Letdown.

I didn't expect college to do this to me.

Sifting through the old files on my computer tonight, I realized that I miss the intellectual stretches I performed so often in high school. I read over specific poem explications, in-depth historical criticisms and intense literary analyses, and I marvel at my words. Did I write that? Did I think that? How? Why?
College classes so far have proven to be exhausting, but not enlightening. This stems mainly from the fact that I am not taking any classes that I haven't been fully exposed to beforehand, so I am quite literally bored all day. I sleep through calculus, space out in biology, take writing lightly (though I do enjoy it) and sit passively through Book of Mormon. Chemistry is the only class that requires even mild attention, but there isn't anything I can't get from lecture that the book won't tell me faster.

I AM SO SICK OF DOING THINGS I ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO.
TEACH ME SOMETHING NEW!
ASK ME QUESTIONS!
EXPAND MY HORIZONS!

Please?

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the Socratic method. I miss answering questions incorrectly and being guided toward a different response. I miss the satisfaction that comes from being publicly right. I miss competition--I have found none here. I'm pre-med, for heaven's sake--challenge me! Take me on! Tell me I'm wrong! Please! My only choices at this point are insanity and apathy.
Take your pick.

On the other hand, I don't know enough to be considered intelligent in my lab. I'm a freshman, but I'm treated like a senior--something I'd usually love, but I honestly feel like I don't know enough to take on my responsibilities. I haven't taken a molecular biology class (ever), but molecular biology is what I'm doing every day, and when the molecular biologist my lab is collaborating with tells me I've interpreted my experiment incorrectly because the residue I worked so hard to see on my gel is excess genomic DNA, not badly-inactivated nuclease-cut fragments like I supposed, I don't feel qualified to further troubleshoot the process. Plus, why didn't I include another positive control? Two proven-viable samples are not enough as a contrast to my experiment; I should have lysed another two living adult tails and run them against two additional fetal isolations from my last successful set. Oh, and I should have used a 10-basepair ladder, not a 100 one, because for this mutation, the fragments are 20 bp apart, not 200 like the others. She exclaims disparagingly over my cloudy cell lysis solution, but I didn't make it, and I didn't know it's really supposed to be clear. My DNA primers are eight months old; how am I to know they expire in six?

This is what I see:
There are smaller fragments than I want to see on my gel, so somehow the DNA is being cut before I introduce any secondary enzymes (???).
Proteinase-K inactivates nucleases at 55 degrees Celsius. Ours is old, but has been kept frozen at -20 degrees C, so it should be fine (right?).
PCR seems to amplify more than I want to see on a final gel. Could the DNA be folding back on itself because it is so highly concentrated? Is the annealing time too short? Is there not enough primer? Is the primer nonspecific? Should I include an additive?
I need to fix this--people need results, and when I can't deliver, everything piles up.
I need to know more to fix this--I feel like I'm wasting valuable resources in my vain attempts at experimentation. Polymerases aren't cheap, and neither are primers, dNTPs, ladders, gel rigs, or even agarose.

Help?