Current pharmD students: what about books?

[pharmschooler]

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I'm curious about this because I've seen a few postings stating that books aren't used at all for many classes.

Do professors in pharmacy school assign readings for the courses? I really like reading books before lecture; the idea that books aren't used at all makes me a little nervous. I love having a printed page to fall back on in case I forget the information I learned.

What has been your experience with books in pharmacy school?

 

[veyep]

I'm curious about this because I've seen a few postings stating that books aren't used at all for many classes.

Do professors in pharmacy school assign readings for the courses? I really like reading books before lecture; the idea that books aren't used at all makes me a little nervous. I love having a printed page to fall back on in case I forget the information I learned.

What has been your experience with books in pharmacy school?

here is my experience:

They give you a list of mandatory and recommended books (which I bought them all (huge mistake)) then that's the end of using books. Most of the books still have the plastic wrappings. They usually give you powerpoints every single day and you just memorize that. We did complain about that and they try to fix it and gave an assignment for one chapter of the book (one time only through out the whole program). Unfortunately we were encouraged to memorize, not understand. So if you can memorize every single powerpoint and be able to write it out from memory you will be fine. That is what some of my friends use to do. rewrite the powerpoints out of memory to see if they have memorized it all or not. I was more of a student that needed to understand what I was memorizing, so I did struggle a little bit.

FYI: Internet is always your friend.

 

[pharmschooler]

here is my experience:

They give you a least of mandatory and recommended books (which I bought them all (huge mistake)) then that's the end of using books. Most of the books still have the plastic wrappings. They usually give you powerpoints every single day and you just memorize that. We did complain about that and they try to fix it and gave an assignment for one chapter of the book (one time only through out the whole program). Unfortunately we were encouraged to memorize, not understand. So if you can memorize every single powerpoint and be able to write it out from memory you will be fine. That is what some of my friends use to do. rewrite the powerpoints out of memory to see if they have memorized it all or not. I was more of a student that needed to understand what I was memorizing, so I did struggle a little bit.

FYI: Internet is always your friend.

Great info. This is what I wanted to know. I, also, need to understand, not just memorize. It seems my current biochem course functions similarly to pharmacy school...

 

[onehot]

Its A LOT of material to memorize, I would not recommend it. Stress more on understanding the main concepts. Its nearly impossible to remember every slide and every detail if you have 500 slides..

Don't buy books, its a total waste of money. I wikipedia anything I don't understand. Google has been good as well. textbooks are too detailed, too much time to read, and not efficient use of time.

 

[crazybob]

I bought the books they required. I guess I'm dumb and wasting money 🙁 Should I throw away my books then? 🙁

With some of the material, if you have a hard time understanding it, and you can't figure it out before the test, just memorize what works for you, and then later it will make more sense to you.

When you have an insane amount of material to study, understanding it definitely helps so that you don't have to spend every single hour trying to memorize every single word they told you.

I think reading some of the information in the text helps. When I don't understand something from class, I'll read up on it in our text and it makes sense to me. Then when I go back to class, and they're building off of that, it makes sense to me.

If you want to buy the books, then go ahead. If you want to see what it's like, then you can probably ask someone if you can borrow it, and then decide if you want to buy it.