changing careers

[matumi99]

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Hi everyone, I am 29 years old, married with no kids, and I have been teaching for 6 years. Needless to say I am more that disapointed with my career. One of the few things I enjoy about it is the satisfaction of seeing the kids progress and having the summers off, but as a professional who has a master's degree I feel insulted by my salary. A good friend of mine is in her last year of pharmacy school and she is always telling me what a great career it is. So I have been really thinking about going back to school to get my prerequisite classes to get into pharmacy school. But first I had a couple of questions maybe you guys could help me out?

-What are the chances of getting a M-F 9-5 job?
-What happends if I get pregnant during school? Can I skip a year?
-How much time off do pharmacist get?
-How much money would I make if I were to work part-time?
-As a teacher I get a pension when I retire. How is the retirement in the pharmacy field?

Thank you so much in advance for your help.

 

[rxlynn]

Hi everyone, I am 29 years old, married with no kids, and I have been teaching for 6 years. Needless to say I am more that disapointed with my career. One of the few things I enjoy about it is the satisfaction of seeing the kids progress and having the summers off, but as a professional who has a master's degree I feel insulted by my salary. A good friend of mine is in her last year of pharmacy school and she is always telling me what a great career it is. So I have been really thinking about going back to school to get my prerequisite classes to get into pharmacy school. But first I had a couple of questions maybe you guys could help me out?

-What are the chances of getting a M-F 9-5 job?
-What happends if I get pregnant during school? Can I skip a year?
-How much time off do pharmacist get?
-How much money would I make if I were to work part-time?
-As a teacher I get a pension when I retire. How is the retirement in the pharmacy field?

Thank you so much in advance for your help.

Hi - I am also a career changer. I can only answer your questions from the retail point of view but here's what I know.

The chances of you having a M-F 9-5 job in retail are almost impossible - retail requires night and weekend work at least some. The trade off is that you are also off during the day some and can get things done during the day. Pharmacists get the pretty standard 2 or 3 weeks vacation to start. My employer will pay off the pharmacists at the end of the calendar year for any vacation they haven't taken, so some of them opt to take the money instead of the time off. If you work as a part-time pharmacist, then you will negotiate an hourly pay figure with your employer - that will of course depend on your market, years of experience, etc. Retirement in retail is all through 401(k) programs, matching by your employer, and I think most companies will also have stock purchase plans you can participate in if you want. It is actually very rare now that people will have true pension plans unless they are a government employee (although, obviously there are government jobs in pharmacy too).

In terms of the pregnant vs. school thing - I think it would just depend on your school and what they would be willing to work out with you. I have one person in my class who just had a baby in December - she missed two weeks of class, came back for a couple of days and to take her last two finals, then was out for a month for Christmas holidays, and she came back full-time when we started in January. Search the archives - I think there was a thread about this awhile back.

 

[matumi99]

what are the chances of getting a nonretail job fresh out of school?