Spring traveling during third year (New York, Orlando, and Philly)

During this spring semester I booked a few flights for conferences and visits home to see family and friends.

Over spring break in late March, I took off for New York right after our OB/GYN shelf exam. I stayed in the Bronx with one of my best friends from college. I also went to a scholarship interview in Manhattan, visited with the fam in New Jersey for a day, and hung out with a few friends who live in New York. 

Here are a couple of places I visited with friends that I highly recommend:

• Mulberry & Vine 
• A super delicious fresh, organic food place in Manhattan close to the Brooklyn Bridge. Well, actually, they're all over the place, but we went to the one by the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a pretty popular spot, and the place gets packed during the lunch hour!

• Le Baobab Gouygui
• This place is an incredible Senegalese restaurant in the heart of Harlem. My friend and I went out and ate here afterwards. We stayed there until 5AM. Isn't that crazy? My friend ordered the dibi lamb (Senegalese grilled lamb) and I ordered the dibi chicken with fries (they were out of rice) and a sweet ginger drink that tasted a little bit like Jamaican sorrel. That made me nostalgic.

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In early April, I flew to Orlando to give a poster presentation on some of the research that I assisted with over the past year and a half in Loyola's Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 

Brief spiel on the project:

We have been investigating the mechanisms underlying fear and anxiety in male and female rats following a myocardial infarction (MI). Corticotropin-releasing factor 1 (CRF-1) receptors in the rostral locus coeruleus are upregulated following an MI, leading to an increase in glutamatergic activity. Our results suggest that this increase in glutamatergic activity is over-activated more in the female rats following an MI, and this mechanism may explain the anxiety observed more commonly in the peri-MI period for females than for males, which would increase risk of morbidity and mortality. 

On our last night, I went out with my PI, a Loyola PhD student, and several of their colleagues to an awesome Greek restaurant in Orlando called Taverna Opa Orlando. The description in Google says, "Diners climb on the tables & shimmy with the belly dancers at this family-friendly Greek chain link." This couldn't be more true! The music was bound to get you movin' and groovin'. I ordered the Greek lemon and chicken soup, which was delicious. (I learned that Greeks like to put lemons in a lot of their dishes? Pretty interesting).

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This past Easter weekend I went to Philadelphia for the American Medical Education Conference  (AMEC) through the Student National Medical Association (SNMA). It was a perfect networking and professional development opportunity. The mission of SNMA is to support and promote the advancement of black minorities in medicine, but it is not an exclusive organization. It just so happens that the majority of attendees at AMEC and members of SNMA are African-American students, residents, and attending physicians.


Next weekend in early May, I will actually be returning to Philly for a Neurology specific conference (American Academy of Neurology) which I was fortunate enough to have received a scholarship award to attend. I look forward to the opportunity to network further with neurologists (and aspiring neurologists like myself) in the city of Brotherly Love. This weekend is right before our Pediatrics clerkship exam so I will unlikely have much time to explore the city.

In late June, after my final clerkship of third year (Family Medicine), I will be flying to Jamaica to visit my mother's side of the family in rural Mandeville. My grandmother and great-aunts and uncles are excited to host me for a week. My sister will also be in Jamaica during this time, but at a resort in Montego Bay with her boyfriend, rather than on a farm with the rest of our family haha. We will have two very different experiences.

The day after I return to Chicago from Jamaica, I will fly to Japan for the RIKEN Center for Brain Science Summer Lecture program at the RIKEN Institute located right outside of Tokyo. I am beyond excited for this opportunity that I never thought I would have when I applied to the program earlier this year. I will post another blog entry about these experiences down the road.


Thanks so much for reading! :)