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.

So how do I begin...

My previous blogs have all fallen in a state of disrepair, forgotten and alone in the little corners of the vast cyberspace. So here I go, restarting afresh, anew, and hoping this will not end up disused.

A little introduction is necessary: My name's Luke, and I'm a medical student at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). I, if not undertaking the Bachelor of Medical Research or repeating a year, will graduate in 2013, as the MBBS degree at UWS is 5 years in length. I decided to start this blog on a spur-of-the-moment, hopefully sharing my experience as a medical student here in Australia. To understand where my opinion henceforth is based upon, heres a little of my background:

~ I'm of Chinese descent, though my parents were born in Malaysia and I was born very locally (Westmead Hospital in Sydney, NSW, Australia) and raised my whole life in Australia. As such, I consider myself pretty Australian, though I am pretty hopeless at sports, contrary to the stereotype. I come from a low-middle class background, and I'm the first of my immediate family to go to university.

~ I entered medical school in Australia by a rather typified method: through OC Class, Selective School, HSC marks, UMAT, and an interview. I entered med school straight out of high school, and though there are reasons not to do so, I don't regret it at all.

~ Culturally, the pressure to achieve academically, for me, was fairly high, which is probably not unlike most medical students in Australia. However I procrastinated a lot, also not unlike most medical students in Australia; so it's kind of ironic to enter a career where maintaining academic effort is of extremely vital importance.

~ I consider myself EXTREMELY blessed to have entered medical school in my first attempt, straight from high school. My procrastination was the bane of my parents and as a result I did not score a 99, or even 98+ UAI (seen by many as a given for medicine in Australia), I was a Greater Western Sydney student and thus had local advantages given by UWS to encourage local students, I was only offered my spot in the Late Round of UAC Offers (University entrance offers), and it was a Bonded spot (requires a contractual obligation to spend 5 years after specialisation, working in a District of Workplace Shortage - i.e. where there are not enough doctors of your speciality). So I guess this can give some of you hope in regards to medical school entry.

~ I was and still am really keen on Medicine. Along with the altruistic nature of the profession, Medicine ticked my boxes because it was a secure job with a decent pay, was extremely broad and yet you could find a speciality that could occupy your entire life, was one of the few occupations where there is continuous learning and expansion of your knowledge, made my parents quite happy, was a field where I had an interest in (my other interest is Computer Science), and allowed the undertaking of responsibility of lives but also the privilege of being able to treat patients and play a significant role in their lives. In exchange, I considered the rather long hours, lengthy time to finish training and specialising in comparison to other courses, high stress and emotional situations, and a huge amount of (expected) study for the rest of my life, but they didn't deter my decision. It is important to see whether another career/degree suits you better, although in my case I'm overwhelmingly happy with my decision. This will hopefully not change as I progress through the registrar years, and I hope not to become a disillusioned junior doc in the future.

~ I keep an open mind towards anything and everything, including country practice, all types of specialities, conference attendance, anything. So I will hopefully cover a large spectrum of the medical student experience in Australia and in particular my university.

That's probably enough introductory information to show where I''m coming from, so I'll leave it at that. I hope this blog will have two purposes: firstly, to share what I have gathered through personal research and communication, and secondly as something to look back on when I am old and grey. So thank you for dropping by!