Abby Thuet's response to interview:
1. Describe your feelings about or response to the interview.
     I had never met a neurologist before, so before having this interview, I did not know what to expect. Dr. Weinstein was just one doctor in a practice containing multiple neurologists, and he was incredibly nice from the moment we arrived for the interview. Something that I definitely noticed was that he was incredibly professional and business-like, which made the interview go very smoothly.
     Something very positive about the experience was that he was very willing to answer any questions that we had. Whenever I apologized about our inconvenience or thanked him for everything he was doing for us, he kept repeating over and over again that he was more than happy to be doing it, and he expressed that we could call him if we thought of anything else, or if later in the semester any other questions came to us. It was refreshing because he had such a professional attitude, but was still very good at making sure that we were comfortable with the interview.

2. What changes occurred for you as a result of your interview?
     I really enjoyed talking to Dr. Weinstein because he made me realize that a lot of the reasons that he wanted to be a doctor are reasons that have also led me to my choice to attend medical school after Rockhurst. Between the desire for the intellectual aspect of science and medicine, the desire to help others, and the enjoyment that comes from using deductive reasoning to solve problems that may seem unsolvable, it reaffirmed that I have made the decision about my future for all of the right reasons.
     This interview made me realize even more how important the mechanisms our body uses to fold proteins correctly are. It baffles me that our bodies are able to do all of these amazing things and send these signals and make these proteins without any conscious effort from us. Also, it is unbelievable that just a small problem, or even a single change in an amino acid can cause for a disease or debilitating problem.
        Something that also interested me that I realized after this interview is that many more people than I realized know about and support grid computing. Since I had never heard of it before, I guess I had naively thought that if I didn't know about it, many people did not. But in talking to Dr. Weinstein, I realized that grid computing is something that most doctors and researchers completely support and hope to further this research in whatever ways they can.

3. Did anything about the interview disturb you?
     Something that Dr. Weinstein said in the interview was incredibly interesting to me. When I asked him if he thought that evolution was important in his field, he answered with a quick no. He didn't offer any more of an explanation, and after that, he asked what the next question was. It just surprised me because I know that from what I have learned in this class, there are definite applications for neurology and Parkinson's disease. This is especially true because Parkinson's disease includes protein misfolding, and we have spent so long in class talking about mutations, which can cause this misfolding. After the interview I had to think about this answer for awhile, and I came to the conclusion that it is possible that he had never or not recently taken any classes on or read any papers on the importance of evolution, and its applications in science and medicine. I believe that if he did, his answer would have changed to a resounding yes.

4. Describe the connections you found between the interview and your research & classwork.
     Something that we have talked about extensively in Evolution is mutation. We have learned of the many different types of mutations as well as how seemingly simple mutations that cause things like frameshift mutations can cause debilitating diseases. Parkinson's disease is caused by mutations in specific genes, and those mutations cause the protein misfolding that is characteristic of Parkinson's disease. This interview truly caused me to realize how intricately our proteins our made, and how important it is that they are made correctly. I believe that this interview was incredibly informative, and beyond understanding Parkinson's a bit more, it also reinforced my belief in my future as a physician, for which I am incredibly grateful.
     I also realized because of this interview how important grid computing is. It is such a simple thing to let these programs run in the background of your computer, and it can be so helpful to the world of research. Because of this interview and what we have talked about in class, I realize that I have no problem with letting this program run indefinitely on my computer, as long as it is still helping the cause. Dr. Weinstein really helped me to come to this conclusion because he was just reinforcing how helpful these programs can be, and how easy it is for anyone to do.