Follow up on career change post from last month

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I decided to shadow a pharmacist friend who is working for a retail pharmacy before persuing a pharmd degree. Only took me 4 hours to realize being a pharmacist is not that great. Everybody seems so busy all time, nobody get to sit down to relax for a few minutes. My friend was standing and starring at his computer all day. He took only one break. Phone was ringing constantly. How can a person standing 8 hours a day like that? The money is good, he told me he makes 120k but has 140k in student loan. I only make 50k and zero debt plus I can come anytime I want and leave anytime I want. At my job, I can take 2 hours lunch and nobody cares. Plus I can work from home 2-3 days a month. I admit that most of us in the office don't put in 40 hrs a week. The downside of my office job is it is not stable. Anybody can get layoff at anytime.

In conclusion, I am just going to put this dream on hold for now.

Here is my original post

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=905103

Thanks for the update. It's refreshing to hear that someone is sticking with their job.

Not to jump on the doom and gloom bandwagon but...I would say at least 1/3 of my class (maybe more) do not have a job. Another 1/3 are doing residencies so they are sort of deferring their entry into the workforce by one year. So just think how bad it might be by the time you would be ready to graduate. I think you are making the right choice.

Originally Posted by dannyginaterrel

I decided to shadow a pharmacist friend who is working for a retail pharmacy before persuing a pharmd degree. Only took me 4 hours to realize being a pharmacist is not that great. Everybody seems so busy all time, nobody get to sit down to relax for a few minutes. My friend was standing and starring at his computer all day. He took only one break. Phone was ringing constantly. How can a person standing 8 hours a day like that? The money is good, he told me he makes 120k but has 140k in student loan. I only make 50k and zero debt plus I can come anytime I want and leave anytime I want. At my job, I can take 2 hours lunch and nobody cares. Plus I can work from home 2-3 days a month. I admit that most of us in the office don't put in 40 hrs a week. The downside of my office job is it is not stable. Anybody can get layoff at anytime.

In conclusion, I am just going to put this dream on hold for now.

Here is my original post

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=905103

Probably you made the right choice but you based your decision on a retail experience.
Most of the pharmacists hate retail anyway.I wish you would have seen other aspects of the profession too like inpatient /clinical pharmacy, independent pharmacy,mail order pharmacy etc

At the end ,probably( not sure ) you made the right choice because by the time you graduate we dont know what the the employment situation of the profession will be and we dont know what the retail world will be like