March

March brought a return to parading in New Orleans in honor of St. Patrick’s day.  I felt like I was transported back in time two thousand years ago seeing people beg for vegetables, though they are admittedly more practical than beads.  It’s also fun showing friends that come to visit around, it hasn’t even been a year since we were given tours of the city by the NOLA natives.  Our core courses have wound up, and many of us are spending more time in research labs or volunteering.  A few of us are off to collect soil samples to determine the lead levels for one of our elective courses, and we had an interesting talk about stress induced epigenetic changes.  The broken window hypothesis might incline me to fix some upside down signs around my house.  The BMS department hosted a crawfish boil which was a good opportunity to relax and meet new people.  Some people might think that shrimp boils are preferable to crawfish, but they or may not have learned to keep their opinions largely to themselves.  The Pharmacology department boil should be coming up shortly.  We had some interesting stories regarding MCAT testing facilities and associated characters today, my experience was entirely painless.