There and back again

So I'm back. I needed a full six hour nap yesterday to recover from the craziness these past few days and now I'm about 90% functional. Bottom line - it was probably the craziest trip I've ever been on. And I think I consumed more alcohol in two days than I have all together since Jeff and I got married. Don't worry I didn't get drunk and act like a fool (unlike SOME people I know:), but I did enjoy myself. Here are some fun pictures:

This is the beach right by the Yakina Head lighthouse in Newport. We had a beautiful weekend, the weather was great!

We attempted to go tide pooling, but the tide was way to far in. We had a really good time anyway. These are some of my school buddies...

After quite a few in the bar the last night... and trying to get Mike to remove his hat. We've never seen his hair.

And the highlight of the evening? Our professor burning the intrinsic system of coagulation. If only we could do that to our tests!!

Aside from the fun we had during free time, the lectures were incredibly informative and very interesting. The NW Medical Teams lecture definitely reinforced my desire to go overseas. I was able to get some information to continue researching now that I'm home.

The body fluids lecture was given by the woman who wrote my textbook, which was pretty incredible. She was a very dynamic speaker, and I really appreciated the amount of information she was able to go through in that 3.5 hour time period. It was impressive, and really helpful.

The most interesting lecture I attended was the infectious diseases of biofilms. I'm still ruminating that one around in my head. It was a presentation of a very large problem in clinical microbiology that still has no answer. It made clinical research very appealing. I won't go into details for fear of boring you non-science people to death.

Last, but not least, the greatest thing I took away from this trip was a bit of advice given to me by Dr. Leclaire of the University of Massachusetts regarding extended education. She sat down and gave me and a few friends a large list of possibilities to pursue in the future. One of the programs she mentioned is in development by the ASCLS right now, and is going to be proposed in front of the legislature this July. It is a Doctor of Clinical Laboratory Science, a position that would be the liaison between the medical doctors and the clinical lab. It would require several years of medical training (making rounds etc) to be able to help MDs to order tests correctly, to explain the results, etc. I asked her how MDs feel about a position like this being instated and she said that all the feedback they have had has been extremely positive. How cool is that? I'm really really hopeful about this and would love to pursue it when it is started in a few years. In the meantime she suggested I look into getting a Masters in Public Health if I want to pursue the angle of infectious diseases, epidemiology, parasites, etc. since most graduate science programs don't necessarily educate from a clinical perspective. So I'm going to look into that.

It was an awesome trip, and I'm glad I went! I'm already looking forward to next year :)