I am a medical geneticist at the University.  I was an undergraduate at Reed College (anthropology) and graduated from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.  After two years in medicine at UCSF I went to the NIH/NIDR as a Research Associate as alternate federal service.  I spent 3 years in George Martin's group in the NIDR working on collagen structure and then went to UW as a fellow in Medical Genetics (Arno Motulsky) and Biochemistry (Paul Bornstein).  I chose Genetics, or perhaps it chose me, because I wanted to understand how things work and thought that human models might be best and most direct.  I saw and still see patients and developed a diagnostic laboratory that allowed us to study thousands of people with heritable connective tissue disorders and understand the basis of the conditions, and the genetic and allelic heterogeneity.  This pathway has created openings in several career enhancements along the way and made it clear how lucky we are to have academic careers.  I have become convinced that in reality medicine is a discipline with genetics--something this gathering makes so clear.