[6/06/12 11:39:48 PM] Mum: oh you mean accept your need to engage in repetitive and dull professions for the slim chance of loot?

…but she just described my entire life.

It’s her fault for asking, really.

…they explode into bats.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the student office at my desk when the fire alarm went off. This came as no real surprise as they are currently doing refurbishments on a couple of levels and the fire alarms have been going off on a fairly regular basis for at least the past fortnight. Usually, it would be preceded or at least interrupted by some sort of announcement. This time, however, there were no such announcements. After about 10 minutes, it became apparent that perhaps this one hadn’t been planned. Rather than thinking, ‘hey, maybe we should see what’s happening’, the response of people on my level was either, ‘I’m sick of this, I’ll see you people tomorrow’ (followed by a trip in the elevator to the exit), or, ‘it’s not the evacuation alarm, so I’m just going to stay right here’. After another 15 minutes of what can best be described as apathy with a touch of confusion and annoyance, we were told it was just a false alarm courtesy of a few levels down. Crisis averted, I suppose.

It made me wonder, though. What if it hadn’t of been alarm? I mean, I’m sure we would have been told to get out a little sooner than 25 minutes into the alarm sounding, but in a situation where every second could possibly make the difference of getting out of a building alive or not getting out at all it really does raise a few concerns. Concerns that were made rather apparent today when the fire alarm legitimately went off and everyone had to be evacuated.

That was the most factual account I could find. The first article released not long after it occurred stated that ‘A nine-storey building has been evacuated and as firefighters attended to the situation’, which was about where I stopped reading on account of the fact that I work on the apparently non-existent 11th floor (factual journalism at its best). Unless of course they were implying that the remaining levels didn’t get evacuated at all. ‘Oh sorry levels 10 and 11, you guys will have to stay here. Tell us if you smell anything corrosive’.

Now, I wasn’t actually around to know how the evacuation played out. I woke up at my usual time to a message from a colleague telling me that the first floor had exploded. It was perhaps the most exciting thing that had happened all week, mainly because it meant that I could sleep in (and sleep in I did). Some people went back in to the building and started work after the first alarm had gone off thinking it was a drill. It in fact took multiple intercom messages to the tune of, ‘if you are still here get out and get out right now’, before it was fully evacuated. Apparently the, ‘oh, it’s just a drill’, mentality was in full swing. Thankfully for those people, the explosion itself was fairly well contained and no one got hurt (except the poor firemen, who apparently got chemical burns in the process of cleaning up).

By 12.30, which was about when I made it in to campus following my extra 3 hours sleep, the first floor had been re-opened. All in all, the damage was pretty minimal. The explosion itself was the result of a waste container that decided that it had other ideas as to how it should be disposed of – it went with violently.

Fortuitously, the offending waste container had been taken to the small and enclosed chemical store room located in our docking bay – far away from the research and teaching labs and just far enough away from the NMR and mass spec labs to not ruin the lives of many. Indeed, it could have been considerably worse than it was. For one, the room is very enclosed and somewhat out of the way, so the two gigantic liquid nitrogen cylinders that are also in the docking bay managed to survive (there would be no chemistry building had they of exploded). It also happened at 7.45AM, before most people were in and before the first chemical delivery of the day had happened. No one was hurt and no research was destroyed, which certainly would not have been the case had it not of been taken down the night before.

The room itself is fairly repairable, though I sure as hell won’t be going in there for a while. I’ve also heard rumors that the owner of the waste container has been identified. I had my money on Peter, but I’m told it wasn’t him. In any case, I can imagine the person who does own it is in for one heck of a Monday morning.

If nothing else, I’ve made a new decision that the next time I hear a fire alarm I’ll just take the stairs and get a coffee; better safe and caffeinated than grumpy and limbless (a great motto to live by, feel free to use it).

About a week ago I queried a professor of mine about how many chemistry honours students that had enrolled this year. Her response of, ‘six’, was somewhat more than disappointing. Six honours students at a university whose main campus has over 40,000 students, approximately 4500 of which are enrolled in the Sciences.

Granted, chemistry is one of the smallest graduating classes of all the disciplines (it’s right next to biophysics, which had a grand total of 2 graduates last year). That being said, when you consider that first year chemistry courses have consistently had enrollments of above 1300 for the past 4 or 5 years, you really do have to question where all the students are going? Of the 1300 or so first year chemistry students, around 1200 won’t continue with chemistry. Of those that continue with second year chemistry, almost all of them continue on to third year and of those who then graduate, only a few continue on to honours.

One of the major issues I see is the general lack of student interest at the lower levels. A lot of this has to do with the fact that many of the students partaking in first year organic/general/physical chemistry are there because they have to be as part of their biology major or as part of their pre-med, physiotherapy, biomed or pharmacy degree. In general, these are the types of students who ask, ‘will this be on the exam’, every lecture; the type who aren’t really there to learn, but to memorise enough to get a pass in the course. However, while the number of student who fall under this banner is certainly large, it still doesn’t really account for the huge drop in numbers.

A few years ago I used to tutor a student in first year organic/inorganic chemistry. At the start of the semester, the first of his tertiary education experience, his plan was to continue with a chemistry major. As the weeks went by, his interest in chemistry showed signs of dwindling. He changed from, ‘all chemistry is great’, to, ‘I really don’t like inorganic chemistry’, to, ‘I think I’m going to do a nano major’, in the space of three months. Try though I did to teach him mechanisms and what I like to call ‘chemical intuition’, every week he would come back with the same questions in a different context. By the end of semester, it became glaringly apparent that he was learning nothing and trying to memorise everything. This of course did him no favours, although he did just manage to pass the exam. By the end of the year, having further tutored him in first year physical chemistry (which he failed), his interest in the subject had dropped so dramatically that he changed from science to do mechanical engineering. This illustrates a point that became more and more obvious to me when I tutored lower level chemistry and was confirmed when I started tutoring second and third years – students aren’t coming in to the lower courses with enough understanding to actually facilitate proper learning.

Rather than understanding the material, students will try to memorise it. The problem with this in chemistry, especially organic chemistry, is that there is simply too much to memorise and it does you absolutely no good when you are asked to apply what you are taught to different contexts (which they are). As an example, last year the university I attend brought in short answer questions to their end of semester exam for first year organic/inorganic chemistry. The purpose of this was to properly test whether students could actually recall and understand material themselves as opposed to relying on chance. The first question was a simple one step transformation – a bromination, IIRC. Most students got it right. The remaining 4 questions, however, required at least two steps and a small amount of abstract thought. Even if students didn’t get the reagents right, but could explain what needed doing, they would get marks. Despite this, most students got none of them right and the average mark for that section ended up at around 2 or 3 out of 10. Only 1 of the 1500 received full marks.

It’s hard to know what to do to fix this. To me, the problem appears to lie in the secondary education they receive. High school teachers who barely understand the material themselves, passing on their ignorance to the future generations. One possibility is that all chemistry students are required to do a basic chemistry course at university before they attempt the remaining first year course work. This, however, then becomes a problem of having enough resources. Another possibility is to split the classes so that science students are segregated from the other degrees. This would eliminate the need to cater for an overly large educational diversity, though I’m not convinced it would help the problems I and others see in beginner student learning.

Second and third year chemistry courses here are not compulsory for anything save chemistry related majors. It makes tutoring much nicer, because you deal with students who genuinely want to learn chemistry and for some reason love brutally honest feedback. Provided with the right amount of tutor feedback and right teaching staff, these students learn well and even enjoy themselves. Why then, do only a tiny proportion of these students go on to honors? I know there are some who simply aren’t interested in research – this is something that is being dealt with as the opportunities for research exposure increase. There are some who simply don’t know what they want to do and go on to do other degrees and others are still in the process of completing dual degrees. Can there really be that many of them though? There were about 50 or so chemistry graduates last year, so what are 46 of them doing?

I myself don’t have much of an answer to that. It baffles me. I wonder if maybe it’s the lack of a recruiting process. I know that a number of the biology based schools go to an outrageous amount of effort to attract students into doing honours and higher degree programs with them. It seems to work quite well for them. Here at least, the chemistry department tends to lack that initiative and students are often unaware of the opportunities without looking for it themselves.

In the lab next door to us, there is a PhD student. Let’s call him Peter. Over the last year, the first of his three year PhD, he has been guilty of a wealth of stupidity. Distilling thionyl chloride one of our communal rot evaps (our poor vacuum pump was never the same), throwing thiol soaked gloves in the general waste (those weeks smelt wonderful) – you get the picture.

My favorite part about Peter is the questions he asks. They range from the outright bizarre to the outright daft. Sometimes they are annoying, say after the hundredth question on top of a question, but more often than not they’re just hilarious. I feel almost selfish for keeping these wonderful moments to myself, so I thought I might share.

I’ll start with one from today and add more as they come. Peter is from overseas. In January, he returned to his home country to get married. Although Peter has returned, his wife remains abroad. Today myself, a former PhD student and one of the other post-docs were talking to him and asked what it is that she did and what she would do for work here in Australia. He told us that she would be working with families or with children, but that she would need to get a blue card*.

Peter

“How long does it take to get a bluecard? Do you know how long it takes?”

Me

“No idea.”

Peter

“But you’re a woman.”

Me

“…Excuse me?”

Peter

“You’re a woman, you should know how to work with children.”

Today was the day I was nearly a feminist.

The first day of my PhD:

Peter

“How many pages are you writing for the introduction for your thesis?’

My thesis isn’t due until some time in 2016.

These types of moments are plenty, so I’ll be sure to share more of them when they come.

* For the non-Australian readers, a blue card is card dispensed by the government to say that is okay for you to work with children.