February 2024: Spreading the Love by Making Valentine's and Serving at St. Agnes

February Service Hours: 8 hours 

Current Cumulative for Spring Semester: 8 hours

Despite having a whole extra day to spread love this month (thanks to whomever discovered the concept of a leap year),  February was just as short as it was sweet. Between finishing Reproductive Pharm, celebrating Mardi Gras and the break that came with it, and completing Neuropharm this past week, 29 days can sure pack a punch! 

This month, I was privileged enough to serve in two capacities. I opened up the month by decorating and writing St. Valentine's Day cards to senior citizens as a part of AARP's Cupid Crew thanks to a connection from Ms. Linda. Though it only took three hours to complete my personal stack of cards, it was such an honor to be able to make some happy mail and, hopefully, return a little bit of love that they've put into the world throughout their lives. This meshed along with a bit of what we've learned about the aging brain in Neuropharm: social interactions are so important in order to prevent age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, and projects like this do a small part in this effort! 

Lastly, I returned to St. Agnes and spent five hours helping the sisters prepare the women's shelter for a fresh coat of paint, as well as helping them clean up the living quarters. Before we gave the upstairs halls a final sweep down, I helped with cleaning the downstairs walls by moving furniture out of the way and removing art from the walls to help the painting crew sand the previous paint off. Afterwards, while they painted, I moved upstairs and made beds with fresh linens, as well as swept and mopped. No matter what one's circumstances are in life, everyone deserves a clean place to lay their head at night. In this world, this sentiment is unfortunately hard to come by, and I felt blessed to play a tiny role in helping the residents achieve this. 

In regard to school, as I mentioned before, we covered two incredibly important units this month! I touched a little bit on Endocrine in my last blog, so to avoid redundancy, I'll touch on Neuropharm. In this unit, we were able to explore how drugs can modulate neuronal activity, as well as alter perception, mood, cognition, and behavior. We are about to specifically start our Psychopharmacology unit, but we even learned about treating specific neurological and a few psychiatric disorders via our Advances in Pharmacology class. This unit was incredibly interesting, and it even sparked an interest in a career in Anesthesiology! As most know, the brain is a fascinating organ; learning about how drugs can specifically interact with our neuroanatomy in order to achieve a state of deep unconsciousness unlocked an even deeper level of fascination for my own brain!