April Blog: Giving Hope the Food Pantry

 Service hours this month: 7

Total community service hours: 12


The month of April was bittersweet since it marked the end of the Pharmacology program. The program has taught me a lot about myself, studying medicine, and how to proceed from here. We finished Principles of Pharmacology last month, but still had presentations, our Cell Control Mechanisms final, and the opportunity to take part of the NBME. Our NBME consisted of retired Pharmacological questions from the shelf exams for medical school. It encompassed most of the Medical Pharmacology material from the cumulative year.

Although a little daunting at first, the NBME was a great bench-marker for how much the Pharmacology Program has taught us. It was a valuable experience that hopefully gave the whole class the confidence needed to move onto the real thing in medical school in the near future. Additionally, the presentations and our end of the year elevator talk in environmental signaling proved how far we have come in terms of public speaking. Due to my lack of presentations during college, this experience was extremely helpful towards improving my presenting abilities. I am glad the program has this component to it because it certainly challenged me and took me out of my comfort zone.

As far as community service, I was able to volunteer for 7 hours with Second HarvestFood Bank's event, Giving Hope the Food Pantry. The amount of food we helped give out to people in need was honestly mind boggling. The event took place at a big warehouse with bulk storage of many different types of food. We initially assembled the various items into balanced boxes of food to give out to people in need at the location. As the cars arrived, we were stationed at many different spots to help load up each car with water and nutritious food. I was pleased to be able to help so many families in need and meet some great people doing it! It turned out to be a very good workout as I was loading heavy bags of baking mix, boxes of grapefruit, and bags of potatoes into each car for hours. All-in-all, it was another meaningful experience and opportunity to help out through Second Harvest Food Bank.

Next on the list of things to do is the MCAT and medical school applications. 
Wish me luck,
Edward 

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