Refraction

In this post, you’ll find:

• Career ramblings
• School musings
• Music murmurings

(I needed to keep the parallelism!)

Career
When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to say, “published.” I deliberately kept it vague because I wasn’t sure that whether I wanted to publish a novel, poetry, journalism….

Oddly, I’ve now (partially) fulfilled that dream by a means I never could have imagined: a scientific journal article. Sure, I’m third author and sure, it’s in a journal which probably has a negative impact factor, but I’m still proud of the thing, despite not actually having written a single word of it.

I’m also involved with a mentoring program at school. I got paired with an industry mentor, who seems very keen, for lack of a better word. He’s actually kind of scaring me with his organization. I’m not sure this is the best pairing for me (I’d really been hoping for a grad student, since I don’t have any grad students I can talk to for this kind of thing), but I’ll make do.

School
School is going well–mostly. I’ve kind of let one of my chem courses slip behind a little, but I’m still confident I can pull it out in the end. The prof in the other is just so nice that I can’t see myself getting anything below a B+ in the course.

My two French courses are just fine, naturally–I’m definitely focussing on my strong points this term ie, NOT LIT). I got a full 20/20 on our one and only homework assignment in my translation class. This is from a prof who deducts half a mark for every mistake you make–mistakes include things that may seem as trivial as accents. For someone who really only started learning French as a teenager, I think I’m doing just fine.

I also have to start worrying about grad school soon. *whimper* I’m fairly confident no school is out of reach, with the right letters of recommendation, but… I’m not really sure this is what I want.

Secretly what I really want to do is start McGill’s translation diploma program, but maybe I’ll save that for my mid-life crisis instead.

Music
I’ve been listening to nothing but MONKEY MAJIK’s discography for the last three weeks. Currently on repeat is “LONG SHOT PENNY.” This is really the first song that I can think of where I like the music more than the lyrics, not counting all those Japanese and Chinese songs whose lyrics I don’t understand.

Although MONKEY MAJIK is ostensibly a Japanese band, the two vocalists are a pair of ex-pat brothers from Ottawa, and they probably sing as often in English as they do in Japanese. (I’m also kind of in love with one of the brothers, who’s released a song mixing English, Japanese, and French.)

Completely random and petty things
Mispronunciation gets on my nerves. Sorry. ALL chemists should know how to pronounce “chiral.” “Chitin” I can forgive; I might be pronouncing it “CHI-tin” instead of “KY-tin” if I hadn’t heard it in a presentation once.

I know I’m perfectly guilty of this myself. I still can’t decide how to pronounce “nomenclature,” for instance. “no-MEN-cla-chur”? “NO-men-clay-chur”?