Biochemistry II holds a special place in my heart, mostly because it had no exams and only three people in the class including myself. It was by far the smallest class I have ever taken, and I am embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t remember the third students name until 2 months in. Even now her name has slipped my mind. I think it starts with a C. Or an M? Either way I think it goes to show I burnt out I was by this semester. Luckily this class was taught by one of my favorite professors, Dr. White. And with Dr. White comes whatever he has decided to bake for us that day. I remember distinctly one day where I left with my own banana bread loaf. It was a good day. As for the class its self, it wasn’t as lecture based, but instead we had to read a very confusing and long research article every week and then answer questions about it and then discuss in class. That part I liked because it helped me with picking apart difficult research articles. What I didn’t like were the proposals we had to do. Somehow we had to fit an entire proposal, where we had to explain ourselves and give aims, and also include a figure of some sort, on to one page? It was nearly impossible for me, I don’t think I’ve ever had skinnier boarders and liked single space so much. I also sucked at writing them because it meant you had to understand the research articles from class, which I rarely did on my own. Luckily Dr. White was very patient with me anytime I had any questions and even helped me make my own compounds in ChemDraw. I definitely liked this class more than Biochem I though, which I was not expecting! I was sad when it ended because I knew it was my last class with Dr. White. I am going to miss his humor and baking. :'(
Instead of a final exam, we had to present in the Spring Showcase, where we had to propose a solution to an issue we had discovered in one of the literature reviews. I decided to add onto the research in one of the papers that was about cancer. I proposed developing a more effective method of targeting cancer by developing a metal agent to integrate immunotherapy and chemotherapy.
“Developing a Novel Anticancer Gold(III) Agent to Integrate Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy” (Spring 2022)