Inorganic and organic

It's over.

Oh, it's over. I woke up this morning absolutely amazed that morning had come so fast. "How can it be seven thirty? I only went to bed five minutes ago!" By the time I got to school I still wasn't awake, and I couldn't have coffee (caffiene is a diuretic; three-hour exam), so I bought a pack of Starburst and another of Dairy Milk tasters, mixed them all up together, dumped my stuff in the library office and went to get registered.

There were hundreds of people taking exams this morning. AS Chemistry, of course, plus people resitting it, but also AS Spanish and the entire Upper Fifth doing GCSE English, which is much harder than AS English, I think. I remember doing GCSEs alongside people doing AS-levels; I'm now on the other side of the room, which somehow makes a difference. And I was right at the front and Mrs Custard was throwing fits trying to get everything organised with all these exams, and yelling about mobile phones and periodic tables. Because they're nice like that, we get a periodic table along with each Chemistry paper, but it's perforated and needs ripping out, and the resulting racket as thirty people did it at the same time was quite unnerving for people doing English. In the end Mrs Custard was reduced to hopping around at the front waving one of the tables. It was mine, as well; she gave it back in the end and I actually started paying attention to my paper.

Inorganic wasn't so bad, but it's a good thing I actually revised last night, as every blessed thing I hadn't revised before last night came up. The reducing and oxidising capabilities of iodide ions, all that stuff with concentrated sulphuric acid and later, sodium tetrahydridoborate (VII) as a reducing agent. And there was a scary amount on silicon impurities in iron. But I'd revised it, I knew it, and there was a grand total of one question on the paper I really didn't have a clue about, and that was something to do with the activation energy of a given gas, G, and why most of the gas eventually decomposes despite the high EA. I made it up.

Organic was much harder, because... well, I don't know. I couldn't do mechanisms very easily - spent ages trying to do a nucleophilic substitution on an alkene, of all things - and I had real trouble with the long-answer questions, which were about thermal and catalytic cracking. One thing I spent a disproportionately long amount of time on was trying to remember what the reactive intermediate is during catalytic cracking. I must have spent at least ten minutes thinking about it. It came to me about a minute before the end; I love it when that happens. The answer is a carbocation! It's always a carbocation; I must have used that word several thousand times during the course of the paper.

And then that exam was over, and I handed in my paper, walked out while the people doing resits were just starting, and went down to the library, ostensibly to get my things and find out how quackaquacka's English went. But once I got there, it seemed to dawn on me all at once that my exams were - are! - over, and there's no-one at home, nothing for me to revise and nowhere to go, so why not stay. And I stayed, distracting Nichola from her history, listening to Miranda telling me about her English and Fidan telling everyone about her mechanics.

While we were there, Mrs O'Connor stopped by to ask me how it went. I thought that was very nice of her, as she teaches me English, and has previous wondered aloud how on earth I can stand all these sciences. I was mainly moaning about my mechanism for adding ammonia to a haloalkane, and she laughed at me and said she thought it was all fine. And I hope so.

We went to lunch and I was singing. Miranda said, "You realise you're always singing?" and I said it was Nichola's influence. And it is. She's a much better singer than me to start with, and she induces me to harmonise and sing twiddly bits and it's all good. "She's in a good mood," Dr Galbraith said, as I joined the queue, and I jumped up and down a bit and said, "My exams are over!"

She gave me a look and said, "All right, I forgive you."

Well, I have reason to sing. My exams are over (fuck General Studies) and I have a week to do nothing, and did I mention, my exams are over?

Roll on August the nineteenth.

They're over!

Recs

So, what have I done on my first free afternoon in months?

I've made a recs page!

Sad, but true. I'd been meaning to do it for a while, what with my getting back into Stargate fandom and the way PoA has brought with it a resurgence of puppylove, and it just seemed a fun thing to do. Accordingly, Sleeping With Ghosts fic recommendations. (HP, Good Omens, Stargate and M*A*S*H).

I've recced stories by daegaer, lilka, louiselux, musesfool, casira, language_idling, mieko_belle, gamesiplay, amchau, garnettrees, danvers and minkboylove, plus a host of others who are not on LJ.

If you'd rather I used a different link, or would rather I took the rec down, just let me know.

Waah. Tired.