October Blog: It's All About Balance

 

Volunteer Hour Breakdown:

    Boo at the Zoo: 5 hours

    St. Michael Special School: 2 hours

Monthly Community Service Hours: 7 Hours

Cumulative Fall Semester Service Hours: 7 Hours

October in New Orleans is like no other. With the city finally having cooler weather and many events during this time of the year, I would say the month has been eventful. At the beginning of this month, I was able to introduce some of my classmates to the community I grew up in and the festival I’ve volunteered at over the past couple of years. We were able to participate in Viet Nola’s event at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church Moon Festival to celebrate 50 years of Vietnamese Americans in Louisiana by painting. Although I wasn’t able to volunteer at the festival this year, I participated in other events held in the city. One of the biggest events I was most excited about volunteering at was Boo at the Zoo, which benefits Audubon Zoo and Children’s Hospital New Orleans. Having volunteered at this for the past 3 years, I was grateful to be able to assist again this year with maze management and line control. It was rewarding to support their mission of improving the quality of life for the families and children in New Orleans. In my previous blog, I mentioned volunteering at St. Michael’s Special School this month. This past week, I had the pleasure of spending my time with students during aftercare. It was heartwarming to reconnect with the students again, hearing about their day, sharing their love for singing songs, and enjoying the many jokes they were excited to tell me. During this time, the students usually wait for their guardians to pick them up, which provides the perfect opportunity to enhance their time until then. 

Having the opportunity to take part in these events allow for the balance between enjoying my favorite season and studying for the amplified modules in this curriculum. This month we started the autonomic and cardiovascular system module. The cardiovascular module is intense, but with the help of my classmates and the professors it has become manageable. I am grateful to this program for allowing the opportunity to provide high yield/enhanced learning through the JiTT sessions. Just in time teaching (JiTT) is a method of learning where the students have a pre-class reading assignment containing material taught in the module. After reading the pre-class reading, Dr. Clarkson is able to take our feedback on the reading and enhance our class time lectures by focusing on the areas we find more difficult and utilizing the class time for more quality learning. These sessions are a huge benefit in learning the material during this module especially in our most recent one on various treatments of heart failure. For the remaining of this month, I will be preparing for the upcoming exams for this module.

                        Figure 1: Fountain at Boo at the Zoo event at Audubon Zoo

Figure 2: Painting at Viet Nola 50 years of Resilience at Mary Queen of Vietnam Church's Moon Festival

Figure 3: Preparing to walk over to our designated stations at Boo at the Zoo

Figure 4: Mystery Maze at Boo at the Zoo