just a fan of electrons

Hello! My name is Lena and I'm a chemistry student in my final year of uni.

I completed my BSc thesis in the same research team in which I'm currently working on my MSc: a lanthanide electronic spectroscopy group. We are currently focusing on studying hydration equilibria; I enjoy it all very much, because I get to combine my two favorite branches of chemistry: inorgo and pchem! Some of the subdisciplines that are of particular interest to me are: lanthanide chemistry, coordination chemistry, electronic spectroscopy, and, albeit very tentatively, electrolyte solution thermodynamics.

I love chemistry very much and I'm always willing to talk about it, so feel free to hmu if you have any questions!

Links and navigation

#chemistry asks

#dabbling in sci comm - because I write sometimes :)

#queuerious chemists - a queue of mini-biographies of some historical chemists, posted on their birthdays

My tips for studying... -> chemistry in general -> analytical chem -> inorgo -> pchem -> orgo

The Chemistry Library - my collection of chemistry resources

Three of my sci comm posts that I particularly like and that neatly sum up most of my research interests: -> Equilibrium and one beautiful regularity (lanthanide coordination chemistry, hydration equilibria) -> Why some electronic transitions are forbidden and why that actually means jackshit (electronic spectroscopy) -> Solutions are stupidly complicated (electrolyte solution thermodynamics)

My storygraph

Ingredients

For the eggplant

1 small eggplant

A drizzle of cooking oil of choice (I used rapeseed bc 🇵🇱)

A very generous pinch of salt

A much less generous pinch of black pepper and chili powder

~1 tsp smoked paprika

For all the rest

Pasta of choice. I used fusilli bc it's my favorite. How much pasta? That's between you and god brother good luck

~half a cup pasta water

1 large tomato

Another drizzle of cooking oil of choice

2 large-ish cloves of garlic

1 tsp dried oregano

Another generous pinch of salt and a less generous pinch of black pepper

2 heaping tsp tomato paste

shredded cheese of choice for garnish. I'm vegan so I used the Violife mozzarella

Procedure

I'm the #1 vegetable skin hater, so first I peeled the eggplant. I sliced it in half lengthwise to remove the seeds (I find them bitter okay), then chopped it very roughly into pieces and transferred them onto a parchment-lined baking tray.

I drizzled the pieces with rapeseed oil and sprinkled with salt, black pepper, chili powder, and smoked paprika. You could probably use less than a full teaspoon of paprika but I'm a sucker for it and add ungodly amounts to everything.

I gently tossed those babies to coat them and then baked the hell out of them at ~190°C, tossing them with a spatula every once in a while. If you're like me, you'll be itching to ramp up the temperature to make the eggplant cook faster. May a god of choice stop your hand from reaching for that knob or you'll burn the eggplant. As it is, it'll take around 15-20 minutes for the pieces to soften on the inside and crisp up just a little bit on the outside. Don't trust me though. Check with a fork.

While the eggplant was in the oven, I cooked the pasta. When it was done cooking, I scooped it out with a pasta scoop strainer and kept that lovely starchy pasta water (I didn't know how much I'd need for the sauce; in the end, I used about half a cup).

In the meantime, I peeled and cut the tomato into quarters, then removed most of the seeds. I blitzed the tomato quarters with an immersion blender. It doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, that's up to you. You can use canned tomatoes, but it's Summer here rn, so I went for a fresh one.

I heated a drizzle of oil on a small pan. I peeled the garlic cloves and minced them with a press directly onto the pan. I added oregano, salt, black pepper, the blitzed tomato, and tomato paste, stirred, then let it cook over low heat for a bit (and I mean like a minute. Garlic burns fast).

I added the cooked-through eggplant pieces to the pan and mashed them a tad with a fork. Again, make it as smooth as you want. I like it when there are some pieces left.

I added the pasta water in small portions. You want to get a sauce, but a thick one, so stir it in between adding water until you reach a nice consistency.

Taste test. See if you'd like some extra salt or black pepper.

I added the cooked-through pasta to the sauce, folded it in, and let it warm up over the heat for a minute. Then I turned the heat off, transferred my pasta onto a dish, and shredded some (vegan) mozzarella on top.

Not to sound like a fucking food blogger but if you make it and love it pls let me know! If you make it and don't like it then I'm sorry there's no hope for you I guess :////

31 July 2026 ☀️🌡️

Hi! A Bachelor's takes 3 years in Poland if you don't have to do any repeats and that's exactly how long it took me. So in that sense, I unfortunately don't have any advice. But before I took up chemistry, I started another degree, spent 2 years struggling to enjoy something I'd found out I hated, took a year-long break due to my health, and then I started chemistry. I was (and still am) the oldest person in my cohort and feel a little behind sometimes, like I should've figured it all out right after high school, just like everybody else here did.

But that's a fallacy, of course. Not everybody else figured it out right away, and there were many people who came to realize they didn't really like chemistry but didn't have the courage to switch majors. I took a very scary step and am going to graduate """late""" but at least I'm studying something I love and have a chance to make a career out of it. And that - graduating "late" - is always better than graduating "on time" with a degree you couldn't care less about.

It's also better to graduate "late" honestly than to graduate "on time" through cheating, which people very much do. Will they make good chemists though? Debatable. What does it matter if you graduate a little bit later (and really, a year later is just a little bit) if you earn that degree through honest work? You'll learn the same material and pass the same exams. My thesis supervisor once told me that he doesn't differentiate between a student who did well in his class right from the start and a student who needed a bit more time to get there. He said, "To me, they are alike - one of them is simply displaced in time as if by a vector."

28 July 2026 🌤️

Picked thesis writing back up after I put it on hold this Spring; although I wrote so little back then it's as if I started today. It is. Not going well lol I enjoyed writing my BSc thesis but now I am Struggling™️ with this Master's. I know what I want to write about and I have some really good sources, but the writing just doesn't flow out of my mind like it usually does. Hopefully it's just a matter of getting back into a routine though.