Spring 2012 Schedule

My lovely schedule for next semester ...

The friends with whom I am staying in Nashville are most definitely not morning people (and I most definitely am), so I've had some nice quiet time curled up in this awesome, oversized chair that they have. This morning, I decided to enter my schedule for next semester into my Google calendar, and also to figure out when, exactly, classes actually begin. Just so I know how much time I really have off. Turns out classes start Jan. 11, which means I have a little over 3 weeks of vacation. Hooray!

But as I was inputting my schedule into my online calendar (which also syncs to my iPhone, of course), I was also getting excited about the classes I will be taking next semester:

1. Organic Chemistry II (with lab). As much as I was terrified of orgo going into last semester, my fears have abated. Not that it's an easy class - I most definitely earned my A (yep, an A!) this past semester through hours of hard work at my dry erase board. But for some reason, somehow, orgo makes sense to me. (At least, most of the time, after I have puzzled through it for several hours.) Crazy as this may sound to all of you who have taken or are taking orgo, I actually like drawing reaction mechanisms. And that's what second semester is all about: more reaction mechanisms and synthesis, which to me is like deciphering a giant puzzle. I've always liked puzzles. Plus, Organic Chemistry II is a co-requisite for the next class I'm going to talk about.

Ribbon diagram showing 3-D
structure of a protein. We'll
be studying these guys in
detail in Biochemistry.

2. Biochemistry. Some people claim they like biology, but not chemistry. In my opinion, this is absolutely impossible. Biology is all about chemistry, when you break it down to the molecular level. That is, if you actually want to understand how things work in a cell, you have to understand chemistry. And I'm definitely a "process" person. By that, I mean I like to understand how/why things work, at a deeper level. Biochemistry, to me, is about unraveling some of the mysteries of biology through chemistry concepts. For example, by learning about the structure and properties of the 20 common amino acids, you can gain a better understanding of how a protein structure develops, why certain mutations (genetics!) cause a loss or alteration of function, etc. In addition, there are so many organic chemistry reactions that are pertinent to biological functions. Life IS organic chemistry, when you get down to it. I know that we will only scratch the surface in this class, but it will be a good preparation for taking biochemistry in medical school/graduate school in the future as well as (hopefully) interesting.

Chi-square distribution graph. This is
the one statistical test I do know; we
covered it in Genetics. I look forward
to learning more such tests in Statistics
this coming spring semester.

3. Statistics. This is another class that, for me, will hopefully be of great utility. Many medical schools (and graduate programs) suggest that pre-medical students take stats; a couple of schools require it. So having taken stats will look good on my application. But that's not my main reason for taking the course - my real purpose in taking it is to get a foundation in basic statistics so that I can better understand the statistical tests that are used in many of the research articles I read. P tests, T tests ... I don't even know the basics of stats, so I can't interpret the statistical analysis. (The one bit of stats I know is the chi-square test, which we learned in Genetics.) I know this course won't give me everything I need - at some point, I'll have to take a biostatistics course, I think - but it will be a good start.

Drosophila melanogaster, the
subject of the research I will
be doing with Dr. Kreher this
coming spring semester.

4. Research. In addition to my three classroom-classes, I'm going to be doing 2 credit hours of research work with my Genetics professor from fall semester, Dr. Scott Kreher. I will be working with Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies), most likely doing behavioral assays with the flies related to odor perception. I really enjoyed working with Drosophila in my Genetics lab, so I look forward to this work. It will be nice to be in a research lab again, for sure!

Vacation!

So I made it. I finished the semester. I wasn't quite sure there for a while how that would happen, but it did (and it always does, doesn't it?). 

And now I'm on vacation! I mean, really on vacation - I actually took a trip somewhere. My sister Sarah and a dear fellow non-traditional pre-med friend live in Nashville, Tenn., so I decided to head down South to see them for a week or so. I headed out straight after my organic chemistry final, which, considering I'd been up since 2 a.m. studying, made the 8-or-so-hour drive a bit long. But I survived, and here I am, sitting in my favorite oversized chair at my friend's house, drinking coffee, and absolutely not thinking about homework. Of course, my plan is to begin MCAT prep over break (as you can see on my "ticker," I take the exam in about 4 months). But I think I need to let my brain rest and recover for at least 24 hours.

Funny Bunnies: Evolution Simulation

Click to Run

In my last post, I included a link to an online simulation of the lac operon. If you haven't given it a try, I highly recommend doing so. Today, I want to share another simulation from the same source, the University of Colorado at Boulder. This simulation - entitled Natural Selection - allows you to explore the mechanism of evolution. Again, the premise, graphics, and interface are all very simple, but the lessons are profound.

You start off with one white bunny rabbit that lives at the equator. With the click of a button, you can "add a friend" (start the bunnies propagating), introduce mutations (brown fur, long tail, or long teeth - and decide whether these mutations are going to be dominant or recessive), bring in predators (wolves), give the rabbits food (scrub grass), and change the rabbits' environment (from the brown equator to the white arctic). Then you watch what happens - do the bunnies die, or survive? And more importantly, the simulation gets you to think about why. There is even a running chart at the bottom that keeps track of your population, both total rabbits and by specific phenotypes (physical traits).

It is a great tool to illustrate how different mutations - for example, brown fur color - can be advantageous in one environment (at the equator, where the ground is brown and the brown rabbits are camouflaged and can better evade the wolves), but not in another (in the arctic, the white fur is more advantageous, for the same reason). You can also watch the effects of changing mutations from dominant to recessive or vice versa, and how that affects your population.

The best part is, if you do a really good job of taking care of your bunnies, they (literally) take over the world. Well, maybe that isn't so great ...

The Joys of Mutation: Manipulating The Lac Operon

Click to Run

When I was homeschooled (preschool - 5th grade), my mom was all about interactive learning. We dissected animals, performed chemistry experiments, baked cookies to learn about adding fractions, all kinds of things. It made learning fun, and it made the learning stick. My love of interactive learning has continued, and it's one of the reasons I love my science labs - we put into practice the skills and concepts that we have developed in the classroom.

Last week, my Genetics professor, Dr. Kreher, was able to bring that flavor of interactive learning into the classroom as well. We were learning about gene regulation, more specifically, E. coli's lac operon (the set of genes and other elements that control for the breakdown of lactose, which is a source of energy for the bacteria in certain environments, including our digestive tract). Dr. Kreher had found a lac operon computer simulation program - which is free - that you can manipulate to see what happens when you "mutate" (i.e., remove) certain elements, add lactose, etc. It really made the system come alive, and I now understand the operon in a way that I had not before (in spite of the fact that I have studied it in past courses). I have included a link to the program in this post (just click on the picture above where it says "Click to Run"). While simple in terms of graphics and operation, it really represents how this system works, and what gene regulation means. I highly recommend checking it out. Have fun mutating!

Breakthrough!

This is an example of what I've been working on today ...
the reaction to the left is called halogenation; the reaction
to the right is called halohydrin formation.

After hours of wrestling through organic chemistry problems (and getting so many wrong) ... breakthrough! I think I'm finally getting it. Reaction mechanisms, that is. Well, not ALL reaction mechanisms, just the handful that we've studied thus far this semester. (The mechanisms of SN1, SN2, E1, E2, hydrohalogenation, hydration, halogenation, halohydrin formation, and hydroboration-oxidation, to be more specific.)

This morning, when I started studying for my organic chemistry final, it was all a mish-mash to me. Anti addition, syn addition, retention of configuration, racemization, carbocations, bridged halonium ions ... I couldn't keep it all straight. But after making (and reviewing) a huge batch of flashcards and working through gobs of these practice problems, something has clicked. Just now, I found myself looking at a reaction and actually knowing what to do with the bonds, atoms, and electrons. What arrows to draw. What products (including stereoisomers!) would form.

I still have a lot of practicing to do. I don't have all of these reactions down completely. But I'm getting the hang of it, slowly. Thankfully, my organic chemistry final isn't until next Friday, so I have plenty of time to cement my understanding. But knowing that I am already on my way is a darn good feeling.

The Art of Orgo

I have my fourth and final regular Organic Chemistry exam tomorrow on reaction mechanisms. In General Chemistry, we studied basic principles of chemistry, and how to mathematically work out many types of problems, but now we're actually learning how different reactions happen, why, under what conditions, etc. It's actually pretty interesting. Especially since there are so many pharmaceutical and biological applications for what we're studying. Given that I want to do a PhD in Genetics, I know that knowing this will be helpful, at least for some of the graduate-level coursework (i.e., Biochemistry) that I will soon be taking.

In the beginning of the year, I used massive amounts of printer paper for doing practice problems. Then as I was cleaning out the basement of my old house, I rediscovered a giant dry erase board that I had bought years ago. I thought to myself, "We do practice problems on the dry erase boards in class; why not do the same at home?" So I lugged the dry erase board to my apartment, bought a big set of colored dry erase markers, and started drawing.

To my surprise, I found that I actually enjoyed doing the problems -- drawing things out larger, and using different colors to symbolize bond cleavage and formation (for example) really helped me see the bigger "picture," so to speak. So that's how I've done my orgo homework ever since.

My drawing board has been especially helpful with reaction mechanisms -- these problems have multiple steps, multiple bond breakings/makings, and having a large surface area (and again, many colors to differentiate things) has really made a difference in my learning process.

For kicks and giggles (and to further illustrate my nerdiness, not that that takes much doing), I've taken a picture of a practice problem from my textbook that I worked out on my dry erase board.

I know I'm not a doctor (yet), but if looking at this gives you a headache, I recommend taking two Aleve (a.k.a. naproxen sodium) and lying down for about 15 minutes. The blurred vision and pounding will go away soon, I promise.

I Have A Dream, Too

In addition to this blog, I also post frequently (and keep a "diary") on OldPreMeds.com (OPM), a forum dedicated to non-traditional pre-med and med students. Recently, there was a thread on OPM about race and disparities in health care. This thread evoked strong emotions and opinions from many OPM members. It got me thinking about this issue, and brought up significant emotions in me, too. I don't normally double-post things on both OPM and this blog, but I want to share here what I wrote on that thread, in the hopes that it will inspire people to think about this issue, and even more so, to do something about it, if only in small ways:

As I write this post, I am weeping. Because this thread has reminded me oh-so-clearly that we live in a world where inequality, rather than equality, is the rule. Where the color of a person's skin, or how much money they have in the bank, determines so much about their quality of life, the quality of their education, the quality of their health care. That breaks my heart. Because it is absolutely not right. There is no arguing with that.

I want to thank you for bringing these issues up in our community here on OPM. Because we are a community, and one of the roles of a community is to come together - not necessarily in agreement, but at least in discussion - on significant issues. And this is one of those issues.

I am white. I cannot pretend to know what it is like to experience the hurt that people who are minorities experience, sometimes on a daily basis. The cumulative effect of that pain, I cannot even fathom. No platitudes I have to offer will make that disappear.

So this morning, I turn to someone who knew that pain, who lived with it day by day, and who chose to confront this issue of inequality in a way that was so offensive to the racist element of our country that he died for his cause.

We all know snippets of Martin Luther King Junior's "I Have A Dream" speech. But it had been years since I had really read these powerful words. I offer a lesser-known quotation from his speech in the hopes that his dream can become ours, and that we can work together, even in small ways, to bring it to pass. Someday. So that, as MLK said, "one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Here is what I have to share from MLK's speech. Here is what brought me to tears - tears which will not stop - this morning:

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

Is this a pipe dream, an unachievable goal? I have to believe, to hope, that it is not.

Separately, we are each but one person. But together, we are a community. And like it or not, many of us will someday be in positions of influence and power, of some sort or another. I hope we each choose to use that influence and power wisely, so that it makes a positive impact, if not upon the world as a whole, at least upon individual lives. That is, at least, a place to start.