Why me and Pilot Plant are meant to be

All my 5 terms in Chem Eng I've NEVER once done a laboratory experiment outside of the pilot plant - none in the proper LAB labs at all. Yes. Thanks to some cruel arrangement of timetables, each and every one of the experiments I've done so far in first and second year were ones in the pilot plant laboratory, the latest being the Pilot Plant Scale Batch Distillation - a huge-ass thingamajig spanning four floors of the pilot plant laboratory, which during its zaman kegemilangan (glorious days) was used by BP to distill oil. To think I was ever so intimidated by the Pilot Plant and all the machinery (hardly state-of-the-art but intimidating nonetheless) at the beginning of my first year... lol.

Today, and for the next two and a half weeks I will be spending no less than three hours every weekday except Wednesday in the Pilot Plant, watching digits rise and fall, recording values every ten minutes, turning valves on and off, pushing buttons.... *yawn* Not to say I'd enjoy very much more growing bacteria in petri dishes like Zhon Wei or mixing vegetable oil like Jin Rong but oh, isn't the grass always greener on the other side?

That said, I still am not quite used to wearing that stupid hard hat - it gives me mild headaches and makes my hair look flat. d=