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Institution
Universität des Saarlandes, Homburg (Saar)
Host
Institution(s)
Research: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP),
University of Pennsylvania
Mentor: Dr. Katherine High
My research was done at the Abramson Research Center of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in the Department of Hematology. The main research of my department is in the field of Molecular Biology, specifically in approaches to gene therapy for hemophilia. I was assigned my own project about hemophilia B treatment involving the work with DNA and the assembly of a vector which should allow us to produce transgenic mice. These mice are then supposed to express human factor IX in a specific tissue dictated by our specific promoter. Crossbreeding of different mice strains should finally give offspring that do produce human factor IX but no mouse factor IX. Using this mouse model further data on gene therapy approaches will be evaluated. I was further assigned to different smaller projects which gave me a good insight into the different methodologies of Molecular Biology.
My first contact with the U.S, was in 1989/90 as a final year student in high school in a small town called Higginsville right in the middle of nowhere. To come back once more was, and still is, a great experience. Now that you are "over 21" and are "grown up", you can go to any pub you want to or even be able to rent a car. So when you hit the quarter of a century mark, there are lots of fun things to do! This is especially true when your stay is in a bigger city and, so far, I definitely do not regret my choice to go to Philadelphia.
Next to the personal reactions, however, one sometimes wonders what seems to concern a lot of Americans, such as the Starr-Clinton report which was pushed up big time along our stay over here. But at least Clinton and Hilary have been voted the most admired persons in 1998, so everything is bright and shiny for another year of new insinuations.
Professionally it gave me a nice insight in some parts of the American health system and it showed some nice sides of how much fun medical research can be but also that surely not everything made in the U.S. should be imported into our system because it is supposedly "better". I can say that I do not regret it for a moment to have participated in this program and I still enjoy my stay a lot. At the moment I am even making plans to extend my stay for another half year. Plans change with new opportunities you get.
The heading definitely is synonymous with VISA RELATED PROBLEMS. (More information on that in the Helpful Hints section.) UPenn and the CHOP were pretty strict about letting me get any kind of practical experience with patients which I hoped to get aside from the lab work. The policy was "do not touch patients". Research, however, turned out to be much more interesting than I had expected by relying on my former German experience, so I did not mind.
For number one in this category there is only one candidate: The American coupon and mail-in rebate system. Now I know why it is the land of the impossible. On the one hand you find a bunch of "buy-one, get-one-free" offers where one shirt already costs more than two would cost in the shop next door. So why don't they write two for $XX US? I probably will never find out. On the other hand, and still unbeaten on my best buys list, there is the Microsoft Encyclopedia 99, which was $24,95 and had one of those mail-in rebate stickers for $ 25 on it. Did that mean I would earn 5 cents by buying this product? I received the $25 check from Microsoft two days ago, with a big smile on my face. Oh, I did not mention the second sticker on that pack which gives you additional U$S 5 to your credit card account if you pay with master-card. The letter, though, with my account balance is still pending. That is $5.05 extra for something I did not even want to buy! There has got to be a loss somewhere along the line! Try Staples.
In a head on head race with the items above are Peg's jokes that have reached my email account steadily for a few month now. But you will see yourself.
If you are one of the lucky people to get a B1/B2 visa status for unpaid medical clerkship, it will give you some smiles at first. These are easy to get, and procedures are fast and straight forward (just a small letter by your host institution and you are set). And mine is even valid for 10 years. The fun part starts in the U.S. Watch out when entering the US and have the invitation letter including the of your stay with you. Because the date that the INS officer writes onto your white I-94 slip of paper is now your valid visa. (Yes ... forget about the official photo-visa in your passport; the I-94 is all that counts and on a B-visa you better leave the country before that date.) The problem is that on a B1/B2 visa the longest time the officer can fill in is six month starting from the day of entry, and that only if he has had a pretty good day. So if you do not plan on leaving the U.S. during your stay don't forget to apply for a visa extension (it was $75 at my time). When I entered the first time, that guy was really nice, smiled and put the stamp in my passport with an "until" date that was not even valid for six WEEKS. Unfortunately I did not notice it at the time, so I had to make an unexpected trip to Canada to correct the error.