Secret Skill Training at Stanford

I remember all of the things I was "forced" to do in high school because they were good for me: create outlines, write multiple drafts of papers, wear a helmet. High school me (and her friends) thought most of that stuff is lame - I'm so smart/talented/safe I shouldn't have to do any of it.

Frustratingly, all of that training was useful. It would have been more useful had I taken it more seriously. Interestingly, much of it still exists at the graduate school level. There are these people out there (call them "faculty") who are more experienced/smarter/older than me and they are telling me (and my classmates) to do certain things that seem unnecessary. Now they explain *why* we are doing them and we are supposed to understand, but it still felt a bit like high school: the students groaning and mumbling about the stuff we were supposed to do "for our own good".

Finals Exams

I hated taking tests as a student. I would get terrible test anxiety and forget everything I knew. Sometimes new "knowledge" invaded my brain and I would end up doing all of my cross-products on an electromagnetism test wrong. Fine. At a certain point, I accepted it. I needed to do well on the homework and study - but I wasn't going to get an amazing test score. It isn't so bad when you accept it.

Now I know there is something worse - giving an exam to students. In a class of 40, I can identify/name about 30 of the students. Close to 15 have consistently come to my section. I told them on the first day of section - my goal was for them all to get an A on the exam.

I tried to find great activities for section. I posted notes and clarifications and alternative solutions. I wrote a practice exam for the final and wrote 15 pages of solutions - explaining the approach, as well as ways to get partial credit. I prepared a 2 hour review session where I focused on conceptual material, with 8 clicker questions and some other example problems.

And then I saw the final exam.

Biophysics vs Medical Physics

I recently attended the APS March Meeting where I attended the Physics Of Cancer Tutorial and spoke in 1 of the 3 "Physics of Cancer" scientific sessions. I knew that there wasn't much "medical physics" in APS, so I was interested in seeing what research on cancer there was.

I think I finally understand the difference between biophysics and medical physics. Many of the talks in the Physics of Cancer session focused on physical properties of cancer cells. What are their elastic properties? Do metastatic cells show different physical properties (size, squishyness) from non-metastatic cancer cells? How much force can cancer cells exert on eachother? One of the talks argued that metastatic vs non-metastatic cancer cells do have different physical properties even if there aren't clear genetic differences.