Life Off-Label

Pharmacy school is stressful. (In other news… the sky is blue.) We have to learn a lot of material, and we have a lot of exams to test that. After you consider involvement in organizations, making sure we get in all of our IPPE hours, and other commitments we might have in our personal lives, we spend much of our time constantly going from one thing to the next.

I realized a couple weekends ago though just how beautiful it can be to have a little mini vacation and do absolutely nothing. We just had a pretty intense week of exams, but there wasn’t anything pressing the next week. I slept in until noon both days for the first time in a while, and the most productive thing I did was finish season one of “True Blood”. It was a nice little vacation for my brain, and I’m glad I took it, because after that I was ready to get back into the swing of things.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I get most of that week off. It’ll be another nice time for a little breather, but then we have finals right after that. From what I hear, it’s a time where sleeping is but a memory and we will consume enough caffeinated drinks to bring Texas out of the drought. Now is a good time to invest in some Red Bull stock.

When we can’t take a break, we all do different things to deal with the stress. I sometimes take a quick break at the gym, bake a comfort food, go out for a drink or two with some friends, or write a few words on this thing. Lately, I’ve taken to listening to Christmas music while studying. I know most of you will judge me for that, since society seems to think the happiness of Christmas needs to be restricted to a little “season”. In my defense, it puts a lot of joy into a moment where I’d otherwise feel like I want to rip my hair out, and it reminds me of the nice month-long break I can look forward to after I’ve taken care of things. I’m definitely to the point now where I’ve started counting down days until that break.

40 more days!