WILTIMS #162: Clicking justified

One of the major changes between first and second year at our school is a shift away from purely lecture guided learning (though there is certainly still plenty of that) and towards self-study. The idea being that our professors guide us through the big points but we learn how to best use our time for filling in the gaps. I sometimes feel like we should get some of our tuition back if we're teaching ourselves, but the general idea is sound. We are entering a profession that is constantly changing and we will need to teach ourselves for decades after we graduate.

An interesting change for me is that everything I wrote about last year on this blog I learned in lecture. The few members of my class that for whatever reason read my blog in the past almost always had heard the same anecdotes that day in class. This year, there will be things I find on my own, based on my own study schedule and resources. I'm sure when we start clerkships next year, the trend will only continue. In other words, I think I just justified the crazy trips I so often take down the Wikipedia rabbit hole.

TIL: Amyloidosis is diagnosed by applying a Congo red dye to a tissue biopsy of the affected organ (often the kidney) and looking for an apple-green birefringence under polarized light. Birefringence is a special property of a material whereby it can split a beam of light depending on its polarization and direction. Using a complicated polarisation technique on a pathology slide, substances with these properties will shine bright green while the rest of the field is black.