Day 11 - Grind

What a tremendously busy week it's been. Here's a quick review of what the last few days have looked like for me..

Tuesday
I was up nice and early on Tuesday to finish the last few pages of Chapter 11 and take some notes on the pages I read on the subway on Monday night. From what I remember, I started at 9 am and finished at 2:30pm. So roughly 5.5 hours to get through pretty much all of Chapter 11 again with note-taking. It's one thing to read a chapter with no notes, but you'll retain information a lot better with hand written notes.

Time-auditing:
I noticed that out of the 5.5 hours it took me to study Chapter 11, I spent about 2 hours "Instagramming", going out for coffee, eating, etc. In retrospect, I could've cut out the Instagram, made tea at home instead of driving to Tim Hortons, and ate while reading. This would have given me another hour and a half to put towards Chapter 11 and I could've finished 1 pm instead. I like to audit my time every now and then, it keeps my time management in-check. You'd be surprised at how much of your day is actually spent doing nothing of value.

Technique #4:
During my readings, whenever Clayden is about to demonstrate a mechanism, I will write down the reactants on a sheet of paper and recreate my own mechanism, then compare it with Clayden's once I'm done and correct any mistakes. This way, you get mechanism practice while you do your readings.

Wednesday 
Didn't do any Chemistry on Wednesday at all. Must be why I enjoyed Wednesday this week, hah.

Today
Rough start to the day. Stumbled into the lab just in time for the very first CHM243 laboratory experiment (the commute to school is always hectic coming through Dundas street)! Today we recrystallized Benzoic Acid to remove any impurities. I messed up this experiment in every possible way. I have never fumbled so much in an experiment in my life, but it was still refreshing to do an experiment after almost 2 years. I definitely need to get my shit together before next week's lab experiment.

This week I'll be working on the lab report. In fact, I'm going to finish it by Sunday so that I can edit it throughout next week. I'm a very last-minute, "eleventh-hour", type of person, so I've been trying to combat my natural tendencies by working on things ahead of time. Starting your lab report early gives you time to clear your mind and come back to it later - you can give your report a much nicer "flow" when you edit it with a fresh mind.

Technique #5:
During the experiment, I documented every single mistake I made in my lab notebook so I can refer to it as an explanation for my laughable yield. This is something I started doing as of today - I never used a lab book before. I read online that it's a great tool for chemistry experiments. Logically, a lab book is going to prime your memory when it comes to doing the write-up a week later. I'm going to follow-up on how useful this technique is when I start writing my report.
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After the experiment from 12pm to 2:30pm, I went to the 3pm office hours. As a group of ~20 students and the professor, we worked through the Chapter 9 problem set that is due tomorrow (Friday) morning. I learned a lot, as I always do in office hours. Myself and a few other diligent students stayed for another hour, after office hours, to discuss chemistry and resolve some conceptual issues with MO theory.

After that, I wrote a good copy of my WASP whilst everything from office hours was still fresh in my mind. Took about an hour and a half. I obsessed over how my electron-pushing arrows looked, lol (hopefully that is time well-spent).

That's all the Organic Chemistry for today (7h total). Until tomorrow folks, Good Evening. 

Today's Tune: Arab Trap Mix 2016