Skip to main content

From Bama to NOLA

 

During the Christmas break, I had the pleasure to help with my home church's 8th annual Give Back mission. Each year members of the kitchen committee get together over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to help serve the homeless communities. Hours were spent grocery shopping, prepping and preparing the food for it to be set up and served early Christmas morning. Not only was I overwhelmed with joy to be back home in Alabama, but I was also thrilled to be amongst my family members participating in a selfless act. Seeing the smiles and hearing the many “Thank you” and “God bless you” coming from the population we were serving made me see that every little effort is meaningful to someone. This made me grateful for the little things in life such as laughter with important people in my life and being able to fellowship with them.

December hours: 7

 





After making my way back to New Orleans, I had a wonderful opportunity to assist Second Harvest Food Bank in the 50/50 Raffle at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome for two New Orleans Saint’s games. The objective of the 50/50 Raffle is to sell raffle tickets for a jackpot that is drawn at the end of 4thquarter. The lucky winner goes home with half of the jackpot winnings and the remaining half of the proceeds goes to Second Harvest’s charity organization of choice. The United Negro College Fund and the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation were the two organizations that were given proceeds for the two events. I was able to see firsthand how serious the Saints’ games are to Louisianans, and I must say it is an unforgettable experience. 

January hours: 17

Total hours: 24

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

February

The month of February, I utilized my days studying for our last two Med Pharm modules prior to the Shelf Exam. Its unbelievable that we have made it this close to the end of the academic year already.  The last two modules were neurology and psychopharmacology. Neurology studies the various disorders of the brain that are usually caused by a deficiency or lack of function in neurotransmitters such as Parkinson’s disease, seizures, etc. Psychology studies how the mind works; our lectures focused on how neurotransmitters were defected in psych conditions like schizophrenia, major depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, etc.  From a pharmacological standpoint, targeting the majority of the disorders require agonizing or antagonizing a particular receptor at the synapse. The vast selectivity of the drugs are due to the different types of receptors within different neurons that only respond to particular neurotransmitters. I had the pleasure to discuss the manifestat...

Returning to KIPP

Although my hours for the semester have been completed, I wanted to finish out the semester by volunteering with the organization that I committed to throughout my time in New Orleans.  And what better way to finish out with the same people I started with – my fellow classmates. We visited KIPP and helped to organize the computer station that the students will be using to take their upcoming state exams. Although there was not much work for us to tackle this time around, any amount of work that can be done to help the efficiency of the school for the betterment of the students is well worth it. After just sitting for the NBME shelf exam, I understand the need to have functional operating computers to make testing day go as smoothly as possible. March hours: 3 Total hours: 27

Giving Thanks

KIPP During my ongoing service with KIPP, I continue to be of assistance with helping to keep the school functioning smoothly in any area needed. Several of my classmates and I distributed the boxes of imported textbooks to each teacher’s classroom and stocked the school supplies in the school’s storage closets. We also updated the schools fire drill and natural disaster protocols and posted them in each classroom. KIPP hours: 9 Old Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church Over the Thanksgiving break, I went back home where I helped with my church’s annual “Give Back” service. It is done during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to feed and clothe those in need. Food was prepared the night before Thanksgiving by various members of the church. The morning of plates was prepared and handed out to anyone in need of a meal. Hours: 6 November’s Total: 15 hours Semester's Total: 24 hours