Recap of NOM Week 2015

This will be another picture post because I’m going hard with the studying right now (neuro is torture!!!!!), but I wanted to make sure I included an update on the April 19-25, 2015 National Osteopathic Medicine (NOM) Week. It was a pretty awesome week, and my school took part by having panels with osteopathic physicians, giving out free stuff, and even serving us cake! In my opinion though, the best part of the week was getting out and helping my community.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but I was recently elected President of my school’s SNMA chapter, and the “DO More Day” of NOM Week was the first event of the newly elected E-board. On this day, all campus organizations were encouraged to do some type of community service. We wanted to be more hands-on, so one of the members had a great idea of preparing and handing out bagged lunches to the homeless population of Atlanta. We were able to collect donations from our peers and prepare over 150 bagged lunches on campus, but when Saturday came the weather was horrible! Since my daughter was tagging along, there was no way I would have her out in bad conditions, so early Saturday morning we frantically called shelters hoping one would be open to the donations. Luckily, one of the Atlanta Mission shelters needed the items, so we gladly provided them. Nothing shows #DOStyle more than serving your community, and we were happy to do just that :-)

***Side note: I’m currently in two pictures featured in the AOA DO Style photo contest, so please click the link (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1052969224717289.1073741855.168212096526344&type=1 or https://www.facebook.com/americanosteopathicassociation) and head on over to Facebook to vote for my photos! Each “like” on the individuals pictures counts as a vote, and voting ends Thursday at 5pm, so please vote now!****

Happy National Osteopathic Medicine Week!

Happy National Osteopathic Medicine Week!!!!! This week is dedicated to not only increasing awareness of osteopathic medicine, but also to celebrating the many osteopathic physicians both past and present who help continue to make osteopathic medicine so great! I am truly blessed to be able to attend an osteopathic medical school, and I know the osteopathic philosophy and principles that I learn on a daily basis will help me become a highly-skilled, caring, and excellent physician. If you're reading this, and you're not familiar with osteopathic medicine, I have placed a few pictures below that can help provide you with more information. Of course, in the true fashion of celebrating osteopathic medicine, I had an OMM exam this morning, and will take my practical exam tomorrow afternoon along with other exams this week, so I'm off to go study! Shout-out to all the amazing DO's out there, because you guys are just simply awesome :-)

SNMA AMEC 2015 Recap

I’m back!!!! This year’s Student National Medical Association Annual Medical Education Conference was both a success and a blast! I would have written about my experiences sooner, but after having to catch up on three days of missed classes, driving twelve hours to Mississippi and back this past weekend to pick up my daughter, and taking two exams today, I just haven’t had the time. With that being said, I have not intentionally been ignoring those of you who contacted me, and I plan on getting caught up on all the blog stuff within the next day or two.

Anyway, back to the conference! On the first day of the conference, I attended my morning classes and then I went to eat lunch with my daughter to celebrate her being student of the week. After that, I checked her out of class and we hit the road! Since her spring break was this past week, I thought it would be a good idea to take her out of school for two days so that she could spend her entire break with my parents. This meant that I had to take a detour to drop her off, but it only added 3 hours to my overall trip, making the drive to New Orleans a nine-hour one for me. I didn’t mind it though because it felt so good to be back in Louisiana! I also had a hotel room with an amazing view of the Superdome that just brought happy feelings every time I looked at it.

Attending the conference for the first time as a medical student, there were a few things that changed from when I attended it during my pre-medical days. The first change was having to attend House of Delegates, Regional, and transition meetings. This involved a lot of voting and discussing important matters of the organization. I also serve as a student ambassador for my school, so I took the time to help out one of the admissions recruiting officers during the pre-medical fair. I also attended a ton of awesome workshops, and these varied from board prep to residency interview preparation workshops. As most of you already know, I presented my own workshop during the conference titled “Applying to Medical School as a Non-Traditional Student,” and I received a lot of positive feedback on it, so I guess I did a good job :-) I also received the SNMA Basic Medical Sciences Member Scholarship, and I was appointed as one of the national Co-Chairs of the Osteopathic Medical Schools Committee, so I look forward to helping to bring some great events to next year’s conference in Austin, Texas.

I could actually go on and on about all the great things about this conference, but it would make for a super long post, and I am completely burnt out from the past week. Therefore, the rest of this post will consist of pictures and a few comments highlighting some of my favorite moments from the conference.

GA-PCOM represented at AMEC 2015!

Although, GA-PCOM had a large turn-out at AMEC, it was so hard to get us all together to take a picture. This was the closest one I could find of MOST of us together (courtesy of one of the awesome 2nd year students)

This workshop was pretty much my first time ever public speaking. Can you tell? Lol, it really was a great experience and I'm thankful for the many conference attendees who showed up to hear what I had to say.

I finally had the chance to meet Dr. Dale Okorodudu of DiverseMedicine, Inc. If you have not checked out his website, you definitely should! The website offers mentoring to both pre-medical and medical students alike from actual physicians, and has a ton of great advice. Click HERE to create an account and check it out. You definitely won't be disappointed!

Meeting with AACOM's Gina Moses was a major highlight for me. I first met her at the 2008 AMEC conference in NYC, and she was actually my first introduction to osteopathic medicine. Had I had not met her, I probably would still be on the MD path and not in medical school today, so I credit her with a lot.

I absolutely love all my readers, and it was amazing getting to meet some of you in person. Pictured here is one of my amazing readers and pre-medical student who I met at AMEC :-)

Some of the GA-PCOM ladies during the President's Luncheon

This picture was taken right after it was announced that I had won a scholarship. I hadn't told anybody that I applied, so it was a surprise to everyone, lol.

A selfie with one of the GA-PCOM admissions recruiters :-)

Taken while waiting for the Board of Directors' Banquet to start. I really enjoyed hearing all the chants during the "Rep Your Region" portion of the event, and in true New Orleans fashion, the dinner ended with a live band and second line. Sadly, all my pictures from it are blurry though.

We were definitely all smiles :-)

A splinting and casting workshop at the conference. I believe I had a conflicting meeting at the time and wasn't able to attend, so I'm including a great picture of one of my classmates who had the pleasure of attending.

Had to include a picture of a couple of GA-PCOM men :-)

I skipped one of the night events at the local club to hang out with my little sister instead. We went to see Furious 7 and it was pretty good. Plus, if you look closely, the black dress the woman wore to the party is the exact same one I wore to last month's GA-PCOM formal (mine was blue though).

Can't end without a selfie!