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April Community Service- Master's in Pharmacology

The month of April has undeniably been one of the most unpredictable and unexpected months of my life. It has included a constant cycle of hope and concern, between hearing that the “curve is flattening” and we could be in stay-at-home orders “for several months.” Everyone is paying attention but no one truly knows when our life will return to normal and if our lives will ever be truly back to normal. While I hold on to hope that we have some of the best researchers and scientists in the world, I know that this journey is far from over. And I am also looking forward to the day that I am a physician so I can be more actively part of the solution if a situation like this ever happens again in my lifetime. Surprisingly, this pandemic has reinforced my desire to dedicate my life to helping other people. This month has been spent focusing on myself. As I mentally prepare for beginning medical school in the fall, I am trying to make sure that I am my best self when that new chapter of m
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March Community Service- Master's in Pharmacology

In the month of March I volunteered at a local Speech and Debate tournament before the quarantine took effect. I spent the weekend helping high school students prepare for their events in speech and debate, as well as judge different events that students were competing in. I judge a few speech and debate tournaments every year since I competed for four years while I was in high school. It is a lot of fun to see how hard these high school students have worked to prepare their skill and do the best that they can. The speech and debate community is also dependent on volunteers to help run the tournaments. Since I relied on these volunteers for four years, it only seems fitting that I do my part when I can to help high school students continue to compete.  Alongside my volunteer work at speech and debate, I tutored some students in high school math and science. It has been a lot of fun to tutor over the past several years of my life and help students learn new topics. Ever since the qua
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February Community Service- Master's in Pharmacology

This month all of my volunteer work came from tutoring college students in gross anatomy. I helped students study for their anatomy exams and review information pertinent to the class. This unit for anatomy was the back and leg of the human body. Though it is not dissected, anatomy students also learn about the spinal cord. This component is what is most relevant to the material we are learning in our Master’s of Pharmacology program right now. A lot of this unit and the last unit involve antipsychotics and other medications that focus on the brain and central nervous system. This unit is incredibly fascinating to me because of my background in neuroscience. I enjoy learning about neurological disorders as well how to treat them. The spinal cord, being the messenger of signals from the brain, is a major component of treating disorders that involve the central nervous system, such as Parkinson’s, Epilepsy, Huntington’s, and more. In the coming months I look forward to continuing to v
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January Community Service- Master's in Pharmacology

This month my only volunteer work was tutoring a high school student in Chemistry. I tutored her for 2 hours in different subjects, such as intermolecular forces and equations revolving around Avogadro's number. Though these topics are not directly related to my Master's degree, it is always good for me to review my knowledge in core science topics as my graduate education often builds on these fundamental topics. Alongside the opportunity to review some fundamental topics in chemistry, I thoroughly enjoy tutoring. I have been tutoring math and science since I was in high school, when I would tutor my peers in different subjects. In college I tutored high school students and I tutored at KIPP Believe Primary school, a school for students in underserved communities. I loved tutoring at KIPP because I felt as though I was really helping students and taking the time to focus on their difficulties, which is something not many other people have taken the time to do. It is important
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December Community Service- Master's in Pharmacology

This month, my main volunteer work has been volunteering as a Teaching Assistant for Anatomy, an undergraduate course at Tulane University. This has been my main volunteer opportunity throughout the whole semester, alongside other work. It has been a lot of fun to work with students that are learning this for the first time. I learn a lot myself by helping them and realizing what material I don't know. It has been especially fun to serve as a Teaching Assistant while in the Master's in Pharmacology because I can apply what I've learned about medicine to different organs and their functionality. Along with helping students with dissections, I hold review sessions and teach them how to prepare for the examination. This unit was a continuation of last month when we worked through the abdominal section. This was an exciting unit because most of the drugs we have studied in class have their effect on abdominal organs or are at least metabolized and excreted through abdominal o
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November Community Service - Master's in Pharmacology

This month, my main volunteering work was as a Teaching Assisstant for Anatomy at Tulane. I have been doing this throughout the semester and it has been a great pleasure helping students learn and enjoy anatomy, especially their cadaver lab. I help students in this lab work through the dissections as well as helping them prepare for exams. We help the students prepare for exams by holding review sessions and giving them practice tag exams. This unit was especially exciting because we worked on the abdominal section of the human body. This includes the intestine, liver, and kidney. These areas have been highly discussed in our Master's of Pharmacology as drugs are metabolized and excreted in these organs. Several drugs are metabolized primarily by the liver and excreted through the kidney and urine. In our cadaver lab we also saw a cadaver with matastatic liver disease. This means the liver was 2-3 times the size of a normal liver and the gall bladder was damaged. Pharmacologically
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October Community Service

This month, my volunteer work consisted of experiences while being a Teaching Assistant at Tulane University in the Undergraduate Anatomy Cadaver Lab. In this lab, I help students through their dissections while testing them on material and helping them study for examinations. Alongside my work during class time, I held a review session where I set up a practice tag exam for all of the students to come get practice before their real test. It is a great experience to work with the students, especially because they are all as excited about the mateiral as I am. They are eager to learn and really look to me as a valuable resource to help them learn. This unit we worked on the arms, chest, and axilla. The axilla was relevant to our pharmacology program because it includes a lot of nerves that innervate the entire arm, as well as the axillary artery and vein. The vein in the arm is often where drugs are injected via IV to rapidly enter blood circulation. We also dissected the median cubita
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