A letter written to my past self at the end of my Cell Biology course in Fall 2018.

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A Final Letter to Myself

 

As this semester comes to a close, I look back on the past few months and mentally take a journey through all of the things I have learned. Although some concepts were difficult to understand, particularly some receptor-coupled pathways we discussed, overall I gained a great amount of knowledge from taking this course. Thanks to Dr. Steel and her informative and stimulating course, I have developed a newfound interest and love for the intricacies of the internal mechanisms of cells. I have always been interested in the ways that we operate as multicellular organisms, but taking this course has only fanned the flames of my curiosity.

Learning more about biochemistry, in particular, has been very interesting for me this year. Although I like chemistry well enough as it is, the ways that it ties into biological life as biochemistry explains truly captivates my attention. The overall curiosity and interest that I have for this subject, and for nearly all of the topics covered during this course, really helped to drive my learning and cement the newly obtained knowledge in my mind. As a result, this course was challenging but not nearly as much as it would be if I found it to be boring. Dr. Steel’s interesting and refreshing theories and takes on the subject helped to encourage my curiosity, and made learning the topics as easy as breathing. That, coupled with my study techniques as well as some new studying strategies I implemented this semester, led me to obtaining a grade I am very happy with. The interactive discussions that we participated in as a class also helped me learn, sparking my curiosity and getting me to really think about what cell biology is, what it means, and just how much it really affects my life.

As for obtaining knowledge about the mechanisms of immunotherapy, as I had originally hoped for in the beginning, I have been very successful in at least understanding the cellular concepts that accompany this medical therapy. The biology and mechanisms of cells are very complicated and often are intimately connected in ways that can affect nearly any aspect of the cell. Understanding the concepts of apoptosis and how certain receptors interact with certain proteins, for example, is one thing that helped me to put together the “big picture” of how a new drug can be used for conditions that were previously untreatable. Doing research on leukemia as well as on my own personal research ideas has also led me to the discovery of new understanding as well as new knowledge that I can potentially use in the future, wherever my path may take me.

My advice to you, my past self, is to carefully pay attention to the details, and to make an extra effort to make a mental map of how it all coincides to making a living, breathing multicellular organism work (which is still a marvel to me, considering how random it all seems). Good luck to you!

Best,

Sarah Oatess