Chemistry and Grad School

Derek Lowe writes about the availability of chemicals and life during grad school: bq. A Day in the Life: Dichloromethane and Peanut Butter OK, I've got dry dichloromethane ready to go, right out of the Aldrich bottle. It's not like dichloromethane ever gets all that wet, not compared to something like THF. Stuff's a sponge. Man, I remember the days when we had to distill that fresh from sodium metal. And the fires! Now we just pay more money and it comes in a syringe-sealed bottle. What a deal. Beats calling the fire department once a month. bq. Bottled dry solvents! I'd have called that the height of decadent luxury back in grad school. Of course, a lot of stuff looked like the H. of D. L. at the time, have to keep that in mind - minimum wage would have been a real pay raise, considering the hours. . .took years before I could look at ramen noodles again, and that week where all I had in the place was a jar of peanut butter - smooth, too, worse luck. . . Spent a few years in labs (MarineBio but everyone else wanted to be Jacques Cousteau in the early 70's so real work was tight) before dropping out of college (computers were starting to get really popular and there was money to be made!). I know the feeling... He mentions Aldritch - they are like the Grizzly of power tools or Graingers or McMasters of everything else (except electronics for which you have DigiKey)