January Blog: New Year, New Semester

Monthly Community Service Hours: 0 Hours

Cumulative Spring Semester Service Hours Completed: 0 Hours

Happy New Year!

        With the new year, the spring semester has started and and we more than half way done with the master's program. The winter break was much needed and I am ready to take on the new semester and hit the books. This semester we are taking 17 credit hours as opposed to the 15 credit hour we took in the fall semester. We started the semester off our Medical Pharmacology class with the reproductive module. This mini module only lasted for about a week, but it was packed with material on gonadotropins, estrogen, progestin, androgen, contraception, uterine fibroids, STDs, and age and gender effects on drug response. Before this module, I was unaware of how drug response can be affect by both age and gender. Our module exam was the same day for our first snow day in New Orleans that hasn't happened in years! The week of the module exam consisted of playing with the snow this historic snowfall gave us and starting the next module on endocrine pharmacology. For the rest of the month, we will be continuing this module learning about hypo and hyperthyroidism, insulin, and diabetes.

     Aside from the material we have learned so far in Medical Pharmacology, the number of presentations for this semester has doubled consisting of presentations from Advances and two other classes: Endocrine Pharmacology and Neuropharmacology. Endocrine Pharmacology is different from our other presentation course because instead of being assigned one manuscript and going into it's intricate details, we are able to choice a topic of our choice and use multiple primary manuscript to answer that topic. This course consist of a book written by Dr. Robert Sapolsky called Why Zebras Don't get Ulcers: A guide to Stress, Stress-Related Disease, and Coping (3rd edition, 2004). After reading the first chapter, I find this book fascinating, informative, and humorous. I am excited to read more continuing on with the semester.

      I am excited from with this semester has in store! This semester I plan on volunteering more at Second Harvest Food bank and Giving Hope NOLA since I enjoyed it so much last semester. I am ending this month off celebrating Lunar New Year with some friends at my church's annual Tet Festival. Chúc mừng năm mới! 

 Kayla Nguyen