thesis smells
i'm doing an undergraduate honors thesis on making an open-source flash chromatography system. my thesis project fucking stinks and i'll be the first to admit it. not just in the figurative sense, but it literally smells so fucking bad. worse off, it's making me smell bad.
the naphthalene and other aromatic compounds i separate smell like a combination of mothballs and a seething, visceral stink of 1-naphthol (which has an distinct foul odor, similar to but milder than 1-aminonaphthalene) fortunately, i'm not using triethylamine in my eluent mix, but the solvents smell too; hexanes has an an odd warm-ish smell (more like a light-headed feeling) and the ethyl acetate has a sickly chemical smell that induces a hangover-like headache.
i started smoking as a little treat for finishing portions of my thesis. the first inch of the cigarette is pure bliss, the next inch is enjoyable, and the last portion just tastes awful but i'm too broke to not smoke it to the butt. i do plan on quitting after i finish my honors thesis which shouldn't be too difficult considering that i started using nicotine replacement products sometime my sophomore year as an ad-hoc stimulant in lieu of a prescription (and self-medicating my chronic pain)
more importantly i'm stealing from myself doing this. the sleepless nights, the early mornings, the late evenings, the nonstop energy drinks, the nicotine patches and the cigarettes just add insult to injury. i wake up every day more tired, pissed off, and in more pain than the last, but I can't stop. the work needs to be finished.
i just hope i can submit my thesis before all this catches up to me.