battery-bean

[battery-bean]

May 29th, 2025

Some fun photos from the past two days in the lab! The first is a motherboard (?) -- I work in batteries, but I actually have no electronics understanding, so sorry if I got the name wrong -- that came from a broken fume hood in our lab. The second picture is my second batch of materials from my synthesis!

I had a meeting with my supervisor today and unfortunately the data from my first round was abnormally bad (lmao), but he thinks it's actually an issue with one of the tools I use in the synthesis and not the synthesis itself. So, despite having starting on this second round (and literally being in the very last step), I won't be continuing with this batch since it will likely yield bad results :( A few things I did today:

🧪 transferred my current samples to the last furnace of the synthesis

👨‍🏫 meeting with my supervisor

🧪 started a new synthesis to test the modification (after feedback from meeting)

🖥️fixed & prepped a robot that I'll be using for the next batch

On my task list for tonight is updating my academic CV & writing a cover letter for a scholarship that I was nominated for. I was nominated by my department for this award that goes to the best 3 graduating chemistry students in my province. Each university gets to nominate their top student, and then each of them need to send a CV, cover letter & transcript. I'm quite nervous for it because I find it a bit intimidating to write a cover letter for an award since all you do is hype yourself up and talk about your accomplishments which seems a bit self-centered. I'm also a bit nervous because once I'm done, I have to send it to the advisor in my department who'll have to read it over.

[battery-bean]

May 26th, 2025

So I realize that I haven't posted in a while on here, and it's honestly just because life got so busy taking 6 classes and I ended up moving closer to school for the summer which was a lot to do right after my last exam. With my new position as an undergrad researcher, I find my days are much less structured but there is still so much work to get done that can really get away from me if I'm not careful -- which is why I'm restarting to post on here. For a bit of context, I'm working in an energy storage lab on the improvement of cathodes for lithium-ion batteries on a summer scholarship (NSERC) and will be continuing a similar project during the school year for my honours thesis.

I finally updated my lab notebook so that it's almost fully up to date (I'm waiting to finish the last couple of protocols that I only have access to from the lab computer). This week is supposed to be super busy for me, so I figured I'd start back up posting my task lists & posting lots of pictures from the lab :)

[battery-bean]

Sunday, January 26th, 2025

It's 12:30 p.m. and I'm only starting my school work now. I took my morning slow and put away laundry, ate breakfast with my family, and went to the grocery store to pick up some plant-based milk for the week.

My boyfriend lent me his ID card so that I could get into the engineering computer lab which is my favourite place to study (making studying on campus on the weekend bearable). Unfortunately, I forgot my noise-cancelling headphones at home so it's gonna be a bit difficult to focus with the other people here talking at full volume.

It's going to be a super content-heavy day because I really need to catch up on what I missed last week. I have 3 big assignments that I also have to do for Thursday and Friday this week, which I plan on working on tomorrow and Tuesday.

today's tasks:

🔬materials chem - Thursday lecture

🧑‍🏫 probability - Tuesday lecture

🧑‍🏫 probability - Thursday lecture

🧬 biochem - Tuesday notes

🧬 biochem - Thursday notes

I have 6 hours of studying before I have to head up the hill to the pool for practice tonight, and I'll obviously have to squeeze in breaks to eat. I'm determined to get it all done because I know that I need to take all the time I can this week to work on my assignments and not have to worry about learning new content outside of class.

[battery-bean]

Saturday, January 25th, 2025

I worked 10 hours today at my job, so I didn't get any studying done which is my typical Saturday schedule. I don't ever plan to do any homework on Saturdays because 10 hours of socializing and staring at a screen does not leave you in any state to be able to put your brain to work.

Yesterday, the afternoon slump hit really hard and I wasn't really able to get any work done because I was tired from swimming. Instead, I went home earlier than expected, did some cleaning and talked with my dad for a few hours because he had just gotten back from a week-long business trip.

I got home at work around 7 p.m. today to an empty house, so I put on a TV show, cleaned up the kitchen and did a bit of meal prep. I cut up mangoes, made tofu scramble, and made a new batch of marinated carrots (a.k.a. my newest obsession). On Thursday night, I made burrito filling that I've been eating over quinoa for the past couple of days which has been super easy to prepare and makes my life so much easier on days that I need a prepared lunch (i.e. everyday).

It's 10 p.m. and I'm usually really dead after work, but I'm feeling a bit inspired today to make my 2025 finance tracker. I know I'm quite late to the game, but my end of 2024 finances had me bummed out, and I needed to take a bit of time away from worrying about my finances. But I'm back now and I'm excited to make my new tracker and improve on the 2024 edition.

[battery-bean]

Friday, January 24th, 2025

I’m hitting the mid-day slump right now and really need the motivation to keep going (I desperately want to buy a latte right now, but I’m trying to save money). I had a pretty productive morning, but I have lots to do for school and need to get on it.

This morning, I:

🧺 did my laundry

⚛️ attended my quantum lecture

🏊 went to lap swim

💻 helped a friend with their lab analysis code

I’m very happy with my swim today, I went alone but actually completed my full set which is very rare. I tend to cheat and not do my last 100, or skip out on the 50s and do leg work instead. Thing is, I worked out legs on Wednesday, so doing any kind of leg work in the pool really hurt. That meant that I couldn’t swap out my swim sets with legs and actually had to complete my laps as planned. It was a 45 minute set, I did 8 * 100s, 4 * 50s, and 4 * 25 sprint, along with a bit of legs for cool down (I just *had* to lol). Swimming drops my heart rate and makes me feel really calm afterwards, which means that I’m feeling a bit too zen and sleepy to do school work, though I have to stay at school at least until 7 p.m. so that I can avoid the traffic going home.

My tasks for this weekend:

🔬watch materials chem lecture

🧑‍🏫 watch probability lecture (tuesday)

🧑‍🏫 watch probability lecture (thursday)

🧬 read through biochem notes (tuesday)

🧬 read through biochem notes (thursday)

🗃️ make flash cards for biochem

💻 finish my phys chem lab report!!!

Today, I’m planning on doing the top three tasks and hopefully continue with my phys chem report, but I also have to package up a return and put away my laundry, and I’m super tired from the week (and from swimming), so I’m not convinced I’ll get to doing everything that I want.

[battery-bean]

End of Day - January 22nd, 2025

Unfortunately, I was not as productive as I had hoped. I got a lot of coding done in the morning, so I completed my data analysis for the lab report but I just couldn’t bring myself to get back on that grind after my workout. Instead, I repotted my golden pothos! I’m super scared that I didn’t do it properly and that it’s not going to adjust well to the new potting environment, but I have 3 jars worth of clippings that are in water, so I’ll have lots of pothos babies to plant next month (i.e. either way, I’ll still have a pothos plant). My peace lily that I propagated and moved to a new pot isn’t doing so well right now, but they’re quite picky and I’m hoping it’ll bounce back quickly in a few days.

Things I got done today:

💻 pchem data analysis

🌱 repotted peace lily & pothos plants

🏋️ workout (legs & arms)

♾️ installed sympy in my python IDE - this took so long to figure out and I am eternally grateful that I know bash / command line because I would have been so insanely lost

I also caught up with an old friend for most of the evening, which definitely took away from my studying, but it was really nice to chat since we hadn’t spoken for a long time. Tomorrow, I really need to finish my lab report (discussion & supplemental info) and start on my learning content grind from my other courses (biochem, probability, and quantum chem). For now, I’ve gotta get to bed so that I don’t miss a third 8 a.m. class this week. 💤

[battery-bean]

January 22nd, 2025

Starting this page as a way to keep myself accountable for my studying. I got home very late from practice last night and wasn’t able to make it to my 8:30 a.m. class this morning, and considering how cold it is in montreal today, I decided to stay home. That means I *must* make sure to be super productive to make up for the fact that I missed my classes.

to-do list

💻 pchem lab report analysis

🎙️ pchem lab report discussion

📈 pchem lab report supplemental information

🧬 review biochem slides (from the two lectures I missed)

I’ve already done about half of the analysis this morning and I repotted my peace lily as it was getting super big for its pot. I’d also like to squeeze in a workout (legs & arms) and read a bit (currently reading A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik and my loan expires soon).

We’ll see how today goes 🧠🥝🌨️