Proverbs

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• A day in the library can save a week in the lab.
• A week in the lab can save you a day in the library.
• Excess equals success.
• If you don't get what you like, try to like what you get.
• If you spend all day on the internet...you may not graduate in time.
• Knowing the chemistry of a reaction before running it once is better than running it ten times without knowing anything.
• No one ever spends as much time in the lab as they think they need to-just more than they know they want to.
• No project is ever finished faster than you thought it would be.
• No one leaves details out of a paper without a reason.
• Only a dry solvent is a good solvent.
• The more you try the luckier you get.
• Yields go down faster, easier, and with less warning than they go up.
• You can never have too much starting material.
• Just because you found it in literature doesn't mean it's correct
• If you want to save time, do it right the first time around
• Just carry it on to the next step, it'll be easier to purify and isolate later.
• Getting a PhD isn't about intelligence, it's about perseverance.
• The worse it smells, the greater chance that it will bump.
• If it is highly colored, you will spill it on yourself.
• Never trust a label.
• Don't have time to do it right, but have time to do it again?
• When in doubt, throw it out.
• 100% consumption of starting materials does not necessarily mean good reaction
• The flask only falls when you are not there to catch it.
• Cowboy first. You can be more careful later. And you'll know you have to be in the future.
• Measure twice and cut (react) once
• Let it sit, and it goes to sh*&.
• A gram in hand is worth two in the flask
• Projects take as much time as you give yourself.
• Always keep the supervisor out of the lab: A one hour visit by The Old Man can set you back a month.
• Scale it up? Go BIG or GO HOME!
• Q: What's all that brown precipitate floating around? A: Probably your product. Filter it off and see.
• There are two kinds of people, those who finish and those who do not.
• The more frequently you TLC a reaction, the sooner it goes to completion.
• Expensive glassware begs to be broken
• A day in the library can save a week in the hospital
• The success of a reaction is inversely proportional to the value you attach to it
• Experiments should be boring - explosions are NOT FUN
• Just because your advisor references a paper and so does your book doesn't mean the reaction works
• A little contaminant makes a huge difference in color
• reactions do not run themselves
• There is no try... there is do or do not
• do not reinvent the wheel
• In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
• too much analysis leads to paralysis
• 10 seconds labelling a sample saves 30 minutes identifying it later.
• You don't have to be the smartest student in graduate school, just don't be the slowest buffalo in the herd.
• Cleanliness is next to success
• Two weeks in the lab can save a day in the library
• Change or you will be changed
• Always run a crude NMR
• Love your chemistry, chemistry will love you!
• Real chemists pee in the sink
• The flask is our canvas...the periodic table is our paint.
• Anything is possible with a small equilibrium.
• Decomp is never that far away.
• One chemist's side product/decomp is another chemists target.
• If it was easy it wouldn't be worth such a fancy degree.
• If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate
• Golden rule of organic synthesis: Never throw away anything (except into a labeled flask)
• Never do a column on a friday afternoon
• There are NO trivial reactions.
• It's not the cage that sings, it's the bird inside.
• your path to a PhD is a straight line between two dots. Most people follow a squiggle path. You DONT want to orbit (the first dot).
• Time is one thing you can never get back.
• Extractions and Columns always take longer than you think
• garbage in, garbage out
• Boiling is an uncomfortable phase
• There is no better action than over-reaction.
• assumption is the mother of all screw-ups
• five percent equals ninety five percent! It is only a question of optimization...
• The work isn't done until the pigs are fed, watered and ready to fly!
• Don't assume the reaction will work...It won't work until next month.
• the more you get,the more you want
• The more you learn, the dumber you feel
• The bigger the coffee cup, the better the chemist.
• Dropped glassware always breaks on the third bounce.
• Rearrangements happen.
• Just do it!
• Never just do one thing at a time.