January 2019
Fittingly, the new year and semester brought on a bout of new classes to schedules. In addition to the usual Medical Pharmacology and Principles of Pharmacology classes, we are now taking Environmental Signaling, Endocrine Pharmacology, Cell Control Mechanisms, and Neuropharmacology. For the most part, these electives have given us more freedom to control how much we learn and what content we focus on. While the other electives still focus more on the human mechanisms, Environmental Signaling provides a good balance between physiological phenomena and environmental awareness. We have learned about the signaling pathways of estrogen in the body, the different forms of estrogen, and how they affect the body, but what I also appreciate is Dr. Mielke's attention to protecting New Orleans' population from lead pollution. We have been assigned a project to collect five soil samples from across the greater New Orleans area specifically from places where children spend a significant a