Anyone else feel miserable in pharmacy school?

Started by mustang sally
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mustang sally

mustang sally

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15+ Year Member
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Okay, I know we've had these threads before but just thought I'ld start a new one to vent in. 🙂

I have been truckin' along pretty well through pharmacy school, but I'm absolutely miserable this semester. I think it's 50% workload/stress issues and 50% just having something knock me down almost every day where I end up feeling like I'm never going to be smart enough to be a pharmacist and/or I will end up killing someone.

So how is everyone else's school going...good, bad or otherwise.
 
Well, the stress sucks but the material I am learning is awesome. I won't comment on certain things just because I am not exactly anonymous on this forum but, overall, I think things are OK. I am not "miserable" but the stress and lack of time for myself does make it hard to manage sometimes.
 
I am miserable right now. I have never worked so hard to do so poorly in my life. I am truly afraid that I am gonna flunk out (well, have to repeat coursework). Last year the stress was so bad I would wake up at night with terrible mid abdominal pains - sometimes I would vomit from the pain. Thankfully that is a thing of the past, but I am afraid that is only because my body has adjusted to the new stress level. I have talked to a few classmates about it, but to be honest they mostly just piss me off whenever we talk about grades. They complain about getting B's or C's and meanwhile I am struggling just not to fail. Some days I hate them.

On the other hand, spring break is almost here and I am looking forward to my trip abroad. And I do enjoy pharmacy school sometimes - it ain't all bad. And I don't really hate my classmates - many of them I consider close friends and I get along with everyone. It's kinda like with family - you're allowed to hate them sometimes, right?

I am not going to enjoy repeating a year though - and at this point it is easier to just resign myself to it than it is to try my hardest to prevent it and fail. What would I do then? I don't know. Not sure I would be up to repeating coursework - if I didn't succeed the first time, why would the second time be any different? I just don't know right now. I really hope I am able to pull up my grades, but to be honest I don't want to even get my hopes up about it.

Awesome thread! Typing all that out was surprisingly therapeutic. 👍
 
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What motivates you owlegrad? Maybe finding what motivates you will help you along? I wanted, more than anything, to practice on my own and get paid for it!
 
Keep your chin(s) up. It goes by quickly and soon is a distant, unpleasant memory. I can say without a doubt my years in pharmacy school were the worst of my life and I've had cancer since then so that's saying a lot :laugh: It was 90% personal 10% school, but the personal crap made it really hard to focus on school.

If I can make it, you can make it 🙂 Keep truckin'.
 
Owlegrad, hang in there buddy. You're venting in the right place. Keeping your head above water is not always an easy task. Don't let gunners in your class get you down. If you need someone to commiserate or just need to blow off steam or whatever, send a PM my way. You'll be alright!
 
owlegrad said:
Thanks guys! But lets not focus on me here, I am sure plenty of other people have something to vent about...
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Well, misery does love company. 🙁 I hope your classes work out for you. I started pharmacy school off rough (personal adjustments and things like that) and looks like my classes are going to end rough, too. Still had lots of fun in the middle and I'm trying to stay grateful every day for what I do have, even though it has been sucking lately.

On a positive note... only one more week til spring break and then only eight more weeks after that until rotations start for me!
 
my "misery" almost exclusively stems from finances... ie: the $14K I took out of unsubsidized loans, the interest that is accumulating as we speak, and trying to be as thrifty as possible (especially in the first two years). Fortunately I have a job that nearly covers all my living expenses each month, so hopefully I will only have to take out 30K more in unsubsidized loans for tuition in the future, at least until rotations start at the end of third year. Hoping to get out with < 90K in debt, but even that is a lot. This combined with all the doom and gloom on here really freaks me out sometimes...

School is always a concern, but my rigorous undergrad prepared me very well for pharmacy school and the only difference so far has been the ratio between busy work and studying (which has increased)... overall the amount of time I spend on school work has been almost the same (maybe decreased slightly). I know that will change second year but I think I will feel more in my element since I'm used to studying a lot for exams.
 
I'm there with you owl, just struggling to keep my head above water. Started experiencing insomnia end of last semester and the doc says it's anxiety related, surprise surprise. Working full time while going to school has been an added burden but you do what you have to do.

tungsten87 said:
This combined with all the doom and gloom on here really freaks me out sometimes...
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Ignore the doom and gloom of the future and focus on the present. Tomorrow's problems may or may not come, but if they do they will come in their own time, don't let them distract you from today.
 
I'm somewhat miserable. Getting poor grades never bothered me (I'm getting all A's and B's at the moment which is somewhat surprising for me), but what is bothering me is the lack of experience I have still.

I've applied to so many places looking for a simple tech job and I got nothing. I've called around...nothing. Now it's intern season and so far nothing is happening. The thing that makes me the most mad? They send out emails for internships. I respond to them. The only people that get interviews are the people in the stupid pharmacy fraternities, not even because they know a pharmacist at the place, but because the pharmacists at the place were part of those fraternities. I have loads of work experience compared to some of these people and I'm getting the shaft because I didn't feel like joining a fraternity.

I guess grades bother me, but only in that they are ALWAYS the only topic of discussion among my classmates (mostly the younger ones). Heaven forbid you get an A-. After an exam they have to meticulously talk about what they got for every question as if it matters. Then they all get ulcers worrying. The more I think about it...the funnier it is. Thank goodness for ipods and noise-canceling headphones.
 
I have had many times in pharm school where I felt miserable: debt piling on, limited finances, busy schedule, lack of time to spend with family/friends, academia bureaucracy, and just stressed about job market after graduation.
 
SovietPistol said:
I'm somewhat miserable. Getting poor grades never bothered me (I'm getting all A's and B's at the moment which is somewhat surprising for me), but what is bothering me is the lack of experience I have still.
.
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I am very happy with my grades and research etc. School so far is great. I truely enjoy everything that I am learning. The only thing that I am not happy about is NOT being able to land a job that I love.

Oh and the doom and gloom...everyone is telling me it's impossible to land a job..that doesn't make me feel any better about the situation.
 
One thing after another. Saw that written on a piece of cardboard that some guy used to patch up his broken rear window on a pick-up truck a few months ago. If it's not having your side-view mirror knocked off in the middle of the night, a $500 gas bill, a homeless guy living the basement of your apartment complex siphoning your electricity (wracking the bill up to $300) and then threatening to kill you and everyone in your building after he gets "evicted", a pharmacy school test that you thought you studied hard for but nearly bombed, constant criticism, your roommate flushing a candle down the toilet and clogging it (I was physically and mentally speechless...I drew a mental blank when I heard the news), neighbors with dogs that run 100 laps around their apartment in the middle of the night, then it's something else.

I just try to keep things in perspective in that your professors used to be sitting where you're sitting in some capacity and that they want you to succeed, and at the end of the day you'll end up knowing more than before you began
 
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chubsley2000 said:
One thing after another. Saw that written on a piece of cardboard that some guy used to patch up his broken rear window on a pick-up truck a few months ago. If it's not having your side-view mirror knocked off in the middle of the night, a $500 gas bill, a homeless guy living the basement of your apartment complex siphoning your electricity (wracking the bill up to $300) and then threatening to kill you and everyone in your building after he gets "evicted", a pharmacy school test that you thought you studied hard for but nearly bombed, constant criticism, your roommate flushing a candle down the toilet and clogging it (I was physically and mentally speechless...I drew a mental blank when I heard the news), neighbors with dogs that run 100 laps around their apartment in the middle of the night, then it's something else.

I just try to keep things in perspective in that your professors used to be sitting where you're sitting in some capacity and that they want you to succeed, and at the end of the day you'll end up knowing more than before you began
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Bringing levity to the thread. It's my experience that everyone hates life this time of year since winter/work/school have been dragging on forever without a break. Being in a demanding academic environment just makes things worse.

-A homeless guy lived in the crawlspace of my friends' house. She found out when the cops arrested him at 3 in the morning following him buying crack from an undercover deputy. She was living in the house by herself at the time, as her roommates were student teaching and studying abroad. He'd been living there for a month.

-We had a black light party at my apartment last year. Covered the walls with trashbags, had many packs of highlighters and glow in the dark body paint. One of my roommates was so inebriated that he ate a candle. Ate. A candle. He's going to a top-20 law school next year.
 
mustang sally said:
Okay, I know we've had these threads before but just thought I'ld start a new one to vent in. 🙂

I have been truckin' along pretty well through pharmacy school, but I'm absolutely miserable this semester. I think it's 50% workload/stress issues and 50% just having something knock me down almost every day where I end up feeling like I'm never going to be smart enough to be a pharmacist and/or I will end up killing someone.

So how is everyone else's school going...good, bad or otherwise.
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For me, pharmacy school is well.......meh.

It's not bad, I've been through worse but it isn't exactly thrilling. But w/ a graduation date in 2013, being 33 years old at graduation, currently one of the only women in my class who is 30 and single (and w/ no children, I might add), with a debt of about $200,000+ in loans accrued in my journey through "higher" education that started in 1998, pharmacy school is just "meh". My classmates are even more "meh" (maybe b/c I am about 5-7 years older than most of them). The curriculum is whack, but I am willing to do what I have to do to get that pretty paper that says "you are a pharmacist".

You know that old saying? "What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger". I think that's how I feel about pharmacy school.
 
chaitea said:
for me, pharmacy school is well.......meh.

It's not bad, i've been through worse but it isn't exactly thrilling. The curriculum is whack, but i am willing to do what i have to do to get that pretty paper that says "you are a pharmacist".
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qfe

It could be worse, I'm employed, relatively healthy, passing everything, and unencumbered. (And I've acquired fourscore and nineteen difficulties, but a wench cannot be counted among them) I'm thankful for what's going right.

But I swear to god if I have to write another 'reflection' paper about my 'feelings' I'm gonna stab a bitch.
 
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nrsair said:
-A homeless guy lived in the crawlspace of my friends' house. She found out when the cops arrested him at 3 in the morning following him buying crack from an undercover deputy. She was living in the house by herself at the time, as her roommates were student teaching and studying abroad. He'd been living there for a month.
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Yeah it's a sad situation. I don't care who lives in the basement of my apartment complex but I'm scrounging to pay the bills as-is. It also doesn't help that he came by later and threw a brick through my roommate's window.

nrsair said:
-We had a black light party at my apartment last year. Covered the walls with trashbags, had many packs of highlighters and glow in the dark body paint. One of my roommates was so inebriated that he ate a candle. Ate. A candle. He's going to a top-20 law school next year.
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Hahaha, sorry, I had to laugh
 
I've been feeling miserable as well. I won't go into any details because no one wants to know.

But when I see my test and know that I didn't do as well as I had hoped and find out that the class average was an A or a B, it really gets me down.

I couldn't stop thinking about how hard things are and how I feel like giving up. I got a to-go box from a chinese place for dinner tonight, and my fortune cookie said "Never quit!" and it felt like that was meant for me, and I also thought "how appropriate."
 
I think the crappiest part is how tired I feel all the time. When I work out, I think of all the other **** I should be doing- like studying or doing laundry. By the time I get around to doing the laundry/chores, it's late and I don't get a lot of sleep. When that happens I just drag all day the next day relying on stimulants to keep me moving. On weekends when I work 10 hour shifts, by the time I get to my mom's, I don't even want to study. I just want to veg on the couch but feel guilty about it. It's terrible. When summer rolls around, I am not even going to get that much of a break because I will have four weeks of IPPE in Flagstaff (smaller city up north) where I will be going 40 hours a week. Then there's the research I am doing... Just thinking about all of this makes me tired.
 
gtpederson said:
qfe

It could be worse, I'm employed, relatively healthy, passing everything, and unencumbered. (And I've acquired fourscore and nineteen difficulties, but a wench cannot be counted among them) I'm thankful for what's going right.

But I swear to god if I have to write another 'reflection' paper about my 'feelings' I'm gonna stab a bitch.
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I hear ya gtpederson......

I once knew a girl who went through a grueling BS/MD program AND on top of that....she was homeless🙁. She didn't finish the program, but when I heard about her plight, I just counted my blessings. When I last heard of her, she married and was living a better life in northern Europe.......

One guy who was 2 months from graduating with his Pharm.D. from my school, died from health problems.😱

While pharmacy school maybe a pain in the arse, it could be so much worse.
 
ChaiTea said:
I hear ya gtpederson......

I once knew a girl who went through a grueling BS/MD program AND on top of that....she was homeless🙁. She didn't finish the program, but when I heard about her plight, I just counted my blessings. When I last heard of her, she married and was living a better life in northern Europe.......

One guy who was 2 months from graduating with his Pharm.D. from my school, died from health problems.😱

While pharmacy school maybe a pain in the arse, it could be so much worse.
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Chaitea, with a join date 2005, you average about 4.2 posts a year. I just found that interesting.

Back to the topic at hand, I am 70 days away from graduation. I am not having too much fun. I love learning but I hate school.
 
TemSirolimus said:
Chaitea, with a join date 2005, you average about 4.2 posts a year. I just found that interesting.

Back to the topic at hand, I am 70 days away from graduation. I am not having too much fun. I love learning but I hate school.
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LOL......

What can I say? Between graduating from undergrad till acceptance into pharmacy school (2004-2009), I just didn't have much time to post. Oh well. It feels good to be back on SDN (sometimes 🙄)
 
Oh man... this thread has me all sorts of antsy. Mean I'd be insulted if pharm school was easy, but it sounds like it will be possibly the hardest obstacle I'll have to overcome in my life.

Just one day at a time though, and keep your head up? Mean I like to think I'll always invest enough time to do well, but honestly that's not a guarantee by any means.

I think what we need is a big group hug. We'll all make it guys... we're driven to succeed and that's half the battle!!!
 
Yeah and my college life here has been very breezy. Not what I would expect to prepare me for pharmacy school.

I think I'm going to get a masters in Bio or MHA or something first to get me into the swing of graduate work first...
 
What gets me about pharmacy school is the lack of time. I'm taking a lot more units than I ever did in undergrad, and there's always some sort of test or exam or three coming up. This quarter, I have a lot less busy work, but it's more difficult material that there just doesn't seem to be enough space for in my brain/time to learn. And I'm pretty good at memorizing/applying info. Then there's working at my internship at least 8 hours a week (usually more like 12) and then all the extracurriculars, which are both nice to feel like you're doing something but also seem like a good idea for networking and experience. I don't do too many, but it still feels like any involvement in the ECs takes so much time.

The stress is definitely getting to me. And I did 6 years of a grad program before. Yes, the uncertainty of research is annoying, and my generals and writing my thesis were absolutely crazy and stress-inducing. But there were breaks where things weren't quite so hard and it was more like just a job. This is not the case so much with pharm school, even with summers off, and breaks go by so quickly.

I try and keep in mind that my classmates are in this with me, and I learn as much as I can, while trying to keep my grades up to somewhere close to what I want them to be. Granted, I'm slacking with other things. My house looks like a paper factory exploded over it, and I'd clean it up, but then I think more would just magically appears. 😛

My advice, for what it's worth: learn as much as you can (it'll help in the future), slack off with what you can to keep yourself sane, get help if your stress is preventing you from functioning/sleeping/causing you physical pain, and try and do things to keep yourself healthy. I finally got myself back to the gym this quarter, and while I still don't go enough, it's doing a lot to help my mood.
 
If you think first year is bad, wait till the second year - it's a mind.... We already have several relationships broken, people are going through all sorts of medical problems related to poorly taking care of self, I was hospitalized last quarter personally after 3 weeks straight of midterms for sleep deprivation. I can see my classmates are broken down spiritually and burnt out.

Just don't sign up for any EC and limit your amount of volunteering, both are incredible but if you feel like you are in a survival mode - (which is what second year paired with being in charge of ApHA project and heaviliy involved in community service feels like to me), you gotta think about yourself first.
 
rxlea said:
I think the crappiest part is how tired I feel all the time. When I work out, I think of all the other **** I should be doing- like studying or doing laundry. By the time I get around to doing the laundry/chores, it's late and I don't get a lot of sleep. When that happens I just drag all day the next day relying on stimulants to keep me moving. On weekends when I work 10 hour shifts, by the time I get to my mom's, I don't even want to study. I just want to veg on the couch but feel guilty about it. It's terrible. When summer rolls around, I am not even going to get that much of a break because I will have four weeks of IPPE in Flagstaff (smaller city up north) where I will be going 40 hours a week. Then there's the research I am doing... Just thinking about all of this makes me tired.
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http://imgur.com/gallery/5axrm
 
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nrsair said:
-We had a black light party at my apartment last year. Covered the walls with trashbags, had many packs of highlighters and glow in the dark body paint. One of my roommates was so inebriated that he ate a candle. Ate. A candle. He's going to a top-20 law school next year.
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:laugh:

Other than that story... what a depressing thread. It's sort of what I expected to hear, but still. Keep your heads up guys... and I'll be suffering right along with you next year🙁
 
R2pharmD2 said:
:laugh:

Other than that story... what a depressing thread. It's sort of what I expected to hear, but still. Keep your heads up guys... and I'll be suffering right along with you next year🙁
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Same here. Baby steps though... we'll make it. 👍 We have to...
 
I could care less about the difficulty of school - it sucks- I pass- whatever. The thing that sucks is that they are no freaking jobs. Graduating with debt that you can't pay off in a dead end field- now thats depressing.
 
Pharmacy School sucks.
Paying back loans sucks.
Most likely your rotations will suck.
If you work at CVS or Walgreens, that will majorly suck.
If you work at CVS or Walgreens most likely your co-workers will suck.
If you work at CVS or Walgreens most likely the customers will suck.
The job market for pharmacy sucks.
Any other questions?
 
R2pharmD2 said:
The whole job market discussion. It's been done. Over. And over. And over again. There are plenty of other threads for that.
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Oh... of course...my bad- I must not have read what the thread limitations were in relation to the misery of school.
 
diplomat said:
Pharmacy School sucks.
Paying back loans sucks.
Most likely your rotations will suck.
If you work at CVS or Walgreens, that will majorly suck.
If you work at CVS or Walgreens most likely your co-workers will suck.
If you work at CVS or Walgreens most likely the customers will suck.
The job market for pharmacy sucks.
Any other questions?
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I think you've pretty much got it covered in the department of pharmacy complaints.
 
I thought pharmacy school was the single most boring thing to happen to me, but I got through it (having great friends in my class helped). And pharmacy school opened all the doors I wanted it to open for me, so I am glad I did it. And trust me, five years out of school you start remembering only good things. And ten years out of school you think that was the best time of your life. :laugh:
 
Is pharmacy school that hard? people have a hard time making C's? my friend boston said everything is just powerpoints man... he was making above a 3.5 too. I remembered Sparda saying that pharmacy school was hard, yet he is making it. I just think that humans in general are resistant to change. Once you got it down, it should be like a procedure.
 
owlegrad said:
I am miserable right now. I have never worked so hard to do so poorly in my life. I am truly afraid that I am gonna flunk out (well, have to repeat coursework). Last year the stress was so bad I would wake up at night with terrible mid abdominal pains - sometimes I would vomit from the pain. Thankfully that is a thing of the past, but I am afraid that is only because my body has adjusted to the new stress level. I have talked to a few classmates about it, but to be honest they mostly just piss me off whenever we talk about grades. They complain about getting B's or C's and meanwhile I am struggling just not to fail. Some days I hate them.

On the other hand, spring break is almost here and I am looking forward to my trip abroad. And I do enjoy pharmacy school sometimes - it ain't all bad. And I don't really hate my classmates - many of them I consider close friends and I get along with everyone. It's kinda like with family - you're allowed to hate them sometimes, right?

I am not going to enjoy repeating a year though - and at this point it is easier to just resign myself to it than it is to try my hardest to prevent it and fail. What would I do then? I don't know. Not sure I would be up to repeating coursework - if I didn't succeed the first time, why would the second time be any different? I just don't know right now. I really hope I am able to pull up my grades, but to be honest I don't want to even get my hopes up about it.

Awesome thread! Typing all that out was surprisingly therapeutic. 👍
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When I read the beginning of your post I noticed your school's difficulty sounded very familiar, then I looked over to the left and saw your location, :laugh:.
 
nycrxdream said:
Is pharmacy school that hard? people have a hard time making C's? my friend boston said everything is just powerpoints man... he was making above a 3.5 too. I remembered Sparda saying that pharmacy school was hard, yet he is making it. I just think that humans in general are resistant to change. Once you got it down, it should be like a procedure.
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Thank you for the condescension. No it is not that hard, we are just griping for no reason. Thank you for reminding us that it's can't be that bad sense everything is just PowerPoint's. I mean if your friend Boston told you....


It varies. I truly hope you do not struggle during pharm school - I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But yes - some of us do "have a hard time making C's".

I can't even address the comment about change/adjusting/procedure. I typed up some pretty nasty stuff, thankfully I stopped myself from posting it. One thing you will learn in pharmacy school is empathy - get some.
 
nycrxdream said:
Is pharmacy school that hard? people have a hard time making C's? my friend boston said everything is just powerpoints man... he was making above a 3.5 too. I remembered Sparda saying that pharmacy school was hard, yet he is making it. I just think that humans in general are resistant to change. Once you got it down, it should be like a procedure.
Click to expand...

Pharmacy school is not hard. It is just very time consuming and it is hard if you don't put any time into it. Pharmacy school WILL take up your time and if you don't have anytime to give, then you are in trouble. Most people prefer doing other things besides pharmacy work, so that will make their situations harder.

If you put time into it, pharmacy school is not hard.
 
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owlegrad said:
Thank you for the condescension. No it is not that hard, we are just griping for no reason. Thank you for reminding us that it's can't be that bad sense everything is just PowerPoint's. I mean if your friend Boston told you....


It varies. I truly hope you do not struggle during pharm school - I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But yes - some of us do "have a hard time making C's".

I can't even address the comment about change/adjusting/procedure. I typed up some pretty nasty stuff, thankfully I stopped myself from posting it. One thing you will learn in pharmacy school is empathy - get some.
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Im sorry, I did find someone posting "I have a 3.8" and I get B's and C's. Im kind of worried too, but my friend kept reassuring me. That's also one of the reason I hesitated to attend mcphs because they require a 2.7 gpa at the professional phase.
 
Namishin said:
No idea at all, I'm going to guess 2pd and male, any other hints?
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So far so good!

What else do you know about me? I don't mean abstractly - just from looking at any of my posts on SDN, what can you tell about me? I can give you one major hint, but once I do the game is over.

Where do you normally go to find people online? How would you normally find someone online?

If I never give you my name, what else might you consider using to search for me on Google?
 
nycrxdream said:
Im sorry, I did find someone posting "I have a 3.8" and I get B's and C's. Im kind of worried too, but my friend kept reassuring me. That's also one of the reason I hesitated to attend mcphs because they require a 2.7 gpa at the professional phase.
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You will probably be fine. No need to give yourself undue stress about something that may or may not be a struggle for you.
 
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