Typical Wednesday: Diabetes, Fourth Graders, and PCR

Autobiography cover from the Kary Mullis website

8 a.m. - 9 a.m. Lecture on nutrition for critically ill patients

9 a.m. -10 a.m. Lecture on the ethics of tube feeding

10 a.m.-12 p.m. Lecture on the management of Type I diabetes

12 p.m. - 1 p.m. Basic Science Journal Club on glycosylation (or lack thereof) and its effect on diabetes...because there wasn't enough talk about diabetes in the morning...haha...

1 p.m. - 2 p.m. Bumming

2 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. MedTeach meeting, planning lessons for fourth and fifth grade students in a local SF elementary school on the basics of the heart/circulatory system and lungs/respiratory system. A team of 3 med students (including me) walked over to a resource center located in the middle of the wilderness behind UCSF and reserved some gross pathology specimens, posters, etc.

4:30 - 5:30 p.m. Writing emails and chillin' like a villain

5:30-7 p.m. Informal session on the methods of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) held by the invariably humble and intelligent MSTP's in our class. When I first learned about PCR in college, the professor had a slide with the above image (the cover of Kary Mullis' autobiography) and spent 5 minutes talking about how this Nobel Prize winner is a nut job. However, Mullis knew what he was doing; his book cover did make in impact on me, because now whenever I think about PCR, I think about Kary Mullis and this image of him as a crazy surfer comes up in my brain. His title, "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field," is equally unintelligible...and probably reflects the spirit of a free thinker...or a mad man. Genius is a fine line to walk, I suppose.

Geez, will I ever be able to open the syllabus and start reading?

T-minus 7 days until the GI final exam. Where the hell does all of my time go?

Oh, right, see above (and below and this very site).