Personal | Alex Farris Photo Blog

Hello world!

It's been two years since I've updated the website. As I mentioned in the last post, I started medical school in August 2015. Since that time, my life has been dominated (by choice, mostly) by the Krebs cycle, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, standardized patients, computed tomography images, treatment algorithms, and, in the past four months, real patients in need of real care. It's been quite an adventure, and although I sometimes pine for the relatively simpler days of taking and submitting pictures, I don't regret exchanging one thrilling career for another.

This month, I'm taking an advocacy elective, and its seminar format affords a lot more free time than my first two clerkships of surgery and psychiatry. So, I finally have time to post an update to this six-year-old blog. It's not the post that I promised two years ago ("a catch-up catch-all entry ... before school completely dominates my life"); that post will come next. First, I want to post some pictures from the thing that completely dominated my life (mostly; I had some free time). Most of these pictures are of concepts I drew for study purposes, but there is a bonus collection of images from the solar eclipse this year. Explanations for each concept appear in the captions.

Welcome back!

The metabolism of hemoglobin (and then some). This is a long and winding road involving vitamin B12, an iron-binding protein called ferritin, and chromosomes 11 and 16. I combined multiple individual pathways that wouldn't seem to go together, such as the metabolism of methylmalonic acid and the fate of bilirubin. It seems I was in a synthetic mood on January 22.

Medical school classes start this week, so before all that madness, I took a smaller, but still adventurous and slightly myopic, trip. On July 17, I set out for Chicago on a road trip through Omaha and Casper, Wyoming, to take a hike in Shoshone National Forest.

This is as high as I hiked. The view felt so surreal (and I was so tired from the walk up to it) that this was a good place for a break.

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Yes, yes, yes, I'm posting January photos in March. Life (e.g. two medical school interviews, work in Seymour), got in the way of posting, but not in the way of taking pictures. I was assigned three events for the Star: A high school wrestling meet featuring the indomitable Carmel High School girls' swim team, a sandwich cook-off during a Colts playoff game, and a little thing they like to call Bacon Fest. Also, my college housemate Steph, featured here, got engaged to her British boyfriend, so I made the trek to Chicago for the party. It almost goes without saying, but I will be taking her wedding photos.

Next post will be up within the hour!

Ally Benedyk of Love Handle doles out a sandwich containing Ovaltine brioche, hickory bacon, blackberry-miso jam and koshered carrots, during the Taste of the NFL Sandwich Cook-off at Recess on North College Avenue, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2015.