Back to School - Part 1

I'm going for a Masters in Education (Curriculum & Instruction - STEM)!  Classes start on Jan 25, it's all online, and I will be done in about a year - give or take a few days!
Nervous and excited - haven't done the online thing before, but new opportunities await!

Eventually, I will return to school again for biochem and/or to be a physician's assistant...but later!

Wish me luck!


I am TRYING to post at minimum once a month - not doing too well so far! Sorry, guys!

Explaining Ageing

 Warning: this is one of those sciencey things I warned you about a few months ago (the first strangely!)

 This is just WAY cool in my opinion - since learning about DNA and its purposes in high school biology, I have wondered how it is related to people growing older.  The DNA is the same right?  Wrong! :O  Scientists have been comparing the DNA of babies to the DNA of the lucky that live to 100+.  And guess what?!?  There are differences!  Not in what DNA codes for but the methylation.

 There is this thing called epigenetics that looks at how your DNA is different on the outside (e.g. methylation) and not what it codes for.  This external modification changes the expression of genes in your cells!  Methylation is the addition of a methyl group (-CH3) to the sugar backbone of the DNA.  External DNA modification changes how DNA is stored and how easily proteins that read and copy it can access it.  It has been discovered that as you age, you lose 7% of the methylation (starting at 80% of sites down to 73%) which leads to altered expression.  There are many things that can effect the amount of DNA that is methylated (or externally modified), some of which can come from your grandparents and could be related to when they may have experienced famine! (google it! I dare you - it's pretty cool, and PBS|Nova has a special about Epigenetics that is good)

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

If you are so scientifically inclined, here is the article about the recent discovery: Epigenomic Differences between Newborns and Centenarians Provide New Insights into Ageing

In Process...

so, I have several "working posts" - hopefully I can finish them within the next week, but some are dependent on my time availability (it is hard to write about things you haven't seen or heard)

in the meantime, I am looking for new ideas.  So, what do you want to read about???

please leave your prompts/ideas/questions/concerns/etc.!!!

(and vote in the poll on the left side of the page...down a little bit)

The Formula of a Musician & Composition of a Scientist (an excerpt...)

I have a assignment to start my autobiography....so here we go...

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to lead the double life of being a musician and having what my Grandma called a “real job.”  But feeling that way was inevitable—my mother did it, happily, for a decent part of my childhood.  She was working as a registered nurse on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Rochester Methodist Hospital (RMH) and playing in the Rochester Orchestra Chorale, as it was known as then; she had been working in the ICU and playing in the orchestra since she graduated college and moved to Rochester, MN.

Mommy played piano, organ, and violin, and I grew up watching.  When she would leave for orchestra rehearsals on Sunday and Wednesday nights—and the Friday night dress rehearsals—I would help her put all of her stuff—the violin, the music, the collapsible stand—into her van and ask, sometimes beg, to go along: “Mommy, I want to see how the music is made…” 

And shouldn’t I be allowed to go along?  I went to every rehearsal when I was in the womb.  Mommy was going to go to the rehearsal less than three hours after I was born and play the concert four day later, but Grandma wouldn’t let her.  I wanted to go so badly that when I was about six, I made a violin and bow out of cardboard, said I could be her new stand partner, but I still didn’t get to go.

I went to every concert Mommy played in after I was born—and I was well behaved, even as an infant.  Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Brahms, Handel, and more along with numerous virtuosic guests, all under the direction of Maestro Jere Lantz.

Jere Lantz was amazing.  He wrote most of his own program notes; gave great, informative speeches at his concerts; and composed.  His conducting would make the music come alive even if you couldn’t hear it.  As I got older, Jere Lantz became my favourite part of the concerts—most people go to concerts for the music, I was disappointed if Jere didn’t talk enough.  I suppose Jere is one of the main reasons I decided to study music in college, one of the many reasons I began composing.

My mom being a nurse and my growing up in “Med City USA”, I was always around medicine.  People helping the people that came from all around the world to visit the Mayo Clinic; medical lingo; doctors; technicians; research.  It became fused into my being.  My uncle giving me a toy doctor’s kit—with a kinda functional stethoscope, a thermometer, a syringe minus the needle, plastic bandaids, and a medical bag—probably didn’t help the matter.  Then I really had an excuse to start playing doctor, and I decided I was going to medical school.
Everyone I cared about knew I wanted to be a doctor, but hardly any knew of my dream to go into music.  Dreams live longer when there’s nobody to shoot them down for you.  I worked so diligently through elementary school, middle school, and high school.  I was in the advanced science, math, English, and history courses and took all the AP classes I could in high school.  I was in many extracurricular music activities: church choir, church orchestra, two handbell groups, assistant director and conductor of the youth handbell group, musicals and theatre.  I went to conferences for careers in medicine and music and performing arts in attempt to find the best way to break into my dream fields.

 to be continued…and maybe started?