Teaching med students with a B.A.?

As promised, I am posting some pictures of my new flat as well as a few from events a while back.



Today was my first day of demonstrating in a second year biochemistry lab for medical students. This lab was far less involved than any lab I took at Williams. I hesitate to call it a joke...but I guess I just did. The lab was titled "isoenzymes," which are multimeric enzymes composed of two or more different subunits. The particular composition of subunits varies across tissues. The medical application of this was that apparently you can diagnose heart vs. liver disease based on the form of isoenzyme released into the blood from damaged cells. The students separated a mixture of the isoenzyme lactate dehydrogenase isolated from different tissues by native gel electrophoresis. They opened a pre-cast agarose gel, pipetted liquid from three tubes labeled A, B, and C onto the gel, and then handed it over to the demonstrators to place in the electrophoresis running apparatus. The stain solution which assayed for protein activity had to be made immediately prior to staining, so the students added the appropriate reagents to a test tube by pressing down on dispensers that were programmed to deliver a specific volume (like those for ketchup at the ballpark). The "wet" part of the lab was only one component; half the time was spent working on a case study about diagnosing someone by measuring isoenzymes in the blood.

The experience was made more disappointing by a quite confusing introduction from the lab instructor and the lackadaisical attitude of some (but not all) of the students. When I tried to explain certain points in more detail, they just glossed over and nodded a lot, eager to get out of lab as soon as possible. They do have jam packed schedules, and are given only two hours for this particular lab.

Nevertheless, demonstrating was enjoyable and I learned a few new things--what an antipyretic is, for instance. I was also struck by the number of international students in the class. Tomorrow is the first class of an upper-level biochemistry seminar that I will be auditing this year. I have a good feeling that this will be more interesting than the medical lab.