This semester is relentless

As promised, I'd like to talk about my school schedule a bit. In specific, I'm going to whine about how MUCH there is.

So, in the first week, the schedule seemed pretty manageable. Monday and Thursday are full days but Tuesday and Friday are half days with Wednesday being a variable schedule. (We have our Interprofessional Ethics course, which meets five times, in the afternoon starting next month, and our Experiential Programs class, which largely meets off-campus and on our own schedule, in the mornings.) And with work Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, I thought, this will be hard but not terrible. Well, there aren't any assignments in the first week.

In the second week, things started coming due and we had our first quiz. Still, the load was not terrible, and the Experiential class time was filled with our immunization training, which is very low-level stuff and review of the text we'd read over the summer. In the third week, we had no Skills class because of the Labor Day holiday. But in the fourth week, the tests started coming and Skills started having weekly assignments.

In the fifth week - last week - we were done with the immunization training and ready to start the actual Experiential experience. That was just an orientation lecture, which is no big deal, but from here on out we're expected to spend three hours in our assigned pharmacies each week. That's more to do. This week, we have two exams and a fairly major assignment due Friday. And another exam Monday. And the week after next, the Ethics class starts up. And my wife is due at the end of November. It feels like they're just adding layer after layer to my already over-full plate. I might explode.

Or, I might adjust, and be just fine. I'm consistently amazed at humanity's ability to learn to deal with the tasks placed in front of it. I was talking with a coworker at the casino who got a second job. We both agreed that the more time you commit to things like work and school - basically, the thinner you spread yourself - the more you're able to handle the increased work load. Someone who works 40 hours a week feels like they work a lot. But someone who works 60 hours a week often feels the same way, or even that they have more time available, because they learn to use that free time more efficiently. I don't spend five hours playing video games because I don't have five hours available in a chunk. And I don't think it's a special ability I have. People are always telling me that they don't know how I do it. Well, I don't either, but I do it, and not because I need less sleep than everybody else (that's far from the truth) or because my memory is so good that I never need to study (I definitely do, as witnessed by my first exam score). It's because humans are remarkably adaptable creatures.

So the biggest change in this year's curriculum is a switch in focus. In the first year it's all very fundamental stuff, much of it review or further explanation of required coursework we've seen before. In the second year, the Integrated Organ Systems (IOS) courses become therapeutics-focused. Therapeutics is the branch of pharmacy devoted to managing disease states with drug (and non-drug) therapy. It's not a regurgitation of facts or principles but an application of principles to a specific situation. You not only have to know what drug X does or the side effects of drug Y but which would be the best choice given a patient with condition Z and lab value N. And as you learn more and more organ systems, it gets more and more complicated. Right now all we know is neurotransmitters, the kidneys, and hypertension. By the end of the third year, we'll know the whole body, and the body is not as rigidly segmented as we like to think it is. All the systems interact. You don't have one condition in isolation in almost any patient. So how do you treat diabetes in a patient with impaired kidney function, high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, and crazy cholesterol levels? What if they also get a bacterial infection? I don't know that yet, but a pharmacist does.

Anyway, I feel like I'm learning at an incredible pace. Every week when I go to Kaiser I understand more about more drugs than I did the week before. It's really cool to be a part of that, and to recognize it, as it happens.

And what do you know, this was an incredibly on-topic entry. Did you like it? Don't be afraid to leave feedback, even scathing criticisms, and to ask for more of what you'd like to see.

Best. Cookies. Ever.

I paid $3.49 for this box of twelve cookies. I think, given that they are limited edition, I got a pretty good deal. Seriously, though, all joking aside, I love these things. I'll gladly pay more than a quarter per cookie. Never mind that a regular box of Oreos is like two bucks for three times that many. If you cover my Oreo in white fudge, I can't pay too much for it. And no, under no circumstances may you have one.

All that complaining about not having any homework must have worked. The day after I posted that entry they posted our first assignment. We go back to school tomorrow, and I'm really looking forward to it. Sort of. I mean, I'm saying farewell to sleep for the next two months, but I feel like I've started forgetting things from last semester. Also, I feel like the first semester was almost a different life. I've been getting into the swing of things at what is still a relatively new job (a job that I love, by the way) and enjoying some time with friends and family. It doesn't feel like I've been a student these past four weeks. People keep asking me how school is going, and I don't know what to say to that. I mean, it's going well, because I haven't been in it for a month, and because all my grades were good, but it's sort of like, "Oh yeah, I'm still in school."

The courses for this semester, in case any of you care, are Principles of Drug Action, Integrated Organ Systems 1 & 2, US Health Care Systems, and the two pass/fail classes that run the length of the program, Professional Skills Development and Experiential Practice. In April we have an interdisciplinary ethics course that will feature students from each of the schools at the medical campus working in small groups. We did an orientation activity with our groups in August, and that was sort of cool. We'll see what tune I'm singing when we add that course in the middle of the semester. I just realized that this semester, P1 Spring, is the lightest load in terms of credit hours in the entire program. So if this semester almost makes me lose my mind, any of the remaining semesters ought to finish me off.

If you actually like reading this blog (I'd be surprised, but who knows), my brother is doing a similar thing only he's doing a semester abroad in Montpellier, France. Also, he's a better writer than me with more interesting things to say. Here's a link.

Tonight I'm going to get a full night's sleep, wake up early and eat breakfast, and pack a delicious lunch. Last semester our days were short but they managed this by pretty much eliminating breaks from our day. This time we get a lunch break every day but it means that class runs longer. I don't know which way I'm going to like better. Probably the one that let me come home for an afternoon nap last semester, but you can't overestimate the value of a little break.

This coming weekend my wife is visiting her friend in Texas. I wish I could go with them. I don't like going to bed alone, and I never get enough sleep when I do. I like to think that I'll be able to focus and knuckle down and get ahead on some studying, but I think I'll probably just get nice and caught up on my Wii playing when all is said and done.

I think that's enough for today. Thanks for stopping by, and come back soon.

A one-eighth pharmacist

So, yesterday was my final final. At about 9:30 am on December 17, I completed the final piece of assigned coursework in my first semester of pharmacy school. And that felt really good. I made it through the semester, passing everything. In fact, I got no grade worse than a B. Given that I worked more than all but one of my peers, I'm pretty satisifed with that outcome. I'm still married, and my son still knows who I am. And now I have a month to just chillax.

So far, pharmacy school both is and is not like I'd expected it would be. For one, there's a lot less structured work. Between tests, most classes don't have anything due. I've written something like five papers, summing not more than twenty pages, and haven't had a single comment made about my ability to communicate. In part that's because I'm a better writer than most of my colleagues, but it's largely because there's no need to count off for little errors or poor word choices. Remember, I'm used to writing for English classes.

It's harder than anything I've ever done academically, but the material is no harder to understand than any of the math or science I've taken before. It's very clear and almost always concrete learning. What makes pharmacy school so hard is quantity. I'm learning more things faster than I ever have before. And it's sticking. A friend of mine is taking Vicodin to help him deal with some hernia pain. I know what that is, I know how often he's supposed to take it, and I know that he can't take Tylenol at the same time. Granted, a lot of people know that who haven't ever taken a pharmacy school class, but I didn't know that coming in and because we studied prescription narcotic analgesics this semseter I do now. I also know how to look up any drugs I didn't know about before, and how to gain useful information from the drug information sources I have available. It's cool to see how quickly I'm learning this stuff.

Over the holidays I'm sure I'll keep blogging. It probably won't be about school again until the next semester starts. I wanted to do my next on-site experiential module over the break, but this is not permitted. So much for getting a head start. I have some other ideas of ways to stay on top of the material, but I might just want to take the month off and be glad for it. I'll try to work some more and save some money so I don't end up in a big financial crisis like I did in October. I also wanted to share some of my feelings about my car accident a year after the fact, but I'll save those for my regular weekly post. That should still be out by Monday morning, if you're looking for it.

Thanks for stopping by, and come back soon.