Ciba: Day 1

Today was the first day of the summer Ciba program. I got up around 7:05AM to cram in reading the chemistry review disc that the Ciba people had given us. I read through some and some of my memories about chemistry started coming back, but I still forgot a majority of them. But it was okay, since the teachers were going to review a little.

When I first got to Ciba, I saw a group of girls standing outside. The lab assistant in my sophomore year in chemistry, Roxanne (Roxy), was also there (she’s apparently going to be the lab assistant in the program this year). As the other girls and I waited for more people to show up, a few of the girls talked. When I first got there, I tried to join in on the conversation, but I really couldn’t, since they were only talking about people they knew from certain schools, etc. (we were all from New York, but they knew people from each other’s schools that I did not). So, I grew bored since I couldn’t relate to them, but I also didn’t want to relate to them. I don’t like it when people would leave anyone out of a conversation, so I didn’t try that hard to communicate. But, I had a sinking feeling since I didn’t want to spend the next two weeks of my summer being with people who I may not like (I don’t know these people so well yet, so maybe I will start liking them a lot).

But at 9AM, after seeing that no more people would come, Roxy led us to the room where we were supposed to have breakfast at 8:30AM. Everyone else was already there! I tried to find a seat to sit in and sit with the other girls that I had been waiting with, but they all just started sitting at this one table where there was no extra seat for me. So, I took to a empty table up front kind of gloomily, because I was alone. But that was good! Because, when I turned around, there was another group of girls and they started introducing themselves right away and they seemed very nice. Some of the girls were from Delaware, but two were from New York.

Soon, we went to another room to start the program (I didn’t get breakfast!) and start the experiments. We made soap in the morning. At lunch, at enjoyed my lunch with the girls that had introduced themselves to me earlier and I was happy with the conversations we had. It was something I could actually relate to. I was happy that I was with these group of people, rather than the other people, who still seemed to be discussing about people they knew (and I would not know).

After lunch, we were divided into three groups and we went to lab stations to learn about things and performed experiments. I silvered my wine bottle! That means I coated the inside of my glass wine bottle with silver, so it looks pretty cool. I also learned a little about explosions (we basically saw that example to learn about catalysts) and then looked at oil and water. It was cool when you put oil in Propane (I think that was it) because it becomes little beads that settle at the bottom of the beaker. When you fill the beaker up with water, the beads start floating at the center (since the density changes). After that, we went home.

Judging from this day, Ciba will be fun! I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to connect with anyone, because there are some programs where people like staying in certain groups. It’s good that there are open people.