Undergraduate learning flourishes at the interface between classroom teaching and patient care.  The student must be given the opportunity to apply the knowledge gleaned from books and lectures. Contact with real patients, coupled with opportunities to "read around" the cases, solidifies this knowledge into clinical wisdom.  Our teaching hospitals are a veritable smorgasbord of learning opportunities. Teachable moments occur frequently in patient encounters, case-studies and in anecdotal comments. Our students are valued as an important part of the patient-care team, and while they lack clinical experience, they bring several other important qualities to the table. They offer "hot off the press" basic science knowledge, they provide a valuable "naive" perspective, they brim with idealism and curiosity.