Apparently a babies’ placenta is
used in about 135 medical and scientific uses including: body lotions, “protein-rich”
face creams, and shampoos. Placenta even treats gum disease, arthritis, and eye
problems. Just imagine, something you use at home can have baby placenta in it.
Yes, I know the stuff we use every day has even weirder stuff in it, but just
finding out about specific things like this creep me out a little.
Anyway, today’s topic was mainly
about one of the leading causes of death: Cancer. Cancer is caused by some
malfunction in a normal cell – basically the cell’s DNA is mutated in a way
that it makes the cell multiply infinitely and become harmful to the body. There
are four types of cancer which include carcinoma (skin, lung, and breast),
lymphoma (immune system), leukemia (bone marrow), and sarcoma (tissue, muscle).
As everyone knows, cancer is extremely difficult to get rid of; however, there
are some ways to fight it. The typical ways to combat cancer is through
Chemotherapy, surgical removal, and bone marrow transplant.
There are many different drugs to
use to against cancer. One I found that was interesting was Taxol. Taxol comes
from the Pacific Yew Tree and is found to be extremely effective against
ovarian cancer. It targets malignant tumors by interfering with the microtubules
that are responsible for dividing chromosomes during cell division. The problem
is, it takes about 20,000 pounds of bark to make only 1 kg of Taxol. As you can
imagine, many trees will have to be cut down, which isn’t good for the
environment. Also, it is expensive, with 1 kg of Taxol costing about 600,000
dollars. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t have that kind of money lying
around. Regardless, scientists have made a semi-synthetic material that is
almost exactly like Taxol, so hopefully one day it can be used to effectively
treat this cancer.
Once we finished with the lectures,
Dr. Sulikowski informed us about our final projects. We will basically come up
with our own research ideas and how we plan to use it and also present them in
front of college grad students. Yes, college grads, and yes, I am a little
nervous. Nevertheless, these challenges are what make this class unlike any
high school class out there, and I really want to do my best with this and
prove my abilities.
After class, we all got dressed up
for the dinner with the Dean. The dinner was supposed to be outside, but due to
the storms rolling in, the dinner was moved inside the Commons. The Tex-Mex food
wasn’t too bad, but in all honesty, I am not a big fan of Tex-Mex.
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| My roomate and I :) |
After dinner, we had this activity
called, “You Decide: An Admissions Case Study” which involved 4 kids that we
had to either accept, waitlist, or deny to this fictional university. We were
all separated into groups to decide the fate of these four students. I, along
with a few others, was put in a room with Ricky Thrash, who was an admissions
officer at Vanderbilt. He was really relaxed and humorous, which made it really
easy for everyone to express their opinions on this admissions case study.
The applicants were 4 totally
different people named, Michelle (who had a recently deceased father, Christina
(a girl who turned her life around), Stephen (a quirky, creative applicant),
and Juan (a bright but lazy boy). After about a whole hour of discussing,
weighing options, and voting, we finally came to a conclusion. We admit
Stephen, waitlisted Michelle and Christina, and denied poor Juan. In the end,
this case study really showed me how hard it was to be an admissions officer; I
really don’t know how they do this every year – it really is painstaking work.
Also, it gave me more of an in-depth view of the whole admissions process.
Things like these are really helpful to anyone who wants to apply to college
soon and even the curious student. It would be really beneficial if there were more
workshops like these. Maybe one day they can be more widespread, and in turn
everyone can benefit from it.
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| My proctor group! |
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