Humiliation.

Today was... humiliating. And frustrating. That is all I can say. But I know you people like to hear from me. So I'll tell you about it.

The day started out well, partially because I got more than enough sleep. Last night I was so discouraged and tired and quite frankly -- zombie-ish, that I finished my work early and went home. Shannon was still up and studying in our room, and although I usually can't sleep with the light on, I was out in less than five minutes. By the time I woke up, I had gotten over nine hours of sleep, and I felt pretty good.

First class was New Testament. I always learn something in this class.

Next on my schedule was tap dance. Tappity tappity tap. I got my score back for the test I had taken last time. 89%! This was extremely pleasing. I mean -- that may be the best test score I've ever gotten on any dance test. Even in 280, my second time through, I only got an 88% on my cha-cha test. So I was very, very pleased. I looked at the comments from the graders... "Stiff upper body." Oh. My pleasure dropped into my feet and a little splurge of embarrassment bubbled in my core. Those stupid titantium rods. They may be my claim to fame at times, but honestly -- it results in an extremely inflexible and irreparably tense posture. Oh. Okay, do I go tell my teacher or not?

No! Little shy Jenna screamed in the loudest voice she could. NOOO!

But bold Jenna disagreed. YES! You could SO get some points back for that.

Shy Jenna shuddered. No. No. This is the best you've ever done on a dance test. Asking for extra points is like... disrespectful or something. I don't even want the points. I'm not in this class for the grade. I just wanted to learn to dance. And I hate talking about my surgery. I hate drawing attention to my scar or my stiffness or anything I can't do because of it... Shy Jenna started to beg. Don't make me do that, please....

Bold Jenna immediately pounced upon this laspe in reason. Aha! You know very well that isn't disrespectful in the least bit. You're just scared.

Shy Jenna said nothing, and bold Jenna knew she was winning. Besides, said bold Jenna, next test may not turn out so well. Next test you might need the graders to consider your, uh, disability.

I DO NOT HAVE A DISABILITY! came the outraged scream.

Bold Jenna just laughed in shy Jenna's face. What? You can't do stuff other people can do. Doesn't that mean disability?

The two quarreled all during class. The end of class finally came. I cautiously approached the teacher. She's a nice lady, really. I shouldn't be scared of her. I shouldn't. I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not... Repeating that to myself convinced me barely enough to stay until the line to talk to her was gone and I was standing in front of her. It was my turn to talk.

I opened my mouth. Nothing. I closed my mouth, swallowed, and opened it again. My voice was raspy, but I managed to say, "Um... there were comments on my test that... um... my uh... upper body... was... st-st-stiff..."

Kenady (the teacher) waited for me to continue. It's not like she looked mean or anything. She's very nice. And she's extremely approachable. But for no reason, as I imagined telling her about the rods in my back, I felt hot embarrassed tears starting to form in my eyes.

Oh no, I thought, not now. You don't need to cry, Jenna, this is perfectly okay, this is perfectly okay! I couldn't stop now though. I wanted nothing more than to just suddenly run away and not say anything about the rods in my back. But I couldn't stop now. So I managed to mumble -- "I have titanium rods in my back and I can't bend or um be flexible or um not be stiff or... um... yeah." By the end of that short explanation I was full-on crying. I couldn't see. My throat was swollen.

I was absolutely humiliated.

And nothing makes me cry more than pure embarrassment.

Thus -- a vicious cycle developed: noticing that I was about to cry, I got embarrassed and willed myself to NOT cry. However, feeling humiliation merely produced more tears. More tears lead to deeper embarrassment which lead to more tears -- and so on and so forth.

Kenady was very nice about it, but I knew she couldn't help but notice my tears. I very much regreted having let bold Jenna talk shy Jenna out of saying nothing. She explained that it was mostly my shoulders and neck and arms that were tense rather than my spine, so that shouldn't have interfered much.

I so too humiliated at this point to fight back. Yes, I know. But my neck is a continuation of my spine. A good portion of my neck is fused to titanium rods too. And my shoulders -- I don't fully understand it myself, but ever since the surgery, I've been the tensest thing ever. And you don't even know what I've done to try and reverse it. And my arms -- I don't know what to tell you about that, since I was very careful to make sure my arms were loose and swinging to the beat like you and the TA do when you're dancing. I swear I've done my best.

But I didn't say that. I nodded as bravely as good, said "Okay," and dashed out the door. I was distraught enough that the effort of climbing the RB stairs didn't even phase me. I finally just found a spot in the library and just sat there. It was no use trying to do homework like this. After about half an hour the tears finally stopped. I was just angry at myself now.

Why did I have to start tearing up in the first place? I don't know. I HATE HATE HATE crying. It is my least favorite activity, especially since I still cry when I am trying SO hard not to. I had no reason to cry in this instance, and still I did -- I mean, I did better on my tap test than I did on most of my other exams this week. I was just embarrassed about the "stiff upper body" comment and the frustration I feel for not being able to do anything about it. I guess, for me, tears of embarrassment are harder to hold back than tears of sadness or joy or anger. I HATE HATE HATE it. Rachelle calls it a "gift for weeping" but I personally view it as a curse. Being able to cry in situations where it is okay to cry is nice... but not as nice as this is horrible: the inability to NOT cry in situations where it is definitely NOT appropriate to cry is a curse of epic proportions.

Well, I eventually calmed down enough to finish reading my psychology chapter, get lunch, and stay awake all through the psychology lecture.

Then I went to my chemistry lab class, in which I had my practical exam. Basically -- I was given an unknown ionic solid, and I had to figure out what it was. Mine was a pale yellow. First off, I had to figure out what it dissolved in.

It didn't dissolve in water, or if it did, it was such a slow reaction that it wouldn't ever happen within the three hour lab period. It did dissolve in nitric acid if I shook the test tube for a while. And most interestingly... when I tested to see if the powdered stuff dissolved in ammonia or sodium hydroxide, the instant the powder hit the solution, it turned from a pale yellow to black.

Ooh. That means that the cation is most definitely mercury(I). That was easy. That means all I have to do now is figure what the anion is.

I tested for halides -- nope, no white precipitate at the end of the test.
I tested for carbonate -- nope, no bubbles upon impact with acid.
I tested for nitrate -- nope, no brown ring at the end of the procedure.
I tested for phosphate -- nope, no yellow precipitate of the end of the test.
I tested for sulfide -- nope, doesn't smell like rotten eggs.
I tested for sulfite -- nope, no precipitate of any sort after adding bromine water.
I tested for sulfate -- maybe.

Well, the sulfate test involves this -- add barium chloride solution to your unknown solution. If you have a sulfate anion, it will react with the barium cation to form an extremely insoluble white precipitate. It won't even dissolve in hydrochloric acid. So, if you add a ton of hydrochloric acid to your precipitate, and it never dissolves, it should be that insoluble white precipitate. Any other sulfate precipitates would dissolve. Here's my problem though. I know that I have a mercury ion in my solution. The mercury reacts with the chloride ion from both the barium chloride and the hydrochloric acid and makes a totally different white precipitate that looks exactly the same. And it obviously wouldn't dissolve in hydrochloric acid because it's a chloride precipitate.

But, since all the other tests turned out negative, I figured the white precipitate that I got at the end of the sulfate test was probably a combination of mercury (I) chloride and barium sulfate. I decided my unknown must therefore be mercury (I) sulfate.

Brianna Teerlink, from my ward last year, is also in my lab section. We figured out that we had the same unknown, because, well, it looks the same and it behaves the same way no matter what. I went to go verify that I had gotten my unknown right. Then I could be done!

Professor Brown kind of looked at me sadly when I showed him my work, and said in his Australian accent, "Nope. You got the mercury part right, but it's not sulfate. Explain to me why you thought it was sulfate."

I did. He kind of raised his eyebrows and pointed at the mercury again everytime I said chloride. "Okay," I said quietly. So ALL of the white precipitate must have been mercury (I) chloride, not just some of it.

So I ran every anion test, except the sulfate, again.

All negative.

I was so frustrated that I felt the hot tears coming again. I hid in a corner of the room until they went away. I was still sniffling though.

Again, I ran every test.

All negative.

I really was going to burst into tears at any moment.

Brianna was getting frustrated too. All her tests were negative. Finally, the lab period was almost over. The teacher left for a meeting, and told our TA what our unknowns were so she could grade them when we were done. Brianna finally went to the TA and explained the whole thing. Angela (our TA) kind of looked at us for a minute and then said, you might want to run your nitrate test again.

We did. Both negative. I even made a known solution in which I had personally added tons of nitrate and ran it side by side with our unkowns. That all also turned out negative. The only problem was ... that should have definitely been a positive. DEFINITELY. So... all the tests were negative, including the nitrate test. But known turned out negative too, so we had to assume it should have been positive.

So, our unknown ended up being mercury (I) nitrate. And I left frustrated.

So that was my day. I'm okay now. Just tired and hoping nothing will go wrong at work! :)

Love, Jenna.