Friday, November 26, 2010

Conference - Where kids can come to act smart

Only a couple of days out from finishing with the last of exams for this year, I was celebrating hard-stylez by attending the wonderful Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute conference titled "Charting the depths of RNA". I must've been off my head or something, but I was really quite keen to attend this, listen to some awesome international speakers and generally learn something new. Once again, the experience of this conference was quite similar to the ISAN experience I blogged about more than a year ago; this time, without the good night's sleep, thanks to several friends (who don't do med) kindly playing Trivial Pursuit at my place till 1:30am - although I should be also to blame, I didn't have the heart to kick them out earlier...
At any rate, the conference was quite interesting, if you were a researcher in all the new and wonderful types of RNA around - microRNA, snRNA, and some other RNA's with small-letter prefixes that I couldn't remember. For the average medical student (and I didn't spot many, most seemed to be science students), it was next to useless, with perhaps the very interesting exception about novel therapies for Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy (one to look up if you don't know what it is) and other clinical applications of microRNA. This was more focused on the variants of RNA rather than the old regular RNA that you read in the textbooks - it seems that, for the last few decades, we've getting it rather wrong and have not realised the importance of these microRNA things, which do not contain genetic code to translate into proteins, per se, but instead modify expression of regular DNA. A prime example of why this was important was given in the introductory speech by a Head of Science in UNSW, whereby it was noted that the number of DNA genes that coded for proteins (what we focus on in med school) did not necessarily correlate with complexity, but the number of genes not coding for proteins and instead doing something else, DID correlate with complexity - i.e. humans had more than, say, the fruit fly. This, I thought, was a rather succinct point which helped me concentrate through the first couple of talks, then fall asleep at some of the others and generally lose focus. The technical detail in the conference was enormous, and most of it went right over our heads (went with a friend, who was equally keen on this), but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.
The food was of average standard; to me, a rather undistinguished eater, the party meat pies were the most delectable, followed (by a long way) by this random ball of what tasted like cooked self-raising flour (with no eggs or milk), and then some rather unsavoury sandwiches. But hey, we didn't come for the food. Another aspect of the conference were the sponsors, which were very nice people - they handed me pens (they should upgrade to BIC promotional pens or something, pens aren't much good if they can't write), much needed Post-it notes, and even a thing that blocks out light from your eyes when you sleep - can't remember what it's called, unfortunately. That was a fun part of the conference.
In all fairness, as I stated above, I thought it was a great conference for those involved in the field. For us, the relevance is still there, but the clinical talks were few and far in between, it was very clearly pitched to scientists, as they were revising how the heart worked in one of the talks on Atrial Fibrillation. In contrast, they glossed over the basics of microRNA and did not mention the basics on the techniques used to extract RNA and assess it. Overall, I thought it was a good day out, a nice way to celebrate the end of exams, and a great way to give you a headache were you unfortunate enough to try to pay attention whilst not knowing what in the world microRNA was.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Summer times!

So, a couple of days ago, I finished with exams, hoorah! The actual exams were a kind of mixed bag...once again, an SAQ (Short answer questions - marks ranging anywhere from 1 through to 5), MEQ (Mini Essay Questions - generally short questions based on a scenario, in total worth 10-20 marks per scenario, 7 questions), and two MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions - yeah, I'm sure you're all more than familiar with them). Found the SAQ and the last MCQ difficult, MEQ and the first MCQ bearable but only slightly - which hardly raises my confidence levels, but what the heck - its OVER! Celebrate! *party poppers!* *streams of paper cover the room* *smiles all around*

Shame we had such a party pooper for our main supervisor in our last exam. Was really rather strict about no talking after the exam... I know, that's what is meant to happen, but it is nice to smile around, mouth "how did you go?", mouth back "omg that was so hard" and grin without being scolded for it.

At any rate, with the holidays now here, endless opportunity abounds. I could continue to learn guitar, start learning mandarin, maybe read some medical journals or finish summarising Boron... or continue dreaming, continuing procrastination methods, starting new games. Hmm. Endless opportunity... I would like to be optimistic these holidays, and believe I will at least moderate the two extremes and meet somewhere in the middle, like the good negotiator I am now supposed to be after intense training in student politics. I guess one can only simply start doing it rather than think about it, since thinking about it rarely leads to anything productive (for me, it leads to a game of minesweeper - reaching the 100 second mark on expert btw). Speaking of student politics stuff, these holidays will most likely represent my only significant chunk of time I can dedicate to it for this and next year; I'm getting the feeling that things like extracurricula are going to have to take second priority and be slotted in amongst the clinical attachments, which is probably a feeling amongst almost every full-time worker in the workforce; that everything seems to take second priority after work. Mulling on this, things like a family and religion may become difficult to maintain, and time management is really a rather critical thing to learn when young; when you hear statements like "your most precious asset is time", you think "hey, that makes sense, I agree!" but in real life I think that I, personally, forget about that, especially when procrastinating. Value your time, for it only comes around once...

On a more interesting note, I've just got wind recently of an exciting new project happening at UWS! A person that I'm working together with as part of the Campbelltown Campus Life Committee (mostly UWS Staff, and the sole student rep, me) is heading a new inter-professional project, whereby students of different professional pathways (Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Nursing, and of course Medicine - with a few more maybe added in together) are mentored by professionals of their own chosen pathways, as well as of others. The goal of this project is to foster holistic, integrated and thus (hopefully) a better standard of healthcare in our future professionals. I'm not entirely sure as to how much I can reveal, but essentially, the sessions of the project would occur in an integrated clinic that already exists, whereby clinicians take up students and guide them to facilitate the treatment of real patients, rather than be a wallflower and observe passively. This is the most exciting thing of this development - more clinical exposure, to better prepare us for the future! A friend of mine commented on how this would have been great if it were introduced earlier, seeing as my cohort will be in full-time clinicals next year anyway; but nonetheless, it will most likely be a wonderful opportunity for the future students at UWS. Hopefully it goes to plan and produces some positive results!

Anyway, I hope you have an awesome break, especially those of you who've just completed the wonderful journey that is secondary school, and I'll see you around!