Pancreatic Seminar, PBL, and POD

Our seminar this morning was pretty good. It was about the exocrine pancreas, and we talked about how the pancreas makes enzymes and bicarbonate ion for digestion. There are a lot of enzymes and hormones, way more than you learn about in undergrad. I hope I can keep them all straight. Part way through, they broke us up into groups to work on exercises. I was in the group that crammed into one of the little conference rooms, which is never very fun. But other than that, I liked this seminar.

Today is my last day as PBL leader. We didn't have a problem getting through all of the presentations today since there wasn't much case left. I presented my learning objective last since it was kind of long. But everyone else's presentations were short, so that worked out well. It was kind of ironic, because I had told all of my group members on Wednesday that they better not come in today with any more presentations having seventeen slides. And then guess who comes in having twenty slides? Yeah, well, do as I say, not as I do, right?

The POD talk today was on the genetics of colon cancer. I was worried that it would be kind of dry, but it was pretty interesting. Usually I'm not a huge fan of genetics and molecular bio talks, but this one was good because the speaker gave us lots of opportunities to ask him questions and basically let us direct the conversation. He also presented several small powerpoints about different research projects instead of one big long one with tons of slides of gels and stuff--having to sit through an entire hour of gels would make me want to shoot myself. His group is trying to come up with a way to test people for colorectal cancer using their genomic profiles. If it works, that will be a huge boon for people who are at risk due to their family history or just spontaneous genetic mutations. Oh, and for the record, I brought my own lunch again today.