March Check-In

Almost done! Wow, this semester has flown by. As a neuroscience major, I have been incredibly excited to study neurology and psychopharmacology. It was a lot to memorize with topics such as toxicology but finding the content fascinating certainly helped. I have been studying with a T1 and T2 medical student, which has also served as motivation for my own work. Finding a group to study with on campus has made it much more enjoyable, especially given that we are all on different steps of our medical journeys. 

I am still tutoring one of the students from the WeMade organization roughly once a week. He is incredibly bright and simply needed someone to work with him to review material and encourage his confidence in answering questions. As I mentioned last month, his scores before meeting were in the 60s but are now averaging around 95%. Even with meeting just once a week for two months, I have seen him grown as a student and I look forward to continuing to work with him as we near the end of the year and his LEAP exams. 

 Mid-march, I also volunteered at a Holi festival, which was a blast! Terriona joined me and even threats of storms could not keep us away from helping others celebrate the holiday. My roommate downstairs knows that I am always looking to broaden my cultural knowledge so he recommended the festival to me, given that he is Indian himself. The festival was a blast and we got to meet so many diverse groups of people, even becoming friends with other volunteers and police working the event, starting a color war among us staff. We were also very fortunate to have the opportunity to try a lot of different foods from different vendors. My favorite was the goat biryani but the mango ice cream was a close second. 

This weekend was Brews, Boils, and Bubbles - a crawfish celebration with local vendors including our very own Kayla's family. Originally, I was supposed to volunteer for this event. However, as I write this, I currently have a fever of 103.7. For 7 weeks, I have been struggling with my own medical mystery (sudden spontaneous fevers that last for random periods of time), which doctors are struggling to figure out. I have been lucky enough to be able to use my pharmacology knowledge in real-life, such as stopping a Doctor from prescribing me acetaminophen because of my elevated ALT. Our teachers have been more than understanding, as they allow me to work from home. I feel very fortunate to have such understanding professors because not everyone would be so supportive. 

 As we get into finals study time, I am nervous about our final. However, as I mentioned, I am studying with a T2 student who is in the middle of STEP studying. Having that perspective has tempered my impending anxiety for the exam. Hopefully, I will still have time in April to say a proper farewell to both my classmates and professors, as I have loved my time in this program and cannot wait to hopefully continue my studies here in the future. 

 March Volunteer Hours: 8 

Semester Volunteer Total Hours: 22