The Periodic Table

drinking some red wine, reading a not-so-good paperback, listening to the radio (news), and watching a real-time feed of hummingbird babies that are a week old. my wife is doing the same. it's very thrilling :)

basically waiting for the work week to start tomorrow

and you?

PH13

12:53 AM

^^ work week is not so far away here

Todd Minehardt

right, you're ahead of me by a bit

i have a nice 40-hour week ahead of me. nothing very exciting, but it pays the bills...

PH13

I was calculating some nmr's and as they are done now I wonder what I want to do next ... there are some questions here that are interesting but I cannot answer them as either they are unclear or I don't have appropriate knowledge

Todd Minehardt

i feel the same way you do in re: those questions. i am not very good with organic, nor am i up to date with computational...

PH13

as most questions aren't computational and those which are are answered fast, that should not be the problem g

Todd Minehardt

eh, depends. i feel like a lot of questions, they are just one-time posts from homework, many times missing information - like chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/34583/…

but i suppose as long as people participate, then it gets worked out eventually

PH13

1:00 AM

I wonder why those hw questions are posted here. there will not be an easy answer and the OP is often not interested in the answer ^^ .... when I think back to my school times there were hw given but it was not that bad if you didn't made them ... it was a little gambling ;)

Todd Minehardt

i was the same way with HW - and i feel the same way, we just worked on them and if we got them, fine, if not, then you learn the way...and the internet wasn't that mature when i was in school and grad school (1987-1999) :)

plus, i always learned more by trying to figure them out, even if i couldn't - i remember taking statistical mechanics in grad school, that was hard

PH13

the internet was rising while I was in school (til 2008) but even then it was not quite as today

Todd Minehardt

agreed - it was still not nearly as user-friendly as it is now

PH13

school means everything beneath(?) university

Todd Minehardt

for me, university + graduate school - so undergraduate 1987-1991 (the Bachelor's degree) and then 1992-1999 for Master's and Ph.D.

a little different than in Germany and much of Europe

here, it's elementary school typically until age 13/14, then 4 years of high school, and off to college at 17/18

PH13

1:09 AM

here it is common to go to basic/elementary school when you are 5-6 years old from class 1 to 4 and then to a higher school from class 5 to {9,10,12,13} depending on what degree you want to reach. after that either an apprenticeship or the university follows

Todd Minehardt

from what i understand, it's much more concentrated in terms of what you study - correct? like, if you are on a science or other track early on, you take more of those classes?

PH13

it depends

our system is super stupid ... every state has it's own way of doing this

but in general I would say that you are right

Todd Minehardt

here we have no real specialization until university, and even then it's not overly focused

PH13

I could choose from class 10 upwards that I want more of chemistry, geography and english

Todd Minehardt

that's pretty cool. here, we get stuck taking all kinds of stuff that may or may not be of use to a particular person

PH13

1:16 AM

over here is a big discussion about if higher school has to be done in 8 or 9 years ... many students are tortured through this finding process over the last and coming years

I'm lucky that I'm not in school anymore

Todd Minehardt

i feel the same way in re: no more school :)

my friend, i have to sign off - getting to the end of the evening here - catch you later!

PH13

have a nice evening :)

cu

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