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.