Hello to all the readers out there! Man, it feels like a whole lot has happened since I last wrote to you all two weeks ago. 

To start off this blog, something I was eager to share was that I went camping for the first time since I was about 10-years-old! Two weekends ago my run club and I had a trail run out in the woods, so we turned it into a camping trip. My girlfriend and I, being the young members of the group, lacked all camping equipment and had to borrow from our teammates. The only thing that I had was an air mattress which, of course, had a leak and went flat after just a few hours – at least we had a tent over our heads! I ran the quarter marathon and ended up placing first in my age group!

My girlfriend also placed first in her age group and we received some fun first-place pint glasses as an award. After resting up for a couple of hours we got up and took off on a three-hour hike around the nature preserve. By the time I realized how crazy my club is and how tired I was we were a couple of miles away from the campsite! It was a fun adventure and led to some fantastic pictures you guys see included in this post. The weekend thoroughly wore me out (sleeping flat on the ground didn’t help) but I cannot wait to camp with them again!

Now down to the nitty gritty. Since last post the world has been thrown into the Corona Virus pandemic. I hope that all the readers out there are healthy and well but most importantly taking care of themselves. Things have been kind of crazy here with lots of changes in school and events (three races I was signed up for got canceled already!). This is uncharted territory for a lot of us and the school is no different, but in my opinion the school has handled everything very well. For this week my classes have been postponed and we are making a transition to online classes to finish up the term. Our lab-based classes are going to continue to meet on new schedules with pretty significantly reduced student number on campus.

As for our clinic experience, there has definitely been a learning curve! We have begun screening patients over the phone as well as in our reception area before taking them back to the treatment rooms. We have also increased our sanitation guidelines and have done everything we can to reduce the spread within the clinic. As a future health care practitioner, it has been very interesting watching all of this develop and seeing how it affects my clinic practices. Like all of you, the school and myself will be continuing to keep tabs on the situation and I will let you know how it has affected my student life in my upcoming posts.

Stay healthy and safe everyone! Wash your hands! And as always, if you have any questions, please email me at [email protected].