April

April Hours: 12
Total Semester Hours: 30
2016-2017 Academic year total: 67.5

This semester, I culminated my volunteer experience at Anna's Place and the medical mission. As the final weeks of program approached in March, students became noticeably more restless and anxious for the upcoming summer break. Though on paper, it seems like ages ago when I was elementary school aged and anxious for the summer months, I remember distinctly exactly how they feel. I'm so glad that through the Schweitzer Fellowship here in New Orleans, I'll get to continue to be apart of the program with the kids throughout the summer months and beyond.

I’m continuously amazed by the students in the program, and so grateful for my experience working at St. Anna’s. It’s a Christian church with its own tenets and religious doctrine to adhere to, but that has never been a hindrance to its own practice of welcoming any and everyone with open arms. During clinic hours at the medical mission, we have patients from different racial/ethnic backgrounds, different socioeconomic classes, unconventional sexual and gender identities – but when you walk through the doors of the clinic, we’re taught that the only thing that matters to us as volunteers is that these are people, and it is our jobs to do everything within our means to provide the best care possible. This is the attitude I hope to carry with me throughout my life – yes as a physician, but more importantly, just as a human. If you listen to or watch the news, it’s easy to believe that it’s impossible to be different and yet get along, care for each other, and have empathy for one another. I tend to think that we as people make the process of harmony, or at least peaceful coexistence, more complicated than it really is, and spending so much time serving at St. Anna’s is always a reminder of this, and an experience that I will never forget.