I3

In sum, I3 was a fun and interesting block. Although a lot of the time, it felt like rote memorization of microbes, once I started getting familiar with them, the material became pretty accessible. I felt that a lot of what we learned will be important no matter what specialty we go into, and it was good to learn in detail about diseases I'd heard before but never really understood (like strep throat). We looked at unusual diseases carried by ticks and mosquitoes or caused by fungi and protozoa. I liked the detective nature of it, using clues about epidemiology, biochemistry, location of infection, etc. to make inferences about the causative organism. The labs weren't bad, and we had a lot of case-based learning. We also reviewed basic immunology, rheumatology, epidemiology, public health, and global health. The block wasn't incredibly well organized, and the syllabus had a lot of annoying typographical errors, but the material was pretty solid. I like how infectious disease involves all the organ systems of the body in many different disease states. I also like how potent vaccines are in reducing or eliminating disease.