Letters to seniors

-

Senior citizens in nursing homes are experiencing unthinkable loneliness because of the pandemic. My grandmother lived in an assisted living facility before she died so I know firsthand how lonely residents can become without routine family visits. I was so excited to be presented with the opportunity to reach out to some of these seniors. I wanted to convey to the seniors that people all over are thinking of them even though they may feel forgotten. I wrote to a black woman who requested letters from people from Baltimore. Writing to her made me emotional because of the similarities between her and my grandmother. I hope to write to more seniors in the future.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Passing it on

-
Total community service hours (as of 4/19/21): 40.75 hours I have realized that at my core I really am meant to be an educator. I know this because any time I learn something, the first thing I want to do is share the information with someone else. Every time I've learned something interesting during this master's program, I have texted it out to some of my former students. The Environmental Signaling course in particular has taught me many things that I think are important for everyone to know. I have become so passionate about environmental justice after listening to many of the course's different lecturers. I get riled up just thinking about disparities in lead exposure, water pollution, and life expectancy across races and zip codes. I reached out to a teacher at the school at which I used to teach and have arranged to give a lecture to four of her classes. I am so excited to have the opportunity to pass on some of the information that I have learned. I am going to teac
Read more

February reflections

-
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
Read more

Fighting hunger in NOLA

-
Image
 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
Read more