain on my shirt from where I had, without thinking, wiped my nose while crying. I went home and immediately crawled into bed, without changing out of my clothes or brushing my teeth, and watched YouTube videos until I felt I could fall asleep.

Friday morning I woke up early to finish the chemistry homework I had no will to do after my catastrophic lab and to study for my first german quiz. I still felt really meh, really depressed, and I’m pretty sure the only reason I could get through the day was because I had classes to keep me preoccupied. The day consisted of napping between classes; there were going to be cool events at the college tonight, and I wanted to be wide awake for them.

After going to a fantastic seminar by YouTuber Emily Graslie, I attended our dorm’s “picnic”, and got a tour of our student-run garden. After that I invited myself to play Cards Against Humanity with some girls on my floor (their door was open after all), which was awesome. Then I met up with my floor-friend and our mutual guy friend to see a local band play at our school; everyone else thought it was lame, I thought it was pretty cool.

I anticipated after the show I would go to see a hypnotist on campus; I did not foresee my girlfriend and I being invited to a small party on our floor.

Stayed tuned for the exciting (not really) conclusion, which I will post tomorrow!

Bis Später!