December 2004

Asana Mohamad • Prayers and Crossed Fingers

Ever notice how the teacher makes the course sound so exciting and easy on the first day of class? And then, the day after the last drop-date, the course gets harder?

This semester, I’m taking “College Physics,” “Literature of the Latinos,” “Introduction to African American Society,” and “Organic Chemistry Lab,” which meets three hours twice a week. Everything was great the first few weeks, but organic chemistry is by far the hardest class.

The first day, I met and made friends with Michelle, who shares a bench with me. Thank God for Michelle, because it’s always good to be slightly clueless with someone else in a lab. Over the weeks, I’ve also discovered that Michelle is the only one who can open the combination lock on my drawer.

Another helpful person is Tony, our TA. Tony is a firecracker. Small and loud, he zips around the lab like a ball in a pinball machine. He also swears like a sailor.

"OK, guys! Don’t throw anything away! If you dump something that you need, don’t come to me because I can’t get shit out of the sink!”

"OK, guys! GUYS! Listen, this computer is F***ED UP! So, use the other one! OK?”

"Wait a minute, what is that shit? What did you do?”

I don’t know why Tony bothers to ask us what we did. If we’ve screwed up, we don’t want to tell him what we did (or forgot to do) to get into that predicament—we just want him to fix it.

Lab screwups aside, the semester has been really good so far. I may need a lot of prayers and crossed digits to get through organic chemistry lab, but, hey, it’s all part of the college experience.