Friday, November 30, 2018

November 2018


I can’t believe that the end of the fall semester is almost here. It seems like it was only yesterday when I moved down here to New Orleans to start this Pharmacology program. This month we had 2 block exams which covered cardiovascular, renal, pulmonary, and molecular biology. The CV/Renal block in particular was stressful as it was the longest block and it accounted for the most percentage of points for the medical pharmacology course. For the CV/Renal block it wasn’t enough to just recognize the drugs, their mechanism of action, or their side effects; no, this block and the exam tested our critical thinking and application of everything we covered in class. Not only were there so many drugs to know, but a lot of the drugs could be used in multiple different types of treatments. For example, beta-blockers can be used in the treatment of myocardial infarction, heart failure, hypertension, and many others. So it was imperative that we understood which drug would be the most appropriate to use depending on the clinical indications. Thankfully, our professors did an excellent job in making the topics easy to follow and understand.

With November comes Thanksgiving, and I am thankful to the Pharmacology department in giving us a week off for Thanksgiving. It was greatly appreciated and I took advantage of it to just unwind so I could come back after the break focus for the last couple of weeks of the semester. For community service, I volunteered once again at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. It was nice to come back and see some of the staff that I worked with last month. Since this was my second time volunteering at the ReStore I was more comfortable in dealing with customers’ needs and understanding the general layout of the store and where things needed to be.

This will be my last blog post of the year so I hope all of you have a happy holiday season and I will talk to you again next year!

November hours: 4
Cumulative hours: 25