Evaporation is one of the most tedious unit operations that we studied during college. There were a lot of trial-and-error calculations and every pressure and temperature must be interpolated from the steam table. I know some of you might not understand half of what I wrote but what I’m trying to say is it was time-consuming and difficult. Technical effect para lang mas mahirap basahin. 

But when the topic was discussed again in the review center, our instructor told us that “the superheat and subcooling are negligible”. In engineering terms, something is “negligible” if it can be taken out of the equation without affecting the correct answer. Bitter mode. Pinahirapan pa kami nung college, negligible naman pala.

From unit operations to real life: we tend to spend a lot of time and effort on things, and sometimes people, that as we look back turned out to be negligible in our lives.

E.g. 

1) Something big was coming up. You overthink about the clothes you'll wear, how you’ll act, whether to do this or that. Come the D-day, you changed your mind on your attire, dropped all your rehearsed lines and just became spontaneous. And it turned out to be the best decision you made for the day. Next hopefully would be the clothes. 

2) You got a haircut for 1,500pesos. Nobody noticed. 

3) You and your boyfriend broke up. You cried for two nights, changed your relationship status in Facebook, did a lot of explaining to your friends and then the next day you’re together again. Talk about burning calories.

"Kung alam ko lang..." moment.

But you know the ugly truth? Just like in engineering, we won’t actually know that it’s negligible unless we try it. (Or it’s in the book and the prof said it’s assumed to be negligible) Life is a trial-and-error anyway and it’s usually by looking back that we realize the things that mattered and those that did not pay off. It’s not the best reminiscing moment in the world but let’s not regret on the thousands of joules that we exerted. Just because something did not pay off doesn’t mean all were put to waste.

As Law of Conservation of Energy says, energy is never destroyed. It could be converted to patience for guys who wooed girls for years yet got rejected; or hopefully some wisdom for a girl who empties her wallet for a PhP 1500 trim. Don’t regret because efforts are converted to lessons. 

Umm, Engineering, what have you done to me?