Crescent City Pharmacology

March volunteer hours: 5.5 Total hours this semester: 36.25  Wow! I can't believe it's already March. This program has gone by very quickly. Now that Medical Pharmacology and Principles of Pharmacology are over I have a lot more free time in my day. I've been filling that time by volunteering more at Broadmoor Food Pantry and by studying for the NBME. I have enjoyed getting to do more presentations this semester. I like doing all of the background research that is necessary for a thorough presentation. This month I have presented on black maternal mortality, autophagy in Parkinson's Disease, and concussions. I like presenting because it feels very natural and effortless to me. These presentations are easy considering that I had to "present" to groups of high school students every day for the past two years as a teacher. Cell Control has been the most challenging course in the entire program for me. I think that is because the material is not as interesting as

Community service hours from 12/6 – 3/1: 32 hours This February my main focus has been working on my application for medical school. I compiled a list of over 50 different secondary application essay prompts and I have been hard at work brainstorming what I want to write about. Regardless of the prompt, my brainstorming always brings me back to my motivation for pursuing a career in medicine- my desire to serve my community.  I recently attended an info session for Duke and one of their deans proclaimed "medicine is a service industry". That really resonated with me and reaffirmed my belief that I will be able to serve my community as a physician. For the past three years I have lived and worked in underserved communities that do not have enough access to health care. I regularly interact with people who need medical care but cannot afford it.  Earlier this year I saw a car with the passenger door open and a man slumped over in the passengers seat. He had on only one shoe an

Volunteer hours: (as of 2/1/2021) 12/6- 4 hours 12/8- 3.5 hours 12/14- 4 hours 1/4- 5 hours 1/6- 3.5 hours 1/18- 1.5 hours 1/25- 1.5 hours 2/1- 1 hour Total: 24 hours Over winter break I began volunteering regularly at Broadmoor Food Pantry. On Mondays and Wednesdays, the food pantry provides 70 families with large boxes of food. The boxes contain 20+ pounds of fresh produce, bread products, dairy products, and meat. I really have enjoyed getting to know, work with, and serve the community around me. I wanted to make sure I could reach as many people in the community as possible so I went door to door in my neighborhood and signed people up for the food delivery program. I now get to deliver boxes of groceries to five families on my block. I am grateful that working at Broadmoor food pantry has given me the opportunity to immerse myself in my community. Unfortunately I will be unable to volunteer as frequently as I would like to this semester because classes coincide with the times tha

 Here are my hours as of 11/19/2020: Writing letters to seniors- 1 hour House of Tulip clothing drive- 4.5 hours Making cards for a cerebral palsy patient- 2 hours Second Harvest food bank- 3.5 + 2.5 = 6 hours Total = 13.5 hours Halloween cards I made for a girl with CP Volunteering at Second Harvest

 On Monday (11/16) and Wednesday (11/18), I volunteered at New Orleans's Second Harvest Food Bank. Second Harvest food bank   feeds communities in 23 parishes across all of southern Louisiana. The organization distributes 32 million meals annually and has been distributing even more food since the pandemic began. I was interested in volunteering with Second Harvest because I want to help people struggling with food insecurity. When I was a teacher, I saw firsthand the effects that food insecurity had on some of my students. This motivated me to want to help fight hunger. To be frank, I was expecting my time at the food bank to be quite boring and monotonous. I thought that I would struggle to stay awake while mindlessly filling boxes of food. To my surprise, the work was incredibly thought-provoking. As I scooped pasta onto tray after tray, I kept imagining each meal's recipient. I wondered if a tray would make its way to a young child or a septuagenarian. Envisioning a meal b

House of Tulip is a New Orleans based organization whose mission is to build "an inheritance for trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) community in Louisiana". They are restoring a house in MidCity that, starting in spring 2021, will house up to 10 homeless TGNC people. Louisiana, a state where 1 in 3 trans individuals will experience homelessness, is in dire need of the help of organizations like House of Tulip.  House Of Tulip's BreakOut House On Saturday October 17th, House of Tulip hosted a clothing drive to collect clothing for the house's future residents and for others in the homeless TGNC community. I volunteered at the clothing drive by sorting and organizing all of the clothing that was dropped off. When I arrived at 9AM, it was very quiet and I was not confident that people would come and donate. By the time I left at 1PM, however, we had received so many donations that we ran out of boxes to put the clothes in. Dozens of community members, from a wide spec