Bethel University - Spire Yearbook (St Paul, MN)

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The familiar sojourn into the bowels of the AC building is strangely different in the subdued atmosphere of late evening. Doc’s corner hums with coffeepots, but that warm invitation is quenched in one quick maneuver around the corner. In the blue darkness, the impending corridor is punctuated by a sole square of light issuing from the closed door of AC 115. There is a fascination about the slumbering scene of many a triumph and fiasco: the labs of chemistry. A processional of drooping lab coats slouches on a series of hooks, mute witnesses to the disciples of the condensing tube who daily shuffle to their appointed stations. Here is a panorama of closed office doors. Tavernier, Sackctt, Stephens, Schmidt — men alternately viewed as advisors, lunatics, comedians, and unbearable taskmasters. Some bewildered soul is perpetually lurking around these entranceways, waiting to talk to 'ask Dr. ” Varieties of monumental problems are solved in these havens of clutter: behavior of ideal gasses, the functioning of spec 20’s, if life can be worthwhile without P-chem, What happens tf when I don’t get into medical school?” Long after the chemistry major is bedecked in the garb of a bachelor of arts, after he has forgotten how to defend himself with a rinse bottle and cannot draw the structure of a spingolipid despite any incentive to do so, he may perchance still crack a smile when recalling a certain ubiquitous green sweater, or a Sackett prayer breakfast. The quant lab in the eerie light of its one window.1 suddenly murmurs with the whiz of countless magnetic stir bars! From somewhere in the midst of a sea of analytical balances and scrupulously clean flasks, the lone radio drones 1977’s recurring top ten hits. A sense of timelessness pervades the lab — titration biurets drip rhythmically, solutions melt from color to color, McDonald’s rations come and go until the janitors announce the closing of the building. Organic Chemistry features elaborate contraptions, multi colored rubber gloves, and bulging round-bottomed flasks, all to be manipulated with new found dexterity. The ever-present threat of explosion and sudden appearances of billows of white smoke inflict drama into the seemingly unexciting memories of extracting, purifying, and crystallizing oily liquids and putrid powders. But onward to a land where air jets whistle, glassware tinkles melodiously, and all sounds are party to the smug emotion of new found importance. General chem lab is accompanied by the rainbow- hues of one’s first real lab coat, an entire inventory of assorted paraphernalia, and exposure to that all-knowing upperclassman T.A. and cannot help but flood even the grizzled soul with unwelcome nostalgia. The pains of countless experimental blunders have disappeared, though, and all that remains of initiation into science are the tenacious odors of dormant reagents in the stock room. The light of the “outside world” is again visible through a twin set of double doors. Jane Kochka

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Give me joy or pain — this inbetween is so mundane. Let me cry like Hell burning and eating my brains, Or the laughter that my heart is climbing some tall tree. But I hate to be on the ground looking up or looking down. Mark Rentz