November

November: 10 hours

Community Service Totals: 37.5 hours

November has certainly flown by faster than I expected. We’ve just returned from Thanksgiving break and have jumped right into the Molecular and Cellular Biology portion of the GI/Hepatic block. My experience at Anna’s Place this month was a ton of fun for both me and the students. The students have a Christmas holiday dance performance coming up this weekend that they’ve been preparing for throughout the semester, and they cannot wait to show off their skills. These past few weeks, we’ve used our class sessions to integrate some of the movements that they’ve learned in dance class with the knowledge of the muscle systems that we’ve learned about in class. I’ve noticed that the students really appreciate any lesson plan that involves movement and integration of the arts, whether it be music or drawing, so I try to incorporate that as much as possible into my lesson plans. In the next semester, I’d like to continue this trend and apply it to activities such as cooking (as we continue to study nutrition and healthy eating), and maybe even some hands-on science experiments. I’ve spoken to one of my colleagues in the lab I work in, and he expressed interest in volunteering to do a demonstration that he says has previously been a hit for young students in the past – should be exciting!

We only have one more exam in mid-December before we all head home again for the holidays. Though this semester has flown by, I feel much more confident and comfortable as a student in the program than I did when we first began. I have a solid preparation routine for exams and work well with my classmates in preparation for the exams, and I look forward to the next semester as I hope that it will be a smooth continuation of the process!