Jasmine Naranjo Professor Steel, Christina BIOL 293 Fall 2018
Dear Self,
We made it to the end of semester! The cell biology course was challenging but you learned a lot. Cell biology might have been a difficult course but if you continue to work hard and study, you will do just fine. Great choice on picking this course because it will come in handy for your future in public health. Throughout the course, you have a few assignments to complete including the leukemia, and personal research paper. During the leukemia, and personal research paper you learned about drug development, testing, and apoptosis. Just to help you get a “leg up in the race,” apoptosis is considered cell death and tremendously important process. For example, if p53 is defective it could allow abnormal cells to proliferate, resulting in cancer and to avoid that from happening you would want apoptosis to occur. It was interesting to learn because as we know cancer deals with cell biology; there is a variety of several different cancers. Cell biology helped point a spotlight on the causes of acute myeloid leukemia by understanding the cell cycle. The course will help you have a better understanding on the primary research article both how the study was organized, and being able to comprehend the data. You have learned about the cell cycle and p53 purpose in the cell, which recognizes damage in the DNA. The workload compared to what was expected was more than you realized but everything was beneficial and you enjoyed every step of the way. We are hoping for an “A” as any student would but we will not stress if we earned a “B’ because we learned so much and enjoyed learning it. Our study technique did match up to what we promised ourselves in the beginning of this term, great idea on the index cards and drawing out models to help with your visual learning.
One thing that I consider very important to tell you Jasmine is to have faith in yourself. Have confidence in your capabilities of striving for the very best in everything you do. Do not give up on yourself; you are on your way to achieving a master’s degree in public health and looking forward to the following semester. This year has brought many “ups and downs” but mostly “ups” because public health is a very broad field but with the help of this course, it narrowed down your passion. This course has revived your desire to do research, predominately cancer research because while reading the primary article about acute myeloid leukemia case study, the data helped support a hypothesis of a drug that induce apoptosis. A light bulb went off in your head, and everything cleared, that research might be a step into the right direction. I believe that the case study should operate for a longer time-frame and repeated a few times before taken seriously. My second thought arrived, and considered there is a possibility in the future we may find the cure to cancer and all I could think was; I need to be a part of that scientific exploration. Your drive was awaken during this course because it demanded you to be “on top of your game” and it was all for the best because now you accomplished finishing the course with new knowledge. Once you read this letter, I hope it puts a big smile on your face and ignites a fire for you to achieve your goals. Get to work Jasmine, these assignments are not going to complete themselves and have fun while doing it.
Sincerely,
Future Jasmine