Taking the Plunge….The Polar Bear Plunge!

Hi everyone on February 18, 2012, I have committed to grin and “bear” it for the athletes of Special Olympics Minnesota by participating in the Duluth Polar Bear Plunge!

This event serves as the biggest fundraiser for the athletes of Special Olympics.I know……..you’re probably getting cold just thinking about it! I got chills running down my spine just writing about this. Rest assure that the frigid cold that I’ll feel during the event will only be temporary; the positive impact we’ll have on the lives of over 7,000 Special Olympics Minnesota athletes with intellectual disabilities will last a lifetime! This is where I need your help. My fraternity Brothers from Kappa Psi and I need your support. We have organized a team of plunger and are looking for donations to help us reach our goals.

I have set a personal fundraising goal of $200, and I need your help to reach it! Please help me in my efforts to support the athletes of Special Olympics. No, I’m not asking you to take the Plunge (although I’d love you to join me!), but I AM asking if you’ll make a donation to Special Olympics Minnesota on behalf of me taking the “Big Plunge.” Please visit my personal plunger page at http://www.plungemn.org/plunger/soukphaengkhouane to make a contribution. In order to be eligible to jump into the icy cold waters of Lake Superior in my swimsuit and lab coat, I have to raise a minimum of $75. Any amount would be appreciated and it all goes to a wonderful cause. I want to thank you in advance for your support and ask that you think warm thoughts for me as February 18 approaches. I’ll do my best to make you proud by making the biggest splash possible during the frigid plunge!

Many thanks,

Souk

 

 

Memory Up Grade

It finally got here! I have been tracking my package for 4 days now and I was starting to wonder if I would receive it before class started. Without it I don’t know how I would be able to start classes. Well without it working that is.

Four days ago, I ordered a memory upgrade for my netbook off of Amazon.  Since then my netbook has been in pieces because I had taken it apart to see have difficult it would be to do a memory upgrade. After taking it apart, I didn’t want to put it back together because of how difficult it was to disassemble in the first place. I had all the components “bagged and tagged” just so I wouldn’t lose them.

My netbook is pretty much my life. It contains everything relating to my pharmacy career since I started. All of my notes, documents for all of my organizations that I’m involved in, and all of my pictures. I love my netbook because it was light and portable. It has a 10″ screen and weighs less than 3lbs. I would carry it with me everywhere I went. It was the perfect size to have in the classroom and did everything a normal laptop can do. The negatives about my netbook was it was VERY slow. I always considered myself knowledgeable when it comes to technology but  when I bought my netbook, I didn’t do such a good job researching. My Acer Aspire One is a great little computer. It came with Windows 7 starter, an Intel Atom N475 processor, 6 cell battery, 250 GB of hard drive, and 1 GB of memory. This was top of the line for netbooks at that time. Well just to let you know, 1 GB of memory is not enough to watch lectures on Itunes, use Word, and check email at the same time. I was doing so much at once that my computer would “freeze up” on me every 2 sec. After surfing the internet, I found out that I couldn’t upgrade the memory on the model. I had given up on my Acer until a week ago. That is when I stumbled across Aliamentation’s Youtube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ttWH_DwUI&feature=related. She did a great step by step video on how to upgrade the memory. She figured out how to get it to work by using a certain brand of memory. Well I found it at Amazon and ordered it. I have to tell you, for $13 I couldn’t be happier. I doubled my memory from 1 GB to 2 GB and my Acer is running faster than before. I almost sold it to a friend of mine over the Christmas break but lucky for me, I procrastinated on wiping/backing up  the hard drive. That was the one thing the prevented me from selling it when I was home. I don’t know if you even follow my blog by this entry is dedicated to you Aliamentation. Without your DIY video, I would have been in the market for a new computer. Hopefully this upgrade is all I need to get me through the rest of my studies. I have my eye on a MacBook Air but that will have to wait until after I become a Pharmacist and can afford such luxuries.

 

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Would you like a tour of the College of Pharmacy?

A few days ago, I was going through the college’s website trying to see where all the hospital rotations were for the summer. I was trying to see if there were any sites that were in the Mankato area. While looking around, I stumbled across a link to the university’s Youtube page. With nothing better to do at that moment, I decided to watch some of the videos.

What I was not ready for was a video of me giving a tour of the college. It was the first video I clicked on. At the beginning of the year, I was asked to be apart of the video but wasn’t sure if the video would even be produced. To my surprise it was and I have to tell you the people who put it together did a great job. I remembered that we had to do a lot off “takes” because I was so nervous and messed up numerous times.  It was hard because I had no script and wasn’t sure what they all wanted in the video. From that experience, I am soo glad that I chose to be a pharmacist and not an actor. I hope that I did the campus justice and that you don’t hold anything against the campus because of my bad acting.

 

Audio Post

 

Super Science Fridays

Every Friday as I walk through the halls of Piedmont Elementary School towards Mrs. KP’s 1st grade class, the halls echo with the sound of little voices singing, “It’s Super Science Friday hurrah, hurrah….It’s Super Science Friday hurrah, hurrah.”

 

You got NO Mail!

Sometimes the little victories in life are the most rewarding. It is currently 1am and I just got done going through my inbox. I spent the last couple of hours (3 hours to be precise) deleting or organizing old emails from last semester into folders. It is crazy how many emails you receive in a day when you’re in pharmacy school. My record so far has to be 30 emails in one day. A lot of them are reminders of events that are happening in the CoP (College of Pharmacy in case you didn’t know what CoP stood for). Others are from the different organizations that I am involved in.  The emails I enjoy getting are the pharmacy updates about new drugs or drug trials. The bad part is that I don’t have the time to read them :(.

 

Trying out a new feature …Polling

Hi everyone,

I’m trying this polling feature out to see if this works. Let me know what you think by answering the sample poll.

 

Things I’m looking forward to after Finals!

I realized today that my brain can only take a couple of hours of studying before it decides to hate me. As a result of this new discovery, I decided that I would take ten minutes to post something and the thing I wanted to blog about was “What I am looking forward to doing after Finals!” First and foremost, I am looking forward to spending time with my family. Without them, I would not be where I am right now. Second, sleeping in! My sleep pattern and eating habits have gone by the wayside these couple of weeks. I feel like I have put on 10 pounds due to stress eating. My food and drink of choice is a Rockstar energy drink and some potato chips. Not the best combo but it works for me. Lastly I have some projects that I started that I would like to make a dent in. I want to update my Curriculum Vitae (CV) so that I’m ready to apply for summer internships, make an educational poster about Proper Medication Disposal, and organized a Medication Take Back Event in January (Student Coordinator for the school) to name a few. I hope that I will get a chance to interact with my followers during this break also. Well my 10 mins are up. Time to grab a Rockstar and focus! One Final today, one tomorrow, and one on Thursday!

 

The light at the end of the tunnel

Just finished up my last exam before Finals week. Our first final is in Pharmacokinetics and it is only hours away. It is tomorrow at 1pm!Can’t believe it, we just got done taking an exam. I sometimes feel like they want to see how much we can take lol. So here is the lowdown for the rest of the week. First final is Saturday then we have one each day until Thursday. After that, a six-hour drive home to spend some time with family and a couple of well deserved beers. My goal tonight is to be productive until maybe 10 pm and then get some much-needed sleep. It is bad when people can see dark bags under your eyes when you are dark-skinned. I keep on telling myself that I just need to get through week.

 

Last regular exam until Finals

Hi everyone!

I am sorry that I haven’t posted for a while. Second year consumes your whole time. Just a little quick update. 1) I’m still alive 2) This semester is a beast and I am more than ready for it to be over. 3) Can’t wait for the holidays and some time off to focus on some projects that I started earlier this year. 4) I will be updating this page over the break so watch out new things. I also want to hold a Q and A session during the break. Not sure how to do it but I will let you know. I was thinking of setting aside 1-2 hrs on a certain day where I will response to general questions people might have. Post a question(s) and I will response immediately. Well I’m heading back to studying for my last regular exam.

Wish me luck!