September Blog

This first month in the program has truly been a learning but rewarding experience. I was scared to move from the Northeast, New York, to the South since it has very different cultures. While nothing compares to home, I have found New Orleans to be beautiful in its own way and am learning to appreciate it. The program has definitely given me the purpose to be able to navigate this on my own but also get help whenever I need. Going through the different modules, I have learned extensive amount of information that is so intriguing to me. During undergraduate, I felt I was learning such basic principles and also taking  many classes beyond my major which seemed wasteful at times. However, in the program I can apply what I learn to my day to day and it's all based on subjects I am greatly interested in. I never knew the differences between the NSAIDS and how inflammation in our body works. Now that I have learned it, I am able to understand why doctors recommend certain medications over the other as certain therapeutics. I can also understand what exactly is happening in my body when a cut happens or bacteria enters our body. Also learning how bacteria can be sometimes good for our body. The Inflammation module was definitely my favorite as I feel I learned the most and also can apply it, it made me understand how important every aspect of a drug is. Whether that be the dosage, site or who's receiving it. Some areas that I believe I need more time researching is gene therapy. It was an interesting topic as it's a different way to treat certain diseases but I don't think I fully understood how it works. I know the basic concepts but I didn't fully digest how they actually do it and avoid complications. I will go back and learn this in a more efficient way. Overall, I am content with my performance. I study often to stay on top of everything and my study habits of making concept maps and active recall have aided me in making sure what I learn stays in my long term memory. Also these study habits and using Anki to reinforce concepts have helped to do well so far. My only poor performance was the gene therapy aspect of the Molecular Pharmacology but it's salvageable and I will bounce back. My mistake in that was I went in only knowing basic concepts but I should have made sure I knew more of it and understood it. However, I'm very excited about our current module, Neuromuscular, because one of my majors during undergraduate was Neuroscience and I want to get into Neurology as my future career!