Thursday, October 30, 2003

immunology

The problem with putting together these lectures for the high schoolers is figuring out what amount of depth to go into. A 40-minute period is not a lot of time. Subtract 5 minutes of getting-everyone-settled time and 10 minutes for question-and-answer, and that dwindles down to 25 minutes to go over all of the immune system and how it works, and, "Oh, could you also talk about organ transplantation? And ABO typing and why you have to be matched for blood transfusions?" That's a lot to go over in one lecture. Too much, in my opinion. So I'm going between having a lecture that's 5 times longer than the amount of time I'll have, or having a lecture boiled down to "the cells eat the germs up when you're sick" basic-basic-basics. I just don't understand, furthermore, how much science background they will have had, how much about the immune system they'll know at baseline, and just generally how interested these kids will be. Should I fill up my Power Point presentation just with easy gags and pictures just to keep them interested? Or is that insulting?

This would have been a lot easier if I had done this block in July, when school was out. Then I could have just seen patients in the clinic. I know how to do that

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