Tuesday, May 18, 2010

My Sister, The Scientist


Despite claiming to not enjoy science, my youngest sister entered a few science fairs this year. She did quite well, and I am proud of her. Her project had to to with the chelation of metal ions by insulin to increase its shelf life. She was awarded a $20,000/year scholarship to Westminster, and the honor of representing Northern Utah at the International Science and Engineering Fair sponsored by Intel. At that fair, she received an $8,000 scholarship from the United States Army. Please join me in congratulating Frances for her hard work, and my parents for their continued support.

I took this photo last summer, but never got around to editing it until now.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

P-Chem Throwback

So, I've been pretty bad about this whole blogging thing, and I want to get back to it. I've taken a whole ton of pictures from my first year of dental school, mostly pertaining to the things we have been up to in our restorative dentistry class. I hope to get those things up in the next couple of weeks. Also, I've got a few scanned items that I want to put up, hence this post, which I am dedicating to my senior year of college. Being a chemistry major was pretty demanding, especially the last two semesters. Even though I had spaced out my generals, I still had a ton of upper division chemistry classes to take. Physical chemistry almost did me in. I was a bit rusty on my calculus, since I had taken Calc 3 in my first semester of sophomore year. All things considered, I made it though P-chem. However, I ended up having to take biophysical chem in place of the second half of P-chem. The class was relatively small (no more than 25) and apart from two other chem majors, was entirely populated by Bioengineering hooligans. There was no TA, the lectures were exceptionally dull, and although the professor was quite brilliant he was very much interested in making the class as hard as he remembered it. Our homework assignments were all doozies, and I remember being at or slightly below average on all of them.

This is why this scan of the first page of one of those assignments is such a gem. You might look at the score, shrug, and think it's not that great. But, when I found this paper in a hidden pocket of my backpack last semester, I was quite pleased to recall how proud of this score I was at the time it was handed back.

So, here's to all of those science majors, who struggled through some tough classes in the pursuit of their educations. Being a chemistry major really prepared me to continue my education in dental school. I'm glad to be a part of the next generation of health care professionals.