April Fools

Our program has finally come to an end but I still don't know where the time went. This month was full of bittersweet moments with friends and peers. Last but not least, my service to the lovely community of New Orleans has come to an end as well as my academic year. This past month I continued my work with the red cross and tutoring high school students. I was tutoring students in algebra every week. With the red cross I was working on clerical work because they were swamped with paperwork that needed to be filed. Saying good-bye to the students I have gotten to know throughout this year was really hard. They have shown plenty of improvement over the course of this year and that is the icing on the cake for me. I have grown as a teacher and learned to tweak my strategies for tutoring. I hope to continue this work as a medical student in Vallejo. I would like to end my post saying that this program has been one of the best decisions I have made. I have learned so much inside and outside of the classroom. I couldn't be happier to be apart of something as special as this program and people I was lucky enough to call my friends. 

April hours: 8

Spring Semester Hours: 30

2016-2017 Academic year total community service hours: 60

March Madness

March has been a bittersweet month. My time in New Orleans is coming to an end very quickly. The program has sped by and it is going to be hard to say bye to this wonderful city as well as all of the friends I have made. This month I have expanded my service experience to working to help feed the homeless and assist with city clean up. Trash is always a nuisance in any city and always finds a way to ruin animal life as well as city life. It is an overlooked aspect of community outreach. Having recently learned about the damaging effects of human waste on the planet, I was really motivated to become involved in this type of service this month. The homeless population is a community that I have always been involved with since I was an undergraduate in California. My involvement includes providing basic healthcare to simply raising awareness of the various types of disparities this community suffers from. It was a blessing to have been able to provide service to the homeless population in New Orleans. The humility these people have is inspiring. I hope to reach and maintain their level of humility in my own life. I have learned many lessons from individuals I was able to connect with in the past and the individuals that gave me the chance to talk to them. I am truly grateful to have met to such amazing people in New Orleans and will cherish these memories forever.

Hours: 12 Hours

Total Hours: 22

February Blues

This month has been an underwhelming month to say the least. I was hoping to achieve enough hours to counter balance my lack of outreach last month. I wasn't able to achieve my goal due to an unexpected car accident. It crippled my ability to drive to Sci High this month but prior to the accident I was able to car pool with some peers to assist in a Red Cross Relief event. It was in response to the unexpected tornadoes that struck New Orleans earlier this month. The destruction was wide spread and jaw-dropping to see in person. I was paired up with a classmate and spent all day assessing the damage of each house within our designated sector. When we were done with our sector we assisted other team members that were in bigger sectors. On top of assessing the damage we were instructed to inform the victims about the different ways to access emergency assistance. Being from California, I have never been exposed to tornadoes or the tragic aftermath. There were streets with a couple homes completely untouched and then the rest of the neighborhood was leveled. Fortunately, half of our sector was fairly untouched by the tornado but the other sectors I had helped with were filled with houses that were demolished. All in all, this experience was extremely humbling and made me grateful for the blessings I have in my life. The next month will be less hectic in regards to school work and I will have my car back. I intend on being involved with Sci High this next month.

Hours this month: 10
Total hours: 10

New Year in New Orleans

A new semester has begun and I am still in disbelief that the year is coming to an end so quickly. This semester started out with a bang. Our class was bombarded with a heavy workload from day one. I am taking an assortment of elective classes that really delve into specific niches within the pharmacology world. For instance, I have a class dedicated to the advances in cardiobiology, endocrine pharmacology, mechanisms of cell control, and environmental signaling in medicine. I just finished my neurology block for this semester. I never had a strong background with neurology and I just felt like a sponge in every class because 90% of the information was brand new to me. There was a mix reaction to the information by my peers. Some students were adding to the conversation and some students like me were just sitting there taking in all of the information. It goes to show how diverse our class in terms of educational backgrounds. I was hoping to start volunteering this month but a bittersweet scheduling issue came to be this month where I wasn't able to volunteer at either of the programs I was involved with last semester. The schools didn't come back from their winter breaks until the middle of the month. I have finally gotten involved with research and I had two interviews in consecutive weeks towards the end of the month. Due to my scheduling conflicts, I have planned to double my outreach efforts this next month.

Volunteer hours: 0