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April: What do you mean it's over?

Total 2nd semester service hours as of 5/2: 22 I’ve told a lot of people this week that I have never been great with recognizing milestones. The best example of this is when I graduated from college, most of my peers jetted off on vacations with family and friends or spent a great deal of the surrounding days celebrating their accomplishments. When asked my feelings about graduating at the Saturday ceremony, I said “It’s exciting, but I’m more excited about going back to work on Monday”. These milestones never feel huge to me because I see them all as steps toward the ultimate goal of becoming a physician.  That said, it feels pretty dang cool to be able to say I just completed all my coursework for my Masters in Pharmacology. I have to remind myself daily that this is not something to be taken for granted, but rather is a huge accomplishment that, per Dr. McLachlan, “only 8% of the world has”. Plus, I can’t express enough gratitude for how amazing this program has been. It has given m
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March (not so much) madness

  Total 2nd semester service hours as of 3/29: 20 I used to say that fall was my favorite season. Now I have to eat my words after experiencing full on New Orleans spring! March has been so lovely, but I always get a mixture of nostalgia and anticipatory anxiety around this time of year. With only a few more days till the NBME exam, I am starting to feel a little sad to be done with med pharm and almost done with the whole program.  The end of med pharm lectures at the beginning of the month had me asking “how am I going to fill my time?” Instead of hanging out in my desk chair all morning, about two or three mornings per week have been spent with a precious one year old (Amanda’s niece!). It’s been so fun to watch her grow into more of a little person, even over the short time I have been babysitting her. This definitely plays to my love of kids, which is something I have been keeping in mind as I embark on my post-graduation job search. The hunt is on for a job that combines any of m
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February flying by

  Total 2nd semester service hours as of 2/28: 14 Wait...tomorrow is March? Wasn’t last month March?! Following up the end of the last post - the second dose of the COVID vaccine hit me hard. Luckily after a few doses of ibuprofen, a smoothie, and some much needed rest, I was good as new in time to take our neurology module exam. I still feel extra grateful as I watch the vaccine rollout continue and more friends and family get vaccinated. This month’s modules were super interesting. A lot of the material in the neurology module brought me back to one of my favorite classes from undergrad (Neuroscience of Brain Disorders). It was really cool to circle back to the neurobiology of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s again and learn how the pathophysiological mechanisms inform drug targets. Our final module, psychopharmacology, hits close to home. While learning about drug treatment algorithms for depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder, I couldn’t help but think of how many people in my life h
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January (& a sprinkle of December)

  Total 2nd semester service hours as of 1/31: 14 January felt like the shortest and longest month in all of the best ways. December was also pretty long - after the end of last semester I was basically counting down the days till we started classes again! I was grateful to be able to spend time with my family over the holidays, especially since I hadn’t seen my younger brother in almost a year because of COVID. Over winter break I was able to volunteer at Glass Half Full NOLA. I was equally shocked and thankful at the steady stream of people that showed up to drop off their glass for recycling. This organization is so important to one of my friends, and getting to participate in something that makes her light up was awesome. I also have continued to volunteer at the ReFresh Farmer’s Market every other Monday selling candles for Hagar’s House. The community of vendors and patrons there is amazing, and I always like being able to tell people about the mission of Hagar’s House. Last time
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November: Semester one, done

Total service hours as of 11/30: 12 This month I was able to volunteer at a farmer’s market in Mid City selling candles for Hagar’s House. Hagar’s house provides a safe space for women and children, and they have created opportunities for the women to earn money while staying there by making candles, lip balms, and herbal teas. It was so great to be able to safely engage with the community and the other vendors at the market while also feeling like we were making a difference for the women that would receive the sales proceeds.  I also volunteered with World Relief Durham while home in North Carolina for the Thanksgiving holiday. I prepared and delivered a meal for a refugee family that came from Afghanistan just two weeks prior. I attempted to make shorwa and shir berenj, which involved ensuring the meat I bought was halal and that I followed proper food preparation guidelines. When I delivered the meal to the family, we couldn’t see each other’s faces well (due to masks and distance)
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October: Hemostatics and Hurricanes

Wow, did October fly by! After knocking out three modules in three weeks I feel like almost an expert on autonomic nervous system and cardiovascular pharmacology. A lot of the content this month pertained to problems more commonly seen in adult patients, so it was a steep learning curve for this former pediatric scribe. With so many drugs to memorize in a relatively short amount of time, I found that podcasts could be a great resource to turn to when I could not look at a screen anymore and needed to go for a run or do dishes. I shared my playlists with several classmates and plan to keep doing so from here on out.     Learning about CV pharm this month really hit home for me since both my grandparents have AFib and my grandpa recently had a fall. Knowing the mechanisms of antiarrhythmics and reversal agents of the anticoagulants and being able to explain them to my mom really put us all at ease. Dr. Clarkson – I really took the “be able to explain this stuff to your grandma” to heart!
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September 2020

This past month-plus of living in New Orleans and starting the Pharmacology Masters has been pedal to the metal from get go. Settling in to NOLA life and school was a much easier transition than expected from my previous gap year working  as an emergency department scribe  in Memphis. There are points in almost every lecture that I can’t help but think back on a case from that job. Working in a clinical setting not only equipped me with a wide knowledge base coming into the program, but it also gave me real life cases to refer back to when learning about a particular pathophysiology or drug mechanism. During our Infectious Disease module, I was able to think back on all the antibiotics prescribed for different infections or initiated as first line empiric therapy and understand why certain antibiotics were given. In this most recent module while learning about cardiac physiology, I finally gained an understanding of the parts of an EKG and their clinical significance. These "aha!&
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