It's Over - For Now

I survived the semester.

All of my final exams - three of them - were scheduled for yesterday. I got through all of them, although I'm not certain who well I did on any of them. The best I can say is that I was able to finish them all on time. And none of them were especially easy; I think I had the hardest time with, surprisingly, the Biology final. I had to sort of sacrifice for that one, though, because I was so worried about Organic Chem. Between that and Statistics, I spent a lot of time getting ready for them, and I spent a lot less time on Bio, so if I did tank it, I shouldn't be surprised.

The thing I am most happy about is that the semester is over. It was extremely difficult; in a way I guess I bit off more than I could chew, so I have nobody to blame for that but myself. In a perverse way, however, I got more out of the semester than I expected; I know what an Eniantomer is, and I know what Chiral Compounds are; I didn't know those things at the beginning of the semester. I now have the skills to at least get a basic idea of what is on an IR Spectrograph as well as an NMR display (either H1 or C13), and I can predict substitution and elimination reactions.

I know how to set up regression analysis, I can do chi-square calculations, and I now know how to conduct a one-way analysis of variance with more than two variables.

I got a good review of the Krebs cycle and electron transport chains, I know what proteomics and genomics are, and I learned about the Calvin cycle - this was something I'd never been exposed to.

So whether or not I got decent grades this semester, I think I at least came away with some knowledge and skills I didn't have before. And next semester promises to be a continuation of this one. With Biochemistry, the second semester of Biology, and a survey course on existing diseases, it should be very, very interesting. And I am going to try to get on top of things before it starts.

For now, I'm going to take a couple of days of well-deserved rest. My brain can really use it.