So, what do you do?

Somewhere along the line, this blog became more or less a weekly column. I kind of like having that format attached to it. Let's make it official. Sunday night is now my official weekly post night. I might still throw in a bonus once in a while, but I'll make a commitment to you, my faithful reader: If you come by Monday morning, I'll have something new for you.

From time to time I have special moments with my son that catch me totally by surprise. It's usually witnessing a developmental milestone, like the first time he called me "Daddy." I'm still not convinced he really knows what that means, since he walks around the house saying "daddy, daddy!" to nobody in particular, but that was one of those times when I felt so happy to be a dad, and so totally in love with my little boy. A couple of months ago, when he was sick and we were in the waiting room at the doctor's office, we read a book together and he pointed out all the round objects in the pictures ("Ball! Ball!"). That was another one. This afternoon as I was leaving for work, I crouched down and spread my arms for a hug. I do this a lot. I say, "Hug?" and Xander looks at me and then goes wandering off after a ball or some crumbs on the kitchen floor. But not today. Today he walked right into my open arms and I gave him a big hug. Then when I let him go, he said, "Bye!" I probably could have cried, I was so happy.

I need these moments in my life to remind me of the reason I'm doing all the crazy work and school stuff I'm doing. It's not about me any more. I'm working 30+ hours while a full-time, professional student so that some day I won't have to be this busy. I'm doing all this so my son can be raised by his parents, not a nanny or a daycare. If it means I have to go days at a time without seeing them, it will all some day be worth it. Some people have a clear calling for their lives. They want to be pharmacists (or engineers, or astronauts, or presidents) from their early childhoods and never imagine doing something else. These are the people that would do their job even if it didn't pay anything. I admire people like that, but that will never be me. I'm not going to pharmacy school because it fulfills me. I think I'll contribute to society when I'm a pharmacist, and the field interests me, and I feel good about both of those things. I don't expect to have any difficulty doing it for the rest of my life. But if I won the PowerBall tomorrow, I probably wouldn't go on to be a career pharmacist. I'd finish school; I've invested too much time to back out now. I might even practice for a while, to make myself feel like I'd accomplished something. I just don't feel like my career as a pharmacist, or as anything else, will ever define me. Whatever I end up "doing with my life" will be secondary. To me, what I do with my life will be raising my family. That's my number one priority. Pharmacy is a means to that end. It's the best means I can find, because I don't know anybody who pays you to be a dad.

Since I'm hopelessly off on a tangent anyway, I might as well keep going. See, I think our society views work too seriously. One of the first questions you ask somebody when you meet them is, "So, what do you do?" And the answer? I'm an accountant. I work for IBM. I own my own business. I'm a poker dealer.

I don't blame people for asking, or for answering this way, because I do it, too. It's a social value. What you do to earn your living is one of the major characteristics of a person. But maybe it shouldn't be. What do I do? I chase my boy around the house. I play Cribbage and Scrabble with my wife. I love Wii Fit. I write a crappy little blog that so far has made ten dollars from advertisements but that fulfills me ten times more than the job that puts food on my table and a roof over my head. I tip well, I try not to speak negatively about other people, and I go to church every Sunday (even when it means I only get four hours of sleep).

I don't know if I'm trying to say we should change the way we make small talk. We probably shouldn't. Our society isn't based on forming substantial relationships with everyone you meet. What I'm trying to say is that we should stop defining ourselves, and our close friends and family, by how they earn a living. A job is a job. If you're one of the lucky ones who gets paid to do the thing they love the most, good for you. You're still allowed to answer that question with your job title. For the vast majority of us, I think we should change the way we think. My wife hasn't worked since May. When people ask me what she does, I proudly tell them that she's a stay-at-home mom. And I'm not embarassed to say that. I'm jealous of her.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you next week.

Almost flat-lined for a second, didn't I?

Hello, faithful reader. We almost lost this blog... two weeks between posts? That's unacceptable. As it turns out, pharmacy school is time-consuming. To this point I haven't run into anything that's hard, but I've had to devote significant amounts of time to study and assignments. I'm still working 30 hours a week (although that goes down to 23 this week, and then we'll see), and I like to spend time with my wife and son, too. There are times when my wife works, and I have to spend time with Xander (I'm not complaining about that "obligation!"), and it's pretty hard to say no to some family time if we're all home. I end up with very little time to do the studying. You can see how I have even less time for the blogging. So now I am blogging from Science Foundations class.

This course covers all of general chemistry in like three weeks. It's pretty intense. I see why they make you take all those prerequisites, because if you were seeing this for the first time you would be in way over your head.

I didn't get the class president position. That may turn out to be a good thing (see above paragraphs about not enough time). I did, however, get the student ethics committee position. I told almost nobody that I was applying for this because it all happened at the same time as the student council madness, but this is actually the position I wanted more. The ethics committee is a student and faculty body that meets to decide issues of ethics violations within the school of pharmacy. Most of these end up being academic issues, such as cheating on a test. The ethics committee reviews all the facts of the case and then makes a recommendation to the Dean about what sort of disciplinary action should be taken. For those of you who didn't know me then, I did a similar thing in my last year of undergrad. It was called the judicial board (J-board) at CCU, and most of those cases were student life violations, but it was the same principle (and we dealt with a really hairy academic dishonesty issue that probably shouldn't have come to us at that point). I love doing this. I think one of the greatest ways to serve a student community is in pursuing justice and figuring out how best to apply the rules to a variety of situations. I guess I could have been a lawyer, but for the fact that lawyers represent their clients, not the truth.

We sold our house. That was exciting. We close next week, but the buyer has agreed to rent the house to us for an extra month. His mortgage is better than ours, so we save some money in this deal, and have until the end of October to get out. Now we're doing house-hunting, which takes up so much of my time. It's exhausting. Hopefully we'll find the perfect house today.

Football started yesterday. That was great. It was a good game, too. The reigning Super Bowl champions always get the first game of the year, and the NFL used to schedule them an easy opponent to sort of guarantee a win. The last time the Patriots won the Super Bowl, they got to play the Raiders in the kickoff game. That game was over almost immediately. Now they give them a really good non-divisional opponent. It makes for much better football. Even though it was a 13-10 overtime game, the game was fun to watch. There were key turnovers, blocked field goals, drives that picked up steam only to abruptly end in a defensive stand. I loved it, and I'm glad football is back. Especially because Sunday night sees the regular-season debut of Mr. Jay Cutler in a Chicago Bears uniform. He looked like his usual self in the exhibition game in Denver, and I look for that to continue (although the Green Bay defense should be a little better) this week. I was especially encouraged by the way he handled himself under the surprisingly strong pass rush of the Broncos. I think all those guys just wanted to knock him out for skipping town in the offseason, but he remained composed under the pressure. That's a good sign. He also hit a bunch of different receivers, often in pretty tight coverage, and managed the game well. Plus, Matt Forte is a stud in that backfield. I'm excited.

Well, I'm starting to get rambly right now. I think I'll leave you here and save some of my other thoughts for another post. Hopefully it won't be two weeks from now. Thanks for reading, and come back soon.

It begins!

For the first time since I started this pharmacy school blog, I actually have some pharmacy school to blog about! Today was orientation. Technically it wasn't class, but it was a lot closer than I have been in the past year. I took Biochemistry last fall, and that's the only course I've taken in the past academic year. Getting back into school might be a little rough on me. Luckily, next week's classes are pretty soft material. It's things like how to use the library, the Kiersey personality test, and basic medical terminology. That ought to get me up to speed pretty well.

It was nice to put a bunch of faces to some names. I'd communicated with a number of my classmates through facebook and a Google group that I set up for our class, but before today I had only met five of them, and four of those interviewed with me. Today was the first time all 161 of us P1s-to-be were on campus at the same time. I think officially we're not P1s until the white coat ceremony next Monday, but I am a pharmacy student at the UC-Denver Anschutz Medical Campus (see picture for evidence).

Xander is walking all over the place now, and starting to talk. We've been teaching him baby sign language, and he's picked up a few signs, but last night he said his first meaningful, communicative word - "up." He's said some other things, like "cat," "da" (that either means "Dad" or "that" - I'm not sure yet), and something close to "dog," but "up" is definitely the best communication he's exhibited so far. He really means that he wants up when he says it, which is great. He's also a lot more mobile than ever. The other day he was chasing the cat around the house with a fly swatter and giggling. The cat hates him, I think, but he loves to go after it.

Someone pointed out after my last point that spiders are meat. I knew this, actually. My complaint was that he won't eat the clean, safe, cooked meat that we give him, although this isn't as true any more. I guess the live spider experience broadened his horizons. He's now interested in some meats, particularly at breakfast. We took him to Denny's last week and he dug in to some bacon like it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. I have to admit bacon is pretty good.

What encouraged me about the spider comment on my last post was that I actually have at least one reader! So, faithful reader, thank you. I hope you keep coming back.