This memoir describes my experiences during the years following my first year in the Aristotelean University School of Medicine of Thessaloniki, Greece, as I began my college student years in the U.S.A. I give details of my stepwise progress from a four year college program, to a year in graduate school, followed by four years of medical school, internship, three years in the Public Health Service, residency, fellowship, another three years in graduate school to get a Ph.D. and culminating in my becoming a bona fide faculty member at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing a research program that was replete with discoveries. The most rewarding clinical experience of my career was directing an NIH research project on the prevention and treatment of shock and infection in skin burns, in Lima, Peru. My most important scientific accomplishment was the discovery of Type IV collagen in all basement membranes.
