November/December

Total Hours for November: 9 hours

Total Hours to be completed in December: 10 hours

Total Volunteer Hours for Semester: 42 hours

These past few months I have continued volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club and ARNO. In November, I helped out with an adoption event at the nearby Petco. There was a Star Wars litter of puppies that were the star attraction. Each of the 5 puppies had a Star Wars name and were extremely friendly. There is another adoption event this week with the adorable name “All Dogs go to Happy Hour” which combines the adoption with Happy Hour. In addition to the adoption event, I volunteered at the shelter with Melody. 

For STEM mentoring in the Boys and Girls Club, I helped with homework and the Halloween party in some weeks rather than completing the animal conservation lesson. The Halloween party was extremely adorable, every single child and the instructors had a costume. For the lessons, I ended up drilling the concept for oil spills in the two STEM lessons I did complete. The animals affected by the oil spill were different for each lesson; the first lesson focused on African penguins and the second was on sea turtles.  In each case, the children were taught the effects of oil on animal coats and the difficulty of removing the oil from the water. In the penguin game, there was also a lesson on overfishing which ended up being a disaster thanks to my children’s excitement on using goldfish. I think as I continue to volunteer, the children are more wiling to participate and learn so I’m hoping for the best with the lessons on bats this week. 

October

            Almost as soon as I finished writing my September post when I had given up hope of starting STEM mentoring, I received word on beginning to volunteer. The first time I started it was chaos when I entered the Boys and Girls club, so many children running around and yelling happily. My group consisted of only four kids from 6-9 years of age so I at least had some chance of leading them. I arrived in time for the endangered animals module so all the activities will be geared towards promoting conservation and knowledge of various species. 

            We began with learning about monarch butterflies and the children made butterfly feeders with great effort. It was a monumental task of keeping them engaged and focused and I truly applaud elementary school teachers who have a full classroom to manage. But finally after a long 20 minutes of introduction for the five of us, in which one of my adorable group members gave a lengthy discussion of her favorite TV show. We finally got to the task at hand; only to have the video of butterfly lifecycles fail to load. In the end, I resorted to the dry reading as the introduction. But at the end of it all, the children did manage to decorate their feeders and make nectar out of sugar and water thanks to the help of the other mentor who had long since finished the task with her kids. And I think I managed to get the idea of conservation into the children’s heads. The youngest six year old asked me with big eyes, “but why are we destroying the butterflies’ habitat?” All in all, it ended up being a great experience and I can’t wait to start the next class!

Total hours for October: 4 hours

Total volunteer hours: 23 hours

September

     This past month I still have not been able to start the STEM mentoring, I think the group is having trouble organizing everything, but I am excited to hopefully start next month as soon as the coordinator gets back to me. In the meantime, I continued at ARNO animal shelter and had a great three shifts. Each shift was particularly grueling in this weather but it was nice at the end to see all the animals asleep and well fed at the end of my shift. I caught this picture of Tiggerberry the cat, awake amongst all the other sleeping cats with an adorably annoyed expression. The dog is Scamp, who was very excited to be on a walk.

           

      The units in September were Neoplasia/Heme and Foundations block as well as the beginning of the ANS/CV block. I have particularly enjoyed this latest block, as I have never encountered any of this information in my college classes in chemistry, and look forward to learning even more in the next renal block!

Volunteer Hours for September: 12 hours
Total Volunteer Hours: 19 hours

August

         Hi, my name is Mythili! I recently moved to New Orleans from St. Louis, Missouri to start the pharmacology masters program here in Tulane. I have been interested in the subject from my undergraduate studies and the interest was further cemented in my brief time working in drug development company.  Throughout college and my time in St. Louis, I have volunteered in various animal shelters, so I sought out various shelters here in New Orleans to continue this work. I plan on volunteering in Animal Rescue New Orleans (ARNO) and in the Boys and Girls Club as a STEM mentor (as soon as my application is processed there). This post will only be about my animal shelter experience so far.

         ARNO is a small shelter with both cats and dogs. The cats were some of the friendliest shelter cats I’ve ever encountered. In my first visit, I helped clean the cat areas and in my second, I was able to walk a few dogs. The shelter is doing a great job of socialization with so many cats and additionally, I did not see any aggressive dogs either! I was happy to be able to volunteer at such a capable group. If anyone is interested in adopting adorable, friendly animals then I’m positive you’ll find them at ARNO!

Community Service Hours for August: 7 hrs