I think the defining moment of my high school career was making the entire upstairs of the building literally smell like vomit.

The day started off innocently enough, just your average senior, looking to get the hell out of high school. I walk into my AP Chemistry class, and my teacher announces that "today is going to be the day we all get together and do an esters lab."

Things are going fine; we're all going over the lab procedures and what an ester even is. For those of you who don't live, breathe, and die by chemistry, a.k.a. really just myself considering how much of a nerd I am with this, esters are smelly substances where some can smell really good like mint, while others can smell like vomit.

I, of course, wanted to handle the one that smelled like vomit. Me being the big bad chemist I thought I was, I thought I could undergo that terror.

OH BOY, was I wrong.

After I had gotten the chemical and the beaker I was supposed to put it into, I spilled it. A lot of it. Now, this doesn't seem like a big deal, just clean up the chemicals, and call it a day.

NO.

NO.

NO.

The stench of the butyric acid started to dispel from my lab table in the classroom, over the entire classroom, and then it seemed to spill into the entire upstairs of the building. I wouldn't have believed this at all, but I remember hearing my Latin teacher screaming, "WHO DID THIS?", thinking there was actual vomit littering the hallway.

I remember watching my fellow classmates turn to me and looking so disappointed, and my friend, Nan, getting sick because of her sensitivity to the chemicals. This smell spread everywhere, and I must have spilled maybe 10 or 15 mL of the stuff onto the table.

Our class literally left the room because it was so bad.

I remember the lab after everyone watched me with this sense of like, "She's going to do it again." I honestly didn't even blame them because it was one of those mistakes where you just kind of have to accept the aftermath.

But yeah, the rest of senior year was very uneventful, though this was that lasting stain, which is now hilarious to look back on.

It was honestly one of my most eventful days of high school. Ultimately, I think it was a great way to mark the end of my high school career and a fun story to tell in the future, hopefully where I never use butyric acid again.