Extracurriculars

In my last blog post, I talked about the Teddy Bear Clinic, but I have also gotten involved with a couple extracurricular activities that I thought worth mentioning.

Anyone who know me well, knows that I go CRAZY if I am not involved with extracurriculars. Ever since I was a little kid, I have always loved being busy with a lot of different activities. In undergrad, I was a little overly excited and got myself involved with a little too much. So, in medical school, I knew I would have to tune it down a little bit and focus myself on my academics, before thinking about getting involved with extra stuff.

Now that I have found a good balance, I have found myself involved with 4 things:

1) Teddy Bear Clinic
2) Student Council
3) Admissions Ambassador
4) Friendship Clinic.

If you want to hear about Teddy Bear Clinic, read my last blog! :)

Student Council: I was elected to a student council representative spot by my class. I am very excited for this role and am excited to be a voice for my class. As of now, the 10 of us elected to student council are just called "representatives." However,  in the next few weeks, we are electing President, Vice-President,  Secretary and Treasurer. I have not decided for sure, but I think that I would like to be Secretary. Stay tuned.

Admissions Ambassador: As part of the admissions process at MSU, the interviewees have one faculty interview and one student interview. Since I interviewed last winter, I thought that this was maybe something I would be interested in. So, when we received information about it towards the beginning of the semester, I attended the informational meeting and signed up. I actually am conducting my first interview tomorrow. I am kind of nervous, but I know that my interviewee is MUCH MUCH more nervous than I am. So, I am going to forgo my fears and hopefully put her at ease.

Friendship Clinic: This is another activity that I have been excited to do for quite sometime. It is basically a free student-run clinic for underserved populations in Lansing. S actually volunteered at this in his pre-clinical years, so I have heard good things about it. I was supposed to start volunteering last Saturday. Unfortunately, my paperwork to volunteer had to go through MSU and then through Ingham County Health Department before I could volunteer. I did not know this. So, when I turned in my paperwork on Thursday, I was sadly informed that it would not be processed in time for me to volunteer. I really hope that once it does get cleared, I can volunteer...and I hope its soon!

Teddy Bear Picnic

Since starting medical school, I have been looking for extracurricular activities that I could become a part of, while still making sure I wasn't taking too much time from my studies. So, when I first heard about the "Teddy Bear Picnic" at an activities fair, I knew that it was something I wanted to be a part of.

This program was a one-day fair for local children in the East Lansing community. The MSU Children's Health Initiative set up this fair to provide children with an educational and fun day of bringing their stuffed animals to the "Teddy Bear Hospital." There were a lot of different booths: ranging from general pediatrics, to pediatric oncology, to pediatric dentistry, to pediatric surgery, to pediatric dermatology. Each booth had its own unique  activities planned for the kids. Some of my personal favorites were a casting booth (sport's medicine) and a Pulmonology booth, which game the Teddy Bears some oxygen.

I was assigned to the "Cardiology" Booth. There were 4 main parts to what we did:
1) Listened to the teddy bear's heart with our stethescopes
2) Told the children that their bear's heart sounded healthy and talked to them about healthy things they can do to make sure they have a healthy heart like their furry friends (exercise, eat vegetables, etc).
3) Hooked their bears up to an echocardiogram (that had a film playing of a human heart) and teach the children the basics of how our heart pumps blood through our bodies.
4) Gave the children some coloring books and work sheets about heart anatomy and healthy heart choices.

The purpose of the day was to educate kids about the basic healthy aspects throughout the different booths and try to get them comfortable with the idea of going to a doctor.

It really was a great day and I am so happy that I became apart of Teddy Bear clinic during my first year, because that means I have three more years to be a part of it!


This video was from last years event, but you can still kind of see what its all about: