Life Off-Label

When I was in undergrad, I couldn’t wait to get done with school and just work full time. After all… once you clock out, you’re done. No exams to study for, or homework to remember to do, or essays to put off until the last minute. Then when I was working full-time, especially once I found out I was accepted to pharmacy school, I couldn’t wait to be a student again. No more lazy coworkers that aren’t held accountable for it. Gone are the stressful moments of being in the middle of a tug-of-war with different people or tasks. I can study on my own schedule and set the rules on when I want to take a break.

Of course… then exams came around, and I wanted to just work again. At least when I was working I had a nice sleep schedule. I easily spend more than 40 hours a week between going to class, site visits, and studying. At work, you’re only evaluated on your performance once a year, and it’s pretty easy to pass that. It was also nice having an income instead of piling student loan debt.

Then I did my first day-long site visit (aka interning at a pharmacy for free). Until now, I had done them in spurts of a few hours at a time. I also made the mistake of doing this site visit on the first (open) day of the year. Oh boy. Since I didn’t ever deal with insurance at the hospital, the first day of the year didn’t have much of an impact on my workflow. I expected to be busy with people who didn’t get things taken care of over the holidays, but I was in for a rude awakening. Scripts were piling up and the phone would not. Stop. Ringing. After 9 hours of it, I was done. Take me back to the classroom please!

Then again, I never saw the retail part of the “working” grass as very green to begin with.