Deborah Dyett Desir, MD, vividly remembers her first day as an undergraduate student at Harvard University, Boston. When her parents helped her move into the dorm, her mother, Betty, handed her a beautiful begonia. “My response was, ‘What on earth am I going to do with this plant?’” she says, recalling how she examined the…
On many Saturday evenings, Kaleb Michaud, PhD, saves the world from pandemics, harvests barrels of coffee beans to sell at market or helps King Brandur recover the fabled Runic DragonStones. Dr. Michaud, an associate professor in the division of rheumatology and immunology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha and also co-director of…
Alyssa B. Dufour, PhD, is a salsa dancing junkie. Besides taking weekly dance lessons, she salsa dances three times a week at local clubs or studios and practices routines around the house—while cooking dinner, getting dressed or watching TV. She can’t seem to get enough of the social dance that has boosted her confidence in…
Mary Moran (now an MD) had just turned 20 years old and wondered if she’d make it through that day in May. She was sailing on a 30-foot open boat—no cabin below—for 26 days off the coast of Maine with 10 strangers who knew very little about sailing. On the third day, storm clouds rolled…