Germy

Today is Thursday, we had an exam on Monday. We have another, bigger exam next Friday, and then the following Monday and Tuesday we have more exams and practicals awaiting us. Thankfully, some of the material presented this week is "reviewish" in that anyone who has had basic microbiology has seen this stuff before. For that matter, anyone who has taken the MCAT (all of us) have seen this stuff before. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bug and drug memorization going on as well -- some of it is familiar, some is not. Many of us (as students have done for thousands of years, I'm sure) tackle the rote memorization of seemingly (at this point, at least) abstract terms by making up sayings, or attaching stories or internal meanings to the words. Tetracylines and Aminoglycosides inhibit the 30S ribosome. I remember this by reciting: I mean, Tetris is for 30 somethings. It works. There are so many of these out there and there are abundant lists to be found on the internet, bu...

I just posted a blog entry not more than 15 minutes ago. Like I usually do, I don't remember to briefly proofread it until I publish it. So then I go back and read through it. As I was scanning the last entry, I got to thinking that I really need to be documenting what is happening at school more, since I aim to use this blog as something to be able to come back to and see my thought's on things as they are happening. I do think that I've been putting tid-bits in here and there, and I really do enjoy writing down memories of this and that, but I think that I need to add just a little more of the boring, day to day stuff. So, I'm gonna start with that here. This coming Monday is the Mini-exam for block2, and that is what I'm studying during this fall break. There is also some OMM and doctoring stuff to worry about for the end of the block fiasco. OMM is primarily concerned with Facet Diagnosis, in theory and in practice. In The doctoring lab, we've finally ...

In the backyard of the house where I grew  up, well -- the split level 2 car garage, (but only ever housed on automobile at a time) single family dwelling where I aged from 3  to around 18 years old my Dad built a 2 story play-house (as we called it) and a sand-box. Perhaps it was not as much 2 stories, but a little fort built with an open roof that had waist high walls all around the perimeter. It backed up to the property line that had a 12 foot tall hedge grown next to over a regular size chain-link fence. The name of the plant, bush or tree -- whatever it was kind of looked like the hedge here, though. They were fun to climb in, definitely. The hedge was nearly as high as the railing on top of the play-house. This meant that behind the play-house was a sheltered kind of a cool hiding, cave like place. When I was in kindergarten I went to a elementary school, which is now a Montessori school and every time I drive by, the building and campus seem to get nicer and n...

Last night I was at a comedy club in San Francisco with some friends and my wife (not that she isn't also my friend) and, lo and behold, actually laughed. We saw Steve Byrne and an opening act, and even though I wouldn't call it the best show I've ever seen, we were laughing pretty much the entire time. Going to the club was a belated birthday present, especially picked out because my wife said I haven't been laughing enough lately. Well, that is probably true. Endless memorization of signalling cascades can do that. It was definitely nice to get out, especially since this upcoming week is our fall break. It will be void of lectures and labs, but there is more than enough to keep me busy, especially since next Monday morning opens with an exam -- what a nice way way to welcome us back. As many of you know, medical school in the US is comprised of a total of four years, with the first two being (almost) exclusively classroom/lecture instruction, and the last two being ...

As this week's classes draw to an end (thankfully, we get a long weekend) and we finish our first foray into the science of cancer, I can't help but take a step back and contemplate the larger life lessons that cancer can teach us. Nearly two years ago I penned a short story which is still my favorite piece of writing that I've ever produced, even compared to this blog, unbelievable -- I know! It basically follows a world renowned cancer researcher  and his wife, who is dying of cancer. The researcher's lab wins the grant which allows him to get a new (fictitious) neutrino microscope which enables him to obtain resolutions much higher than an electron microscope. Of course, he peeks into the cancerous cells of his wife, only to find much more than he bargained for. (After finishing writing this post, I thought that it might be nice to include a link to the story. I copied the shortest, polished version (the published version) to a google document, so here is the lin...

When I was 22 years old, I was a contractor who, for the most part worked as a subcontractor for a couple of warehoused who contracted with different property management groups and small apartment buildings for floor covering replacement. It was lucrative work with minimal headaches, as most jobs could be completed with in the span of a day (granted, sometimes the days were excruciatingly long) and there was no sales or bidding of jobs -- which is really a headache. Work was often cyclic with the summers being the busiest times. I remember the summer when I was 22 quite well. It was the summer that I eventually made the decision to get out of the construction business and move to Colorado. But that is a different story (kind of) and several months before I had the inkling that I would be moving out of Oregon (born and raised in the eastern edge of felony flats of Portland) I found myself trying to manage the flow of work, which was good. Between myself and my crew (a couple of...