Rubel's Fall 2020 Blog Posts

Food and Clothing Donations: 4 hours This month has been full of growth as well as hard work. In the beginning of the month I began giving food donations at our local food bank. I then began to donate as much summer clothing as I could the following week. I tried to do as much as I could in the beginning of the month because I knew the end would be very busy because of the NBME exam that we are scheduled to have on April 1st. As predicted, these weeks before the board exam have been taxing. I have been on a strict schedule and still have much of the material that I am not too confident on. The main focus that my classmates and I have been focusing on is seeing and completing as many questions as we can. I personally started with the basic principles and inflammation module that dealt with antibiotics, and then proceeded to go down the list of modules in chronological order. I am currently on the neurology module, and I am again focusing on understanding the learning objectives as well

Food Donations: 1 hour This has been a relaxing, but growth filled month. In medical pharmacology we began our neuro block, and it has been a very humbling experience to learn about the different psychiatric conditions that can affect the human mind, as well as the intricacies that our neural pathways play in maintaining our internal homeostasis. Looking more in depth at the different mechanisms of action in play with neurology has definitely given me a greater appreciation for the field as a whole. One of the topics we discussed was the condition of bipolar disorders. I hadn’t previously known that there were three different types, and the difference in displayed “mania” categorization between them. It's little things like that, that has given me even more motivation to understand as much as I can in the topics covered. We were also able to have a discussion with a Tulane fellow OBGYN, Dr. Naresh. She discussed her journey of becoming a physician, and the difficulties she faced wi

     This month has been full of learning and growing experiences. This second semester started off quickly and with very little room to not be on top of things. In medical pharmacology we began looking into diabetic medications as well as different contraceptive plans of action. I really enjoyed learning about the different mechanisms of action that diabetic medications take. It helped me broaden my understanding of the condition as a whole. I always thought of insulin as a sort of transporter that allows certain things to be taken into the cell for further action, I now know that is not the case. Insulin works more like a transport signaler, in that it signals for more GLUT 4 transporters to come and take in glucose. Understanding more about the ways in which diabetes works to affect our bodies has given me a new light of appreciation for how hard my late uncle, as well as the millions of Americans affected by diabetes, work on a day to day basis to maintain a homeostatic state. In a

Total Volunteer Hours and services: 14 hours total Hybrid Market Assistance: 3 hours Crescent City Farmers: 9 hours Letters to Micheal from Retirement Home: 1 hour Food Donations: 1 hour This month has been my most productive and successful one of the semester. I have been able to get my volunteer hours done as well as have a school routine that works for me. I have developed a more visual learning style with constant repetition of the material when it comes to medical pharmacology; this study plan has helped tremendously with retention of the material. I have been volunteering with organizations throughout New Orleans and getting to know my community better. I volunteered at multiple farmers markets this past month. We essentially work to make sure the community gets their fresh groceries safely and on time. We assist the sellers by helping deliver the food from the market into the cars of the consumers. First, we make sure that the order on the computer is the same as what is in thei

Similar to last month, these past few weeks have been difficult and a struggle. Although I have been getting better at retaining the mass amount of information given to us daily, I need to do better. What I have been doing differently this week is learning the material and then talking through it as soon as possible with classmates and my tutor. They are helping me understand where my gaps in the knowledge of the material are. I will continue to go about trying to know the material well enough to teach it back to my tutor and see where this takes me.  Last month I sent a letter to my penpal Michael from the nursing home, and never received a letter back from him. Today I got the letter I sent him back in the mail. Apparently it was not delivered because of the address, which doesn’t make sense because I wrote the address that I was given. I will be writing more letters and sending them off tomorrow along with the letter Micheal never received. Hopefully, they all get there this time. I

     These past few weeks have been difficult and taxing, but necessary in helping me achieve my end goal of becoming a medical student. Although I’ve been struggling, I have also been learning a lot about the way I process mass amounts of information. I’ve been getting better at making those important connections about the material that can correspond to getting better grades. Whether it be thinking more about the mechanisms of actions for a class of drugs or remembering a specific side effect, such as red man’s syndrome, associated with a specific drug toxicity; I’ve learned I process things better through visual learning and repetitive visualization. This was an important connection to make. I’ll continue using these tactics, along with taking practice tests right after the material is presented, to self improve every day.  This weekend I volunteered to read to elementary students at Kipp, but some things fell through on their end, and I haven’t been able to read to them through z