Here are some selected quotes from literally the best professor I have ever had the pleasure of learning from. Dr. Katz could teach p-chem to third graders.
“I’ve seen your schedule — it’s incredible. You guys are really, really busy. Me, I just sit around all day and blow bubbles and come in here occasionally to talk to you.”
“I got an email from a med student, which was actually quite unprofessional because it used the F-word, attacking my use of ‘wah-wah’ for water. They seemed really upset.”
“55,500 mM water; the highest water concentration known to woman.”
“It’s 1:25 on a Friday afternoon — if I’m not entertaining, I’ll lose you.”
Dr. Katz: So, the kidney filters 180L water and 25 thousand mmoles nackle per day. Which is a ginormous amount. Class member #1: I’d like to take issue with you using the word ginormous. I’m going to write a letter. Katz: I see. If it interrupts your learning, then I will not use the g-word again. CM1: Thank you. Katz: So, the question is, what happens in the kidney such that you see such huge amounts of filtration and relatively small amounts of water and nackle secretion? CM2: Can we also scratch ‘nah’ and ‘nackle’ from the vernacular? Katz: Ok, now we’ve gone too far. CM3: Hey, I like ‘nackle.’ CM1: I was kidding, it’s OK to use ginormous. Katz: Thank you.
Katz: So what’s it called when you have red blood cells in the lumen of the nephron? Us: Blood in pee! Katz: Yes, I think that is the clinical term. “Blood in pee.” You come into the doctor for a diagnosis… ‘It appears you have blood in pee.’ So how can this happen? CM: You get punched in the kidney. Katz: Blunt trauma can cause blood in pee. Alternatively, if you swallowed a bee and it stung the capillary wall, causing red blood cells to enter the lumen; that would also work.
Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, was a specialist.
He could effortlessly execute the double pun: Noah’s Ark
was made of gopher-wood, he would say, but Joan of Arc
was maid of Orleans. Some Whately-isms are so complex
that they nearly amount to honest jokes: “Why can a man
never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the
sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches
there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered
and bred.”
We’re learning how to prep teeth for full gold, porcelain fused to metal, and all porcelain crowns. That is, we’re taking 60,000 RPM pneumatic dental drills fitted with diamond-studded burs and… cutting plastic teeth (funny, eh?) fitted in something called a typodont which is mounted in a very nice simulated patient (complete with cheeks, semi-realistic range of motion, etc.). Thing is, it is tricky work. The next time your dentist picks up a mirror and drill in order to place a filling in your back upper molars… be thankful they first practiced on a set of plastic teeth.
Correction: Umm, that’s 400,000 rpm. Still a lot to learn when you’re off by orders of magnitude.
Heard Tyrone Wells on the radio today. I like the song “Remain” because its lyrics describe the way I’ve been feeling:
Sometimes I get so tired
Just trying to find a place
To lay my head
I look up to the sky
I feel the warmest light comfort me
I’ve seen the great heights
Reminding me I’m alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know there’s something, I know there’s something more
I think we’re all afraid
That we might be alone, alone down here
We all want to have some faith
At least that’s true in my case
To just believe
I’ve seen the great heights
Reminding me that I’m alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know there’s something
This world may crumble into the ocean
It could all end tonight
I undermine you, then try to find you
My only source of life
I’m breathing
I am breathing
I am alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more
Than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know that I’m alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know there’s something more
I took a nap on the couch in the bright afternoon sunlight today, which really distills my spring break down to its essential components: sleep, relaxation, warm sun. Troubled dreams still seem to haunt my sleep, a carryover from the stresses of last week.
Since tumbledry is an ongoing effort to learn more about myself, I thought it appropriate to share a recent selfservation of my own.* I’m afflicted with an ongoing crisis of scope. That is, I vacillate between too narrow or way way too broad. I’ll be studying for a test and it will completely consume my thoughts: I can only think in terms of black and white, pass or fail. My entire world becomes the test — I can’t think ahead to that weekend, or this summer, or being done with school, or even the small (albeit important) role the test plays in the larger scheme of my life. And then, when immediate pressures of school are lifted, I’m suddenly thinking way too broad: why am I here; how can I best fulfill the potential of this gift of life; what if humanity is terribly and eternally alone in this universe, hovering on a tiny vulnerable ball in the midst of essentially nothing, with nobody to keep us company?
See? Crisis of scope.
It’s draining, and depressing, and I haven’t found a great way to fix it, or at least deal with it. I have, however, realized one important thing: the solution to happily existing in this world is to engage others by making oneself helpful. It keeps you focused, engaged, involved — it keeps your scope right, and it knits you together with other people. So, even if we are just a group of beings on a tiny little ball hovering in a nearly infinite nothing, at least I can knit myself into a fabric of people, where the tiny little tests and problems simply bounce off, like marbles from a trampoline.
* selfservation: (n) an observation of the self, shared with others in a manner that is self-serving
I occasionally hop on the mic here and say “disregard everything I’ve said before about listening to something, you simply have to listen to this.” Well, this “this” is the best “this” (or at least most classic) that I’ve yet come up with. It is: Liszt’s “Un Sospiro” from Trois Études de Concert, performed by Jakob Gimpel. I liked the YouTube comment from user cheries5:
I will never forget studying with Jakob Gimpel. He was old then, but just as brilliant. Not an easy guy to get along with, sometimes, especially for the men folk, but increased my technique by 300%.
That said, holy arpeggios with interspersed, crossed over melody lines.
