Melting Point Meditation

No matter how much I love chemistry the new development of open lab, which is basically extra time chemistry students have to devote to lab by taking melting points and weighing products and preparing sample vials to turn in, seemed a little excessive to me, but begrudgingly I do  it, and strangely enough I have come to appreciate the obligation. I enter lab stressed and weary and it seems strange even to me, but the calm I feel when I leave is very real. I find it some how soothing to walk into that quiet place, lined in fume hoods. The laboratory  smells faintly of solvents. It has a library like silence and calm. I unlock my drawer and remove a watch glass an organic product is gleaming on its surface. It is 2,3-dibromo-3-phenylpropanoic acid. It is a powdery crystalline substance that a child would certainly describe as fairy dust. After weighing my sample I prepare the sample, tapping the capillary tube on the table top so the glittering powder will filter to the bottom, letting my worries filter to the bottom as I tap tap on the desktop. Then I put the thin tube in the Mel-temp (melting point apparatus) and the then it's time to watch and wait. I stare through the scope and watch the glittering powder. The temperature of the thermometer climbs. Its like waiting for ice to melt seemingly boring but surprisingly relaxing. At about two hundred and nine degrees Celsius it begins to melt and by the two hundred and ten only a clear liquid remains in the capillary tube. Who would have fathomed that in an obligatory open lab I would find a little bit of zen and a break from the stress of college life.