Dear Infectious Disease Therapeutics,

You’re interesting. But also difficult, time-consuming, and demanding. 

I’m not sure it’s reasonable for you to make me memorize all these classes of antibiotics and their spectrum of activity against the oh so many microorganisms. I am but a mere mortal! 

But you’re also really cool.  A bacteria needs PABA to make folic acid? Let’s make a PABA-look-alike to confuse the bacteria and deprive itself of folate. (aka, Sulfonamides <3)

And etc. x 1000000 other drugs

Yes, you’re awesome. I just wish I had a superhuman brain to absorb your greatness.

You Should Not Go to Pharmacy School if…

1. You are not fascinated by how a human body works. This is the basis for healthcare. From physiology, to pathophysiology, to pharmacology… it’s about the human body! 
2. You hate chemistry. By the time I graduate, I will have taken at least 32 credits of chemistry courses/chemistry labs. Many drugs are chemical compounds, so learning how they work is a big part of the curriculum. There is no way around it. 
3. You are not willing to sacrifice. You’re putting in at least 6-8 years of hard work before you can actually start your career. Talk about delayed gratification! If you’re the kid who would take one marshmallow immediately instead of 2 marshmallows later, pharmacy might drive you crazy. I think the secret is accepting that the journey is the reward (which seems bizarre because it’s a hard journey). But there’s a sense of satisfaction and self-fulfillment that can only come from hard work and perseverance. 
4. You do not like people. Your patients are people. Your healthcare colleagues are people. 
5. You give up easily. Pharmacy school is all about resilience. Even if you’re studying for 10-12 hours a day for multiple days, you can still do very poorly on an exam. And you have to accept it, pick your ego back up, and just try to improve on the next one. Hard work does not always equate to success; and that’s okay! Next time! It’s one out of many, and you’ll win in the long run. 

Spring Break Napping

I sleep for 10 hours. Then I wake up, eat, lounge around. And then continue on with a 4 hour nap.

14 hours?! That’s more than all the sleep I got during my past exam week. Combined.

Recharging is the best. This entire semester, I feel like I am perpetually a device on 2% battery life, only managing to sleep and restore up to maybe 30% a night. Then I subsequently drain myself again from studying, which forces to take an accidental nap to recharge to 15%; but that leads me to feeling guilty about wasting precious studying time so I end up pulling a semi-allnighter… which brings me back to the 2% struggling dark-eye-circled panda of a student that I have become.

But now I am back at 100% :) Well-fed, well-rested, and happy.

Sorry for the slightly unexpected hiatus. I had to block myself from Tumblr (along with other social media) because I realized this spring semester was kicking my butt. I don’t think anyone ever conveyed just how hard the P2 spring semester was, or perhaps I was in denial. 

My life for the past few months has been a blur. A sleep-deprived blur. I vaguely remember chemical structures, treatment algorithms, antibiotic spectrums, and pharmacokinetic calculations… 

Right now I’m on spring break so I’ll be updating more. Gosh it feels good to be reunited with Tumblr.

Wrapping Up Fall Semester

Hi everyone. I know it’s been a long time, but I had banned myself from Tumblr during the semester (the ends I take to curb my inevitable procrastination).

How did P2 fall end for me? It could’ve gone a lot better in terms of grades, but I am thankful that I am done. 

Here’s a reflection of my classes:

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Hurricane Sandy

I didn’t have classes or exams this week because of Hurricane Sandy. And while that seems like an unexpected fall break, my heart breaks for all the families whose homes are completely destroyed, the people living in the freezing cold without electricity, and the ones wandering from shelter to shelter. 

Thankfully, my on-campus apartment was in good condition so I hosted a few friends who were evacuated during this week. 

This storm put everything in perspective for me. Yes, exams are stressful - and memorizing pathways and chemical structures can be overwhelming. But what is that in comparison to knowing you have to rebuild your home, not knowing if your family is okay because cell phones do not work, or not having access to clean water/food/electricity? 

God bless all the people who volunteered and worked during the storm, without missing a beat, and also to all the resilient people who will work to rebuild our communities. 

toxicityof-ourcity asks, Do you think the quality or reputation of the pharmacy school matters? For example, I’m thinking about St. John’s 6-year program, but I’ve heard that its only a decent school, same for LIU. Thanks and I love reading your blog :)

• Look for an accredited pharmacy school with good NAPLEX passing rates. That should be an indication of the quality of the education. But also talk to the students and professors during tours/info sessions and see how they like it. You can also ask for job outlook statistics and see how the graduates from the last class fared. 
• I think St. John’s and LIU are both good schools; I know a few graduates from the pharmacy programs there and they have done well and continue on with post-graduate training like residencies.
  
• I would try to go for more established pharmacy schools. I do not know much about the recent newly built pharmacy schools and their reputations.
  

Exams

I have four exams starting today until next Fri. 

The pros: I like studying with other people. We act out disease states and try to diagnose and prescribe appropriate medications for our friends. 

The classes correlate with each other. We’re learning about anticholinergics in pharmacology and medchem. We then delve into some anticholinergic properties of asthma/COPD drugs… and then we link it back to microbio with the immune system responses in these diseases.

The cons: I am only a simple human. How does one gain and retain four exams worth of information in the brain?!

Pros and Cons of Transcribing a Lecture

Pros

- you don’t have to relisten to the lecture later on before exam time

- it helps you pick up fine points you missed in class

Cons 

- you have to slow the recording down to .5x because your professor speaks way faster than you can humanly type

- you get bored of transcibing and go on Facebook, thus spending hours transcribing 5 minutes of a lecture

- you are essentially going to class twice