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Showing posts from October, 2020

A Saturday With House of Tulip

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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

Scenes from the first two months

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  Going to lectures on the med school campus My cat always joins me for lectures on Zoom Some of the study guides I made to learn all of the different drugs for MedPharm. Making visuals like these helps me organize the information in my mind. A beach trip after the first exam

Life as a Tulane grad student

 After moving to New Orleans in July, I was unsure how I would be able to adjust to a new city and a new school in the middle of a pandemic. My mind was awash with worries. I worried about whether online classes would hinder my ability to form connections with my classmates and professors. Having spent two years as a teacher, I was nervous to be a student once again. I worried that the courses would be too difficult and that I would be met with more failures than successes. Fortunately, none of my fears have been realized. I've loved being a student again and have enjoyed all of the lectures. It has been rewarding to have my hard work result in good exam scores. I have been studying very diligently and yet learning the pharmacology material somehow feels effortless. It is as if my mind is eagerly welcoming the material because I am so happy to be in courses that I find exciting. It's a refreshing change from teaching the same high school chemistry lesson four times in a row eve