Your Health Is Our Way: #Titanic

Hello Blogonites!

Sorry (once again) for the length of time since my last blog post. Although I feel that I have a reasonably good excuse, given the insanity that is known as the 2^nd year of pharmacy school. Regardless, let's dive right into what my life has been like these past few weeks.

Studying:

Most of us have probably observed that studying has the word DYING right there in it and that's aptly in there to alert you as to how you will feel when participating in that activity. Let's just say with the amount of stuDYING we've done this semester our DNA must be of feline origin, otherwise we wouldn't all be alive and well while preparing for the holidays right now. Sure this is pharmacy school and a certain amount of studying is to be expected, but in the last couple of months we have had roughly 1-2 exams every week. At that point life becomes a balancing act.. a balancing act that just happens to be done on a torsion balance that refuses to zero out.

We train our students for the future. That is, a future when sunspots or nuclear warfare renders us without electricity to power the scales everyone else has been using since the 1930's.

We train our students for the future. That is, a future when sunspots or nuclear warfare renders us without the electricity to power all of the other scales everyone else has been using since the 1930's.

So back to this studying thing. I don't want to sound too whiny. I mean I actually enjoy learning, if I didn't, then I think I'd be in the wrong place. The issue is that most people outside of school don't really understand the time commitment. Therefore, you have friends and family calling you up every day wanting to hang out or to have you fix their computers. Meanwhile the rest of your life refuses to be put on hold. Your refrigerator and cupboards never seem to want to refill themselves, your clothing won’t wash and fold itself and your job still expects you to keep showing up for all of your shifts. Before you even realize it, you've simply run out of time to study.

Welcome to 2nd year!

Not to belabor the point, but in case you haven't caught on yet let me reiterate that the 2^nd year of pharmacy school is stressful. Now you're probably wondering just how stressful it actually is. Well for every day that passes in the real world, roughly 30 days pass in the nebulous time-bending void that is known as Weaver-Densford Hall (WDH). To highlight this phenomenon, I decided to photograph myself at the beginning of the semester (in August) and again at the end of the semester (in December). Below you will see the harrowing results.

Taken August, 2014

Taken 4 months later: December, 2014

Given that I just had a birthday, and since I’ve spent the last 4 months ~~living~~ stuDYING in WDH, I now estimate my age to be somewhere around 70 years old. According to ACC/AHA guidelines, that means that I probably should have started taking a statin sometime around September. After next semester I will likely be well into my 80's, so I am hoping that I can live at least long enough to take the NAPLEX. At this pace that may be pushing it. They say that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, well I say that whatever doesn't kill you, you probably wished it had, if you are a 2^nd year pharmacy student.

Nothing like a tombstone picture to bring holiday cheer.

High and Low:

One thing I've been introduced to recently is a little game called "High and Low." While it may sound like a game that addicts play, it's actually a family game that can be done at the dinner table to delay the dining process, usually when everyone just wishes they could get started eating. How it works is that someone starts by describing their "high" and "low" for the year and then the process continues on to the next person until everyone discusses their highs and lows. Well, I'd like to describe my "high" and "low" for this semester. I actually have 2 highs and 2 lows, so here they are:

The Highs:

High #1: – Cardiovascular therapy course. This is the first course where we actually had extensive patient cases to go over and we were able to use our "clinical judgment" to discover the appropriate agents to administer to someone. While I enjoyed the course, it's also frustrating as we are typically accustomed to learning absolutes (when this occurs, do this) and unfortunately treating a patient it isn't always a cut and dry situation. Either way, I really learned a lot in this course and I feel that it’s directly applicable to my future as a pharmacist.

High #2: My fellow PD2's. Not to get too mushy here (because I'm a man after all and I have appearances to uphold) but I'd like to say that it was a pleasure to suffer through the semester with all of you crazy bastages. It’s been said that you never truly know someone until you see them under stress. Well after a couple of weeks into the semester (about the time when personal hygiene and adequate amounts of sleep were thrown to the curb) I feel that I got a greater understanding of who these fine folks are and who I was on this capsizing ship with. Props to all of you for making it through with a couple of shreds of sanity left! #TheTitanicThatWon'tSink

The Lows:

Low #1: Punching capsules. This was my least favorite lab, in fact I think it is the least enjoyable thing I’ve ever had the displeasure of doing. Imagine trying to play the violin in the picture below except you have to do it with your feet instead of your hands and while doing back-flips over hot coals. That scenario doesn't even begin to capture the horror that is punching capsules. All I can say is that if I have to punch capsules ever again, the capsule probably won't be the only thing getting punched.

Pictured: A violin 1 million times the size of capsules you will need to fill to an exact weight.

Low #2: A 4 hour PK final. OK so finals are not something meant to be enjoyed. Especially cumulative finals. Professors are just testing to see how much of the information they crammed into your skull was actually retained. While they hope it's every slide they’ve ever shown you, in reality you were busy learning other important stuff during that time as well. For the earlier PK exams I had plenty of time to go back and check my answers when I was done. So for the final I decided to pace myself similarly expecting roughly equivalent results. Unfortunately, when I heard, "OK there are 30 minutes left" it seemed like only an hour had passed. Once my spasming neck muscles decided to cooperate, I looked up and caught the horrified gaze of several other students. All we could do was laugh, a loud guttural laugh, right there during the final. Time flies when you're having fun, but apparently it teleports you into the future when you are taking a PK final. Before all of the 3rd years chime in, they did reportedly have a 6 hour final, but theirs was 3 pages shorter.. put that in your pipe!

With 30 minutes left, I was definitely in the red.

So that's it for now folks, I'm off to try and get caught up on all the stuff I've been putting off since I started the semester (like showering and sleeping). I hope everyone has a great break. Enjoy the time with your friends and family over the coming holidays. Catch you all on the flip side!

-DK

As usual: Kitten pics!