Comments on: Lo-bore-atory

By: Nathan Dintenfass

Nathan Dintenfass — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Holy shit, and I thought I was busy at school.

Do you end up with a lab partner? Is it odd being well above the mean age of all your classmates in such situations?

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

In Physics you have 3-4 people you work with and that rotates through the semester.

In chemistry, you are assigned a drawer with lab equipment and that is yours for the semester. I usually work with the 2 people next to me.

Geology is usually done in an ad hoc fashion. In once class, there are only 5 other people in the lab with me, so we sometimes work as one big group.

The age issue is probably a bigger deal with me than it is for anyone else. I guess get more respect from my TA’s and professors and a little bit more leeway in grading. I tend to be the guy that asks the most questions in class, so I can be annoying in that respect. The only thing that is really different is that I don’t go out of my way to try to socialize because that would just be wierd.

By: MalHavoc

MalHavoc — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Bah. Here comes the obligatory “when I took labs” statement. When I did my degree, I had SIX courses per week. They ALL had THREE hour labs, plus three hours of course work. Some of them even had mandatory tutorials.

This of course all changed in my last year, when I did my thesis. Cleverly, I had taken all of my lab courses in the previous years, so I “only” had 18 hours of class time a week, mostly graduate seminar classes (because I was doing an honours degree). I forgot about the fact that I’d be in a lab every other waking minute working on projects for the thesis. It even got to the point where I was missing class to work in the lab. That was crazy.

Oh, and once the second year chem labs start, every lab requires a 10 page or so write up. Every week.