Community Service Brainstorm

Written by Kate DiPasquale:

On Thursday, September 25th, Parth Modi, Charley Nottingham, Andrew Junkin and Mai Grant came over to my place to eat chili and brainstorm about ways in which the class of 2012 can get involved in the Richmond community. While it stormed outside, we sat on the carpet of my living room/bedroom/ office/ dining room, and fired off ideas for projects that we imagined primarily being useful in the Greater Richmond area,but that also speaks to the part of us that led us to study medicinein the first place. We talked about looking for ways to join the social support network that already exists in Richmond. We thought hard about ways in which medical students can and cannot contribute in
a realistic manner.

We had some interesting ideas - some of which were not quite feasible, i.e. lending a hand to harvest olives and donate the oil - that would be Mai's, yes she's from California. Others were easy to imagine - holding several events thoughout the year, coat or food drives, that we could organize and contribute to as a class over a relatively short period of time. We talked about being a resource to connect students to service and volunteer agencies on an individual basis. Yet the idea that inspired us was that of having one or more long-term projects that we could work on during our time in Richmond, and pass on to the incoming class when we leave.

We divvied up the project scouting, ate some ice cream, and returned to studying feeling like we had come to the best place in the world to be studying medicine. Then we looked at Beckman's syllabus, which really appears to have been cut and pasted out of five different textbooks, and...no, wait, this was just me.

Anyhow, I DO feel inspired, and really excited to continue working with a group of such engaged, perceptive, intelligent, neat people, and seeing what happens as more people get involved. Actually, the studying feels positively peripheral at this point. But, as the body must continue to send beta-hydroxybutyrate to the peripheral tissue so that fatty acid metabolism can provide energy in the absence of incoming glucose, I trudge on.

Looking Forward,
Kate DiPasquale, Community Service Chair