It's You; Not Me.

As a science major I have been through a good number of lab partners - about 9 or so. Generally, I get along splendidly with my lab partners, even becoming friends with some of them outside of the lab. Laughing occurs often, conversations are plentiful and fun is made of lab time. Lab is a great bonding experience for two people the have never met each other. Physics lab is probably the most painful lab of them all, but my partner and I are constantly cracking jokes and needing to refocus often in order to get any work done.

One of the few times that I didn't get along with my lab partner was in Microbiology Lab. But those were very special circumstances.

Organic Chem II Lab was the first time I had a lab partner that I knew before the lab. He was friends with my former housemates, whom (who?) I happen to detest, but we had had conversations before and were friendly with each other. In fact, I was friendlier with all of my housemates friends, just not my housemates. But that's another story. I was kind of surprised that when he entered the lab he took the spot next to me because in doing so he signed a binding contract that said he was going to be my lab partner. Not really... but you get the idea. The reason it was so surprising was because I had just gone through an ugly falling out with said housemates, but I guess he didn't care about those politics.

The beginning of the semester was okay. The start is always a little shaky and awkward, but that's normal. As the semester went on the partnership seemed to become more awkward, and I have no idea why. I'm a very friendly person and always strike up a conversation - proven by past lab partners. I would try to make conversation but he never added anything to them. In reality though it wasn't that surprising. He was teammates with my former housemates and their most noteable characteristic was the inability to socialize with anyone not on the team. It is well known that this specific team was very cliquey and didn't talk to anyone outside the team.

When the day came that he left lab without saying "bye" I decided to give up on trying to make conversation, or talking to him at all for that matter. You would think that it would be hard to get through a lab without speaking to your lab partner, but let me tell you it's magical when it happens.

In retrospect I think the way I reacted was a little immature, but I honestly don't think he gave a shit and I can't think of anything else I could have done to better the situation. Luckily, he's graduating this year and I'm never going to have to worry about being paired with him again.

But the threat of the micro lab partner still looms...


PS - my schedule for next semester has been finalized

Vertebrate Physiology and Lab - Experiments with mice!!!
Science, Medicine and Ethics (Capping Course) - Ethics, we meet again. And I'm going to rape you all over again.
Human Nutrition - Maybe I'll finally be able to make sense of this field.
Ireland: History and Politics - I'm 100% Irish. Well, Irish-American.

I'm very, very excited for next semester.