Yasmeen Hamed Pharmacology Blog

  Monthly Community Service Hours(March 2025): 6 Hours Cumulative Semester Service Hours (December 2024+Spring 2025): 26  Hours The month of March holds a special place in my heart this year, as it overlaps with the holy month of Ramadan—a time of deep reflection, prayer, and service for us Muslims around the world. While fasting from sunrise to sunset is central to this month, another meaningful practice is Taraweeh, or night prayers. These prayers are longer and spiritually powerful, but for parents with young children, they can also be challenging.   That’s why I’ve been spending my Sunday nights volunteering in my local mosque’s childcare services. For about an hour and a half, I help care for the children while their parents attend night prayers peacefully and without distractions. On some nights, we’ve had over 40 kids, but thankfully, we’ve had a good amount of volunteers to help share the load. It’s loud, playful, and often chaotic—but it’s also incredibly re...

  Monthly Community Service Hours(Feb 2025): 0 Hours Cumulative Semester Service Hours (December 2024+Spring 2025): 20 Hours February has been a busy month, packed with coursework, presentations, and diving deeper into pharmacology. One of the most interesting topics we covered was Type 2 Diabetes, particularly the GLP-1 receptor agonists. These medications, like semaglutide and tirzepatide, have been a huge focus lately—not just in medicine but in pop culture too. It seems like everyone wants to be on these “shots”, no matter if it is for diabetes management or weight loss. I really did enjoy the lectures given to us as well as learning about these drug’s mechanisms. Or, more specifically how they enhance insulin secretion and slow gastric emptying, has been really interesting to me. It’s wild to see how a medication initially developed for diabetes has become such a hot topic everywhere. I’m usually not the biggest fan of our independent studies but the independent study top...

  Monthly Community Service Hours(includes Dec 2024): 20 Hours Cumulative Semester Service Hours (December 2024+Spring 2025): 20 Hours -Note: The 20 hours that I have for this month includes the 14 hours I did in December after the fall 2024 semester ended and the remaining 6 hours includes volunteer service from the month of January.   Happy New Year! It feels great to be back and get back into my school route as well as diving into my coursework. However, I can already tell it’s going to be a hectic semester. With 17 credit hours on my plate—up from 15 last semester—this semester will definitely be busy. On top of academics, this is also the semester I begin the exciting process of applying to PA school and finalizing everything I’ve been working so hard toward.    This semester has started strong with an engaging module. I’ve especially enjoyed the Case-Based Learning (CBL) session, where we’ve been focusing on contraceptives and the variety of options. Contr...

Monthly Community Service Hours  Completed 9 (as of November 26) Cumulative Semester Service Hours  Completed 22 (as of Nov 26)(10 hours more than required for Fall 2024)      November has been a busy month for sure!! With our academics becoming more challenging and the holidays approaching, there’s been little downtime. Despite the hectic schedule, I was fortunate to participate in my community’s food pantry Thanksgiving distribution day on Saturday, November 23rd, from 6 AM to 12 PM. Volunteers had prepared the food boxes earlier in the week, so our primary task on Saturday was to load turkeys and other food items into the cars of families who came to collect their meals. Over 300 families received food that day. While it was physically demanding to carry and load the heavy boxes, it was an incredibly rewarding experience. Knowing that these efforts allowed so many families to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal made every moment worthwhile.     ...

  Monthly Community Service Hours  Completed 13 (as of October 27) Cumulative Semester Service Hours  Completed 13 (as of October 27)      On October 19th, my mom and I participated in an early morning volunteer event with Grace at The Green Light, a program that provides meals and essential support to those experiencing homelessness in New Orleans.       We had to wake up at 4 AM (definitely not an easy task!) and head to the St. Jude Community Center on 400 N. Rampart Street in New Orleans. When we arrived, there was already a long line of about 100 people waiting for breakfast. It was humbling to see so many individuals in need, but it was even more inspiring to witness the community coming together to serve. We started by prepping and serving breakfast, and after the meal, we handed out donation bags filled with essential items for both men and women.        Since I was the only one there with somewhat of a medica...

  Monthly Community Service Hours  Completed 0 (as of Sept 25) Cumulative Semester Service Hours  Completed 0 (as of Sept 25)   My first month at Tulane Pharmacology has been both challenging and rewarding. Coming straight from undergrad at LSU, I was eager to dive back into academics, but it took me some time to adapt to the different study style required for a master’s program. Graduate school is definitely more intense than undergrad, but once I found my rhythm, I started to really enjoy the coursework as well as my routine with answering the objectives and making Quizlet’s for myself and for my classmates.             One of the most interesting things in my opinion that we’ve covered so far in Medical Pharmacology (which is my favorite class), and was on our most recent exam was antibiotics and HIV. Learning about HIV particularly caught my attention, not just because it’s a critical topic in medicine, ...