A new medical training school is coming to South Texas \u2014 Here\u2019s what it means for the region<\/a><\/p>\nFor senior Mari Lopez, who juggles a full course load while working, it’s an event she looks forward to.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’ve calculated it: this semester I have to be on campus for 27 hours a week out of the 5 days,” Lopez said. “So you’re going for 40 hours a week to work. 27 of my 40 hours is at campus and so I work part time on the side.”<\/p>\n
Theresa Sharpe is the director of the counseling center that organizes this annual event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The semester really takes a toll on students,” Sharpe said. “They work really hard all semester, and now they have to do this final push to get through finals. And so just providing a little bit support, encouragement, and joy by offering them the opportunity to visit with all these wonderful animals and also engage in some activities to de-stress.”<\/p>\n
Sharpe said this event has a few activities but the animals are the students favorite.<\/p>\n
“Research has shown that interacting with animals, petting animals, just really has a very calming effect on people, well, and the animals as well,” Sharpe said. “It releases kind of endorphins, oxytocin, and so this is a very positive experience and you know, a lot of times students walk into the room and they just, they feel the effects almost immediately.”<\/p>\n
As Natalie Grijalva tackles her first college finals, she understands how animals can help during difficult times.<\/p>\n
“I have a ESA animal — emotional support animal — and he’s a cat,” Grijalva said. “I think honestly he’s like my main cope basically like from being away from my family because it’s like nice to have something to go home to something with actual emotions.”<\/p>\n
And the main attraction this year, the llamas. Something many students were sure not to miss.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s really nice, especially because a lot of people don’t get to experience these types of animals and just having like a wide variety especially from the farm animals to the reptiles I think it’s great and definitely is helping a lot of people,” Grijalva said. “It definitely made my day today.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paws on the Island offers students a much-needed stress relief during finals, with animals and activities to help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-75086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}