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.
