Coming to the end of my Tulane career is definitely bittersweet. After five years in this city, I have definitely learned, seen, eaten, and experienced a lot. Luckily, I will get to be in the Big Easy for at least another year, however, I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing yet. Looking for a "real" job is definitely a new experience for me and many of my classmates, but I look forward to joining the "real world" while I apply to Med School. I'm sure that living the "student" life will be very much missed and much more appreciated after I take a break from it.
I feel like I have these huge tasks ahead of me, like completing my med school application and getting the ball rolling with the job search, but I think it's going to be a lot easier once I break these seemingly huge mountainous projects into much smaller, manageable pieces. I'm at a transition point right now where this is about to happen and I'm about to get some momentum and accomplish a LOT of things this coming May. I'm a little nervous, a little anxious, but very excited.
Too bad I live in a city without any relief from the stress, right??? I made it to a very wet, muddy Jazz Fest last weekend for a grand total of two hours, but had a wonderful time. I highly recommend going to anyone who has never been before. It's one of the few festivals that I know of where people don't decide to go based on the lineup of musical acts, but for the many other aspects: the food, the characters, the mud, the tradition. This year marks my 6th or 7th Jazz Fest, and I hope that I am able to attend many, many more. I met up with a family friend (and Tulane School of Medicine graduate!) at the festival who said it was his 30th consecutive Jazz Fest. This city leaves such a mark on its residents that no matter where I end up, I'll always have New Orleans to come back to, which is something that my parents and former New Orleans residents have been telling me for years. I've been here long enough and visited with them enough times to see that it's really true. People love coming back to New Orleans, and people especially love to live in New Orleans. Hopefully I will be one of those people for a very long time.
Something I really hope to keep up with as I enter the real world and get regular working hours is being able to volunteer at KIPP. Unfortunately, their hours conflict with regular working hours, but hopefully I will be able to work something out or take a day off every now and then to help out. Last Friday, the first graders took a trip to LSU in Baton Rouge, and I loved hearing all about it. Most of my little friends were very excited about visiting Mike the Tiger and had a very fun day. I will miss them very much over the summer but definitely plan on spending a lot of time with them as their school year comes to a close this May.
Total Hours for April: 10 hours
Total hours for the semester: 30 hours at KIPP
The Pharm Life
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
When life gives you lemons... Make lemonade.
The shelf exam is over! I repeat, the shelf exam is over! I
can’t begin to explain the relief that I feel after taking this test, but I’ve
been using my time wisely. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the good weather and
sunshine that the spring has brought us, Crawfish and sunshine are what gets me
through a strenuous school year. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed learning
about many types of drugs between July and March, I am glad to be done with the
mostly memorization portion of this school year. While challenging, I am glad
that I had the opportunity to take the shelf exam for pharmacology and get a
small taste of what medical school might hopefully be like.
As many of my classmates know, my car was stolen at the beginning
of the month (by a well known drag queen, Tara Shay Montgomery, and you can’t
get any more New Orleans than a story like that). Although difficult to make it
to my volunteering opportunities without my own transportation, I have come to
realize how difficult it is to live in this city without a car. Although termed
the “Big Easy”, it becomes much more difficult to get around town when relying
on public transportation. The streetcar is a lovely way to get around on a
sunny Sunday, but not the quickest or the least crowded by any means,
especially when you need to get to work. A week of taking the streetcar was a
good opportunity for me to appreciate the fact that I don’t usually rely on
that form of transportation. Don’t get me wrong, I love the streetcar. I think
that it is a very important historical aspect of the city that very much needs
to be preserved. However, I don’t think that it is an efficient means of
getting from point A to point B in the fast-paced age we live in today. Everything
is so instantaneous as it seems, and getting from uptown to downtown in less
than an hour seems much less impressive than it might have 50 years ago.
As far as my volunteering at KIPP goes, I’m sad that my car
troubles have kept me away from my favorite first grade class. In April, I plan
on spending much more time with the St. Claude first graders and watching them
become successful second graders prepared to learn and experience new things. Hopefully our lighter class schedule and my (hopefully) vehicle accessibility will help me to achieve this goal.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
My fifth Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident may surely go down in the books as my best yet. I caught a Muses shoe after my Neurology Block exam, went to my first Zulu parade ever and caught my first coconut, and scored an interview with FOX8 News for my group's Mardi Gras costume this year: King Cake Babies. Some of the first graders in the class I volunteer for at KIPP even said they saw me on the news!
I've never dressed up for Mardi Gras... and usually by the time Fat Tuesday rolls around, I'm so worn out from all of the festivities that I substitute going to Zulu and Rex with ordering takeout and watching Netflix in an effort to recover from the weekend. This was easily the best thing I've done all year. We definitely looked weird, but the parade watchers loved us! I've never taken pictures with so many strangers in my life! It took us about 20 minutes to make it a single block down the parade route. Even though "King Cake Babies" seems like such a natural choice for a Mardi Gras costume (or at least to me it does...), we were the only ones that we saw all day! We walked all over the city: from the CBD to St. Charles and Jackson to Royal Street to Frenchmen and then back to the CBD.
As much as I love carnival season, I'm glad that the "resting period" between Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest has finally arrived. I now have more time to focus on my schoolwork, volunteering more, eating better, and exercising.
As I spend more time with one of the KIPP first grade classes, Southern, I am realizing that I would really enjoy to work with children some day, hopefully as a pediatric specialist. As I'm getting to know some of these students a little better, I very much look forward to my time spent at KIPP each week. Learning about antidepressants this block, I very much think that that a viable non-pharmacologic treatment approach might be more time spent with first graders, especially those in Southern.
Friday, January 30, 2015
It's Carnival Time!
With the new year in full swing, I'm excited to get back into my school
routine. I've added weekly volunteer hours in place of working at the
restaurant, which I am much happier about. I've been helping out with a KIPP
first grade class once or twice a week and it's been a ton of
fun! Spending so much time with first graders really makes me want to work
with children when I get done with school and go out into the real world.
In local news, Mardi Gras is just around the corner and I couldn’t be
more ready. This will be my… maybe 10th Mardi Gras? I’m trying to
get with some of the other Mardi Gras veterans and put out some sort of guide
for some of our rookie classmates. There are so many things that I’ve learned
to look for and look out for over the years that I guess many people that
aren’t used to Mardi Gras festivities don’t know to do.
I’m trying to get up early this coming Monday morning so that I can go
to Manny Randazzo’s and pick up a king cake to bring to class. Every year that
I’ve been at Tulane, I get up at 5:30 in the morning to go stand in line for an
hour to get the best king cake, in my opinion, that the crescent city has to
offer. One of my friends and I are doing a king cake taste test on Monday afternoon
and are picking up a few different king cakes from around the city, so I’ll have
to report next month with the results.
KIPP volunteer hours for January: 7.25
KIPP volunteer hours for January: 7.25
Thursday, December 11, 2014
I've so much enjoyed serving the community in different ways this semester. Volunteering with Habitat for Humanity really made me think a lot about the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, a time during which my family didn't have our own home for a little while. Thankfully, we were in a situation that enabled us to quickly get back on our feet and into a house that we would one day call home, but being able to help someone else get into a home of their own, and for some their first home, really meant a lot to me.
On a much lighter note, I also had the opportunity to volunteer at KIPP and help out an old sorority sister who is a teacher there! Her first graders provide enough hugs and smiles to brighten anyone's day. I plan on helping out her class regularly next semester and am very much looking forward to spending time with so many precious and bright college-bound scholars.
Community Service Hours Summary:
Habitat for Humanity: 24 Hours
KIPP: 6 Hours
Total: 30 hours
On a much lighter note, I also had the opportunity to volunteer at KIPP and help out an old sorority sister who is a teacher there! Her first graders provide enough hugs and smiles to brighten anyone's day. I plan on helping out her class regularly next semester and am very much looking forward to spending time with so many precious and bright college-bound scholars.
Community Service Hours Summary:
Habitat for Humanity: 24 Hours
KIPP: 6 Hours
Total: 30 hours
Monday, December 1, 2014
November sure was a busy month! Between friends and family coming to
visit and Thanksgiving flying by, I can't believe it's already December and the
semester is coming to a close. I was lucky enough this month to do some of
my favorite things in the city: go to a Saints game and attend Poboy Fest, one
of my all-time favorite New Orleans festivals (quite a feat, considering the
fact that there are so many). It’s been a little harder to be a Saints fan this
season as compared to other seasons, but I’m trying my best to stay optimistic
for future games!
Thanksgiving was another great opportunity for me to learn about and
enjoy all of the wonderful things the state of Louisiana has to offer. My
grandparents live in a tiny town outside of Lafayette called Abbeville, where
my mother and her siblings grew up. You drive through a few hours of sugar cane
fields in order to finally reach a small cluster of buildings surrounded by
other sugar cane fields. A few of the radio stations broadcasted mostly in
Cajun French, which felt very much like being in a foreign country. However, if
you’ve never tried boudin and/or cracklins, please stop whatever you are doing
and attempt to find some. Two specialties of the Atchafalaya River basin that
you’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere else, these are some of the tastiest
(and fattening) foods I have ever tried. I ate so many cracklins that I made
myself sick. I just couldn’t stop! Thankfully, the geographical distance that
generally separates myself from the cracklin supply is substantial, so I think
I can hold off until next Thanksgiving.
Friday, October 31, 2014
The most beautiful October I have ever seen
This October has surely been a busy
one! My dad came in town and took me to
a Saints game (Who Dat!), I participated in another Habitat for Humanity
project, my mom came in town to visit, and we’re finishing up the month with
New Orleans’s biggest holiday after Mardi Gras, Halloween (okay, so maybe the
third biggest holiday if you count the time the Saints won the Super Bowl as
one).
The Habitat
project I participated in this month was very different from the other projects
we have participated in, where we helped build homes for people to eventually
live in. This time, we worked in the warehouse, organizing tool sheds, testing
power tools, and throwing away the tools and equipment that no longer worked.
This definitely isn’t what most people think about when they think about
volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, but definitely an area where lots of
help is needed. Where they store all of the tools and equipment and building
materials is definitely a very important part of Habitat, and without a functioning,
organized, efficient warehouse, Habitat builds wouldn’t be possible. Although very much a “behind the scenes”
activity, we had a lot of fun. I learned what a lot of different power tools
were and how they worked, and I have to admit, testing out saws and drills is
kind of exhilarating. They make loud noises, are heavy, and in the right hands,
can be very effective at doing lots of work. Maybe not my hands just yet, but
one day!
While that
wasn’t a day to enjoy the beautiful weather we’ve been having, I surely have
been taking advantage of all of this wonderful sunshine before “winter” comes
to New Orleans. My mom and I spent lots of time last weekend walking all around
the French Quarter and going to some of my favorite places, and trying out some
of hers that are still around from when she was a nurse at Charity Hospital
back in the day (Croissant D’or is always a winner). While enjoying the picture
perfect day, my mom and I were discussing the medications she takes for
hypothyroidism and blood pressure maintenance. I knew all about lisinopril and
could tell her all about its mechanism of action. She had no idea that it was
an ACE inhibitor or how exactly those work. It was really neat to be able to
apply what I’ve been learning to casual daily conversation.
I’m very
much looking forward to this spring, when we will be learning about endocrine
pharmacology. Thyroid malfunction runs in my family, and I was diagnosed with
Graves Disease at fifteen. I have been fascinated with the thyroid and treating
thyroid disorders ever since. Apparently there are issues with taking generic levothyroxine
vs. brand name synthroid, and I very much look forward to learning more about
what the differences between the two drugs are.
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