A Drug Named Desire: A Pharmacology Master Student's Tale of Life and Service in New Orleans

March has brought tremendous change to the lives of everyone across the globe with the spread of SARS-COV-2. With the implementation of social distancing, many universities across the U.S. have forgone in-person lectures and shifted to online instruction. When Tulane adopted this measure in early March, I was proud that the university took swift action to prevent the spread of SARS-COV-2 within the Tulane community. This shift brought many adjustments to the remainder of our semester. First, all of our instruction was shifted online through Zoom. I was nervous about how this shift to online learning would impact the quality of education professors would be able to provide. While Zoom classes are no replacement for in-person lectures, in my opinion, I have been surprised by the effectiveness of Zoom's ability to facilitate an online classroom and allow professors to give high-quality lectures. Second, all of our exams were also moved online. A consequence of this, one that I'm h

February is one of my favorite months to be in New Orleans. The hot and humid weather that plagues the city most of the year is still a couple of months away and Mardi Gras is right around the corner. This February was no different, with the exception of some new pharmacology! This month we focused on our Neurology and Psychiatry modules. As I mentioned in my previous post, these modules have been challenging because of the complexity and difficulty in treating diseases such as epilepsy and depression. Despite the challenges, these modules have proved to be eye-opening because you realize the trials that patients and their physicians go through to come up with a reliable course of treatment. Once these last two modules have wrapped up we are done with Medical Pharmacology and Principles of Pharmacology for the semester! Well, truly done after our NBME final exam. This exam is going to put our knowledge of pharmacology to the true test. Encompassing everything we have learned since Augu

After a much-needed holiday break, classes are back in full swing! We hit the ground running with our endocrine and reproductive pharmacology module. Encompassing the treatment of diabetes and thyroid disorders, to the function and use of sex hormones. It was definitely a tough first module after a few weeks spent binge-watching Netflix, but the material hit very close to home since I have relatives with thyroid disorders and diabetes. I was able to connect my personal experiences watching my family members struggle with these diseases to the material in class, which made studying for the module exam much easier. I was pleased with the results on the exam and I believe that the changes I made in my study habits and approach are a large part of that. With the first module of the semester behind us, we have spent the last two weeks focused on our neurology module. I have found this module more difficult because of the complexity of neurologic diseases and treatments. However, similar to

It seems as though it was only yesterday when our class listened to Dr. Clarkson give the orientation lecture for the program. Now, with a little over two weeks left in the semester, it is easy to see how the time has flown by. November proved to be as busy as ever, both in and out of the classroom. We started the month finishing up the cardiovascular (CV) module and moving straight into the renal and pulmonary module. The CV module showed me that I need to spend time over the holiday reviewing anticoagulants, antiplatelets, and thrombolytics. The renal and pulmonary module was perhaps my favorite of the semester. Before this program, I had little exposure to the kidneys and lungs and the courses gave me insight into some of the basic physiology and pathophysiology of the systems. When Dr. Katakam showed us an image detailing aspects of the kidney's structure I was convinced that it was not of this world. I spent hours watching videos about the different structures and functions of

The question in the title is one that I've gotten quite often since I started my master's in pharmacology. I thought it would be productive to explain what pharmacology is. At its core, pharmacology is focused on studying the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs. In simpler terms, what drugs do in the body and what the body does with drugs. Over the past month, we have been studying the pharmacology and physiology of the autonomic nervous system and the cardiovascular system. Covering everything from ion channels and smooth muscle to cardiac arrhythmias and how to read an EKG, these modules have been far more difficult and nuanced than the previous ones. This difficulty certainly presented itself on our last module exam. Afterward, I knew that my current methods of studying for module exams would need some adjustment. In addition to my use of Anki and Yuja, I've started setting review benchmarks and creating more detailed study plans. I believe that these changes

Recently, the popular phrase from the Wizard of Oz “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” came to mind. After a month of my pharmacology master’s program, this phrase captures how I feel about the differences between classes at the undergraduate and graduate level. During multiple lectures in both the inflammation and infectious disease modules, I realized that I had seen the material before, that I had studied in undergrad, but that the level of detail and understanding required of us is far beyond the scope of many undergraduate courses. Consequently, I had to adjust my study habits to make sure I could get through all of the material and actually learn it. It is at this moment that I would like to thank the brilliant minds behind Anki and Yuja, on behalf of graduate students everywhere!  This past month has been a tremendous time for personal growth, as well as academic. Having attended Tulane for my undergraduate career, New Orleans and its wealth of food and live mu