When approaching Physical Chemistry from this point of view, one can sometimes be overwhelmed in detail.

One is not encouraged either by the remarks near the beginning of the Physical Chemistry text of a German Physicist, Arnold Summerfeld:

Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through the subject, you don't understand it. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it except for one or two small points. The third time you go through it, you KNOW you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to the subject that it doesn't bother you anymore.

It's been about six days since that exam and life is beginning to take on a fresh colour. I am regaining my human-like appearance. One rarely considers when returning to school in later years that one can no longer study the nights through during exam week (which is really two weeks) and rebound as one did at eighteen. The bag-like effect under my eyes and my relapse into a condition of adult acne is less pronounced today.

And fond memories are whelming up in my mind from last term...it is said one only remembers the happy things.

I remember, for instance, the relief in my lab instructor's eyes when I did not call the x-ray fluorescence instrument a “machine”. And I must admit, it really was funny when the Calculus Instructor asked the class, “Does anyone know what she means?” when I asked a question.

One of the lab assistants in the department who is also “older” returned to university to pick up a course last fall. While comparing notes on how it is to study again, he said, “Yeh, you look at a page for twenty minutes ... and then you might even be able to read it.” I was leafing through a diary I wrote in my thirteenth year (of life, not school) and I came across the words, “Dear Diary, Today I learned that I don't know everything yet” I guess I was anticipating that very, very soon, perhaps within the following two weeks, I would know everything.

Without hesitation, I will admit, that, dear me, I still don't know everything yet.

And sadder and wiser that I am, I know that I won't know everything, ever.

Audrey Waytiuk is a graduate in Biochemical Technology from Red River Community College in Winnipeg. She has worked for three rural weekly newspapers in Manitoba.