Well, we just finished our first school week here at Penn! It's been a busy week in the Biomed Program. Ms. Shuda has been giving lectures in the morning about genetics. I found it a little difficult to understand some of the material, but as class goes on, I start to get the concepts and I also ask some of my classmates.
We had a few guest speakers this week. On Wednesday, Kate Spillane came in to talk about Medical Physics. Joanne Thorvaldson spoke about imprinting the day after and Melanie Parsons Wescott gave a lecture about cancer today. Out of the three, I have to say Ms. Wesott's presentation held my attention the most. She helped the class understand everything that was going on and now I want to learn more about the subject.
Sometimes after lectures, Ms. Shuda gave us activities that had to do with the subjects we went over in class. I felt a little lost during this time, but luckily we spent a lot of time going over each question in the activities and I have a better understanding of the topics, like genetics.
In lab, we isolated our DNA from cheek cells and by today I was supposed to find out what my blood type is. However, during the week I made a mistake in measuring, so I didn't see any results. I was a litle frustrated, but Mr. Sanders gave the class a lecture and said everyone makes mistakes and we should all learn how to deal with disappointment. I thought his advice was very helpful and released some of my stress. Usually, a teacher will get angry if the work isn't perfect, but our lab instructor was very understanding especially since it was some people's first time using a pipet (including me!). But now I know the mistakes I made, and I'll be sure not to make them again.
OH! I forgot to mention. I got the journal club I wanted which was Circadian Rhythms with Kate Cecil. We met for a little bit on Wednesday and she gave us our first article. it's about the plasma melatonin rhythms in young and old humans during sleep. She also gave us a paper about how to read a research paper. I'll let everyone know how the article is going after our next meeting.
Yesterday was the birthday of a girl on my floor, so some of us went out to eat and then we went to make jewelry in the quad. At 11, our RC set up a meeting so everyone on our floor had cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to her.
Today, I met an interesting guy in Houston when I went out for dinner. I was trying to figure out what to buy in order to spend all the money on my card, but I knew I wouldn't be able to finish $40 worth of food. I went up to a group of guys and asked if they needed money, and one (from the Biomed Program) said he was buying power bars and bottles of water to give to the homeless. I thought this was a great idea and gladly paid for some of the food. What was I going to do with that much food anyway? I felt great after that. It inspired me to help those who need it.
There was also a mandatory movie night. I watched Wanted with Cynthia and Michelle. I highly recommend it by the way! Once we got back to the campus, we saw there was a party going on so we checked that out. Today was a great day to celebrate finishing the first week of class.
Well, I'm going to go now and get some sleep before DC tomorrow!
-Courtney
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Courtney--
I hope you didn't have to bribe anyone to get the journal club you wanted.
Sounds like you're getting in some nice lectures.
I hope you're not letting your little error get you down. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes as long as you learn from them and don't make the same mistakes over and over. Making mistakes is often the best way of learning. I'm betting that because of that mistake you probably won't be repeating that kind of error again.
Making mistakes and learning from them is akin to those experiments where the test takers are wired so when they make the wrong choice they get a shock. We go through life wired but the wires are in our heads. When we make a mistake we send a shock to our brains and in the future we remind ourselves about the pain we felt after making that mistake. Rather than continuing with those shocks most of us tend to take actions that will ensure that they don't reoccur.
ANother lesson you seemed to have learned: it feels good to help others. Chalk up another one in the plus column.
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