OK, longer version:
I was definitely steered toward pharmacy by my parents. They were of the mindset that anything was OK except medicine. The problem was, they had a kid (me) who would otherwise have decided to be a doctor at like, age 5. But it was such a foregone conclusion that being a doctor was bad that I never even questioned it. I knew all the bad stuff about it and nothing about how rewarding it is. Plus I had hated science in high school. But I read a lot about it on my own, and when I got to college, it just seemed so much more interesting than anything else. And liberal arts, which is where I started, seemed like an overwhelming babble of opinions, none of which could truly be proven right or wrong, and theories resting on so many simplifications and assumptions that they had no real predictive value whatsoever. I just wanted out of that.
A second factor was that I was having really severe health problems and was completely convinced at that time that I'd never have the stamina for medicine. So I wanted a career in which I could support myself reasonably well, that was in the sciences and was well-respected and not too strenuous. Voila, pharmacy. Plus, I really did like the chemistry part of it.
But it's definitely its own little culture, and I had no idea about that at all. And I am simply not that kind of person. So I tried to figure out a way to do something else with my BS degree. At that point, the all-PharmD thing started, and I jumped on board, thinking it was a way into something different. Then we had to do rotations the last year, and that was when I discovered what it is that physicians do. After that, the question was really whether or not medicine was something I simply had to do, or whether I could find a career within pharmacy that would be a decent substitute. And after trying all the major areas of practice, I still felt med school was the way to go. So here I am.
