Insight and Regrets of Pharmacy Students

[PharmRX0308]

If you are wondering how the current pharmacy students are doing or what they think about the profession or if you are trying to decide if you should go to pharmacy school, this post is for you.

I'm currently a third-year pharmacy student. Like we all know, pharmacy school workload is extremely heavy. Our class lost some students in P1 year and some more students in P2 year. The IPPEs we had were composed of 1 hospital and 2 retail rotations. Without doubt, the 2 retail IPPE basically used us as free labor. We did not learn much and did not reinforce anything we learnt from school. Our school teaches us the importance of leadership and management, but they never support us to go to any annual meetings or events. If we do, our points will suffer. They also teach us empathy and sympathy but if we do one thing wrong even due to a valid reason, they will not consider our reasons and will just go ahead and harm our grades. They know pharmacy school is hard, but they will keep making new projects and throwing them on students. It is fine if it is worth it, but is it really? Pharmacy school is hard enough. Please give us some space to breath, please be reasonable. I am a straight A student, and I am in Rho Chi. But I'm just frustrated by how inconsiderable some professors can be. If a pharmacy student does something wrong due to lack of knowledge and miscommunication, talk to him about it but do not punish him too harshly. Your decision to give him a C in that one class can cause him his residency later. For example, if a student submitted the assignment late, ask him why before just failing him for that, especially if he has never done it before. It is not worth it. Please. After knowing that going through pharmacy school without a job is basically a suicide, I got a job as an intern at a retail chain. They required us to work every weekend which is fine but to be honest, most of us really hate our job. Retail pharmacy has nothing to do with clinical decisions/ knowledge we learn in school, except for things like immunization and self-care. Moreover, retail pharmacy is an extremely fast-pace high-stress environment to be in. Also don't forget that we have to stand up all days in retail pharmacy. The fact is that a vast majority of pharmacy grads will be in retail one day, and if we hate retail we will have to do residency. Now, getting into residency is difficult, but surviving one is even more challenging. 60 hours a week in average is no jokes. When I enter pharmacy school, I have no ideas that we must do residency in order to be considered for clinical positions. It will be a huge sacrifice (Effort, finance, time, hobby etc.) if we do decide to become a resident. AND even if we do residency, there are no guarantees we will get the job we desire or just to get a non-retail job that comes with good benefits. No matter what we choose, we will end up with five digits student loan post-graduation. For someone who go to a private school like me, the cost will for sure be over 150k. Paying these off is a chronic issue. Pharmacist salaries are really not that much after paying student loans. Last but not least, you think pharmacy is a highly respected profession? I don't think so. I used to think we are, and I am still hoping we will. I am speaking from my limited view as a pharmacy student, but from what I have seen, we do not get as much respect as we deserve. In retail, they only hire us to be there so they won't get into law suits and to make profits. They don't really care much about patient-care. In hospital, well, depending on specific institutions, but even some Bachelor nurses will look down on us a a drug dispensers. I evidenced my preceptor got yelled at a physician for suggesting him to make a change in therapeutic interventions. Unfortunately, I don't think we are respected as much as we think. I and many of my friends in pharmacy school have cried so many times. We are not mentally weak, but sometime the stress from school, job, future really cause us to lose our control over the situation and the ballon eventually explodes.

I am personally in the place where I am so lost about what to do with my future. I don't want to do retail, but I am not sure if I am ready for residency. I need money to pay off my loan, and I also can't change profession due to the same issue. I am stuck. If anyone has any suggestions or experience with this, please let me know. I will highly appreciate it.

I don't want to say that I regret going into pharmacy school because it is too late. But for people who are considering pharmacy school, please take everything I have mentioned seriously.

Are you okay with being yelled at by people? Are you okay with doing 1-2 years of residency? Are you okay with the extreme workload of pharmacy school? Are you okay with your weeks being bombarded with projects? Are you okay with working extensively during school to be considered for a retail job and residency? If you choose pharmacy for financial security, that will be even worse because of the mentioned loan issues.

Last word, please consider your options carefully. If you love pharmacy so much and really want to be in the profession, then please consider your choice of schools carefully.

---

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[Momus]

Job market sucks. You are a slave to whoever your boss is. I wouldn't do this again.

 

[UGAZ]

These kinds of posts should be sticked in pre-pharmacy forum so they can open their eyes and make decisions. I don't regret for being a pharmacist but if I would have done all over again, I would not chose pharmacy at this point. Job market is super saturated, heavy loan debt...This is a negative investment.

 

[owlegrad]

These kinds of posts should be sticked in pre-pharmacy forum so they can open their eyes and make decisions. I don't regret for being a pharmacist but if I would have done all over again, I would not chose pharmacy at this point. Job market is super saturated, heavy loan debt...This is a negative investment.

Can I ask a serious question? Do you think prepharm students don't read the pharmacy forum and see these posts? Do you think if we posted more in the prepharmacy forum we might reach them in time, before they make the switch to pharmacy students and, except in rare cases like @PAtoPharm, it becomes too late?

 

[PharmRX0308]

These kinds of posts should be sticked in pre-pharmacy forum so they can open their eyes and make decisions. I don't regret for being a pharmacist but if I would have done all over again, I would not chose pharmacy at this point. Job market is super saturated, heavy loan debt...This is a negative investment.

I agree. Now in the mid of P3, I sadly realize my school was lying about the profession, the potentials for success, financial security, and all those amazing promises. If we can work in the right environment, pharmacists may still positively enhance patient care but that seems extremely rare. I and many pharmacy students are stuck in this condition. We cannot find a job in hospital. For someone who got the job, it is usually outpatient. Inpatient positions are almost non-existent. With that said, we have to keep hoping and going forward, but to be honest it feels very bad and insecure for our future. It is just really stressful.

 

[lord999]

So, I came from a different place than you were and retail and hospital operations was what we were being trained for, not clinical care. That said, I can understand your position to an extent, and I will answer the rest as if I were more clinically minded.

The job that schools recruit you for is a fiction in practice. This is both from the intellectual arrogance of the academic culture in Pharmacy, but also from the need for professional enrichment where academics and hospital pharmacists wanted something to show for themselves as retail took home the money.

I am a harsh grader as an academic, and I was a pharmacy student myself and worked atrocious hours as an intern (I was a F/T intern with benefits all three years of school). There is a reason for this, pharmacies then and now are about process, not practice. If you cannot follow a process, there is little need for you in operations. The goal is to get good enough to see to your commitments without overdoing it. Most PhD faculty find student supervision to be a chore; it does not pay the research bills, and unless you were a pharmacist yourself, it is hard to identify with students. On the other hand, due process, late turns, can I eat those? I am not kidding when I say that pharmacy school used to be a one strike and you were out (Florida, Iowa, and Michigan were notorious for this). To get any consideration at all was a reform long time in coming, but there are still professors that put the burden on the students to get their affairs in order. I explain to my students that I frankly do not care if you know how to practice if you cannot follow the process.

Oh yes, I was used as free labor in my clerkship as the rest of you too. That is the point, to actually learn the job under controlled circumstances. But what I find annoying is that students are not introspective enough to figure out that what you are also supposed to learn is what to do and what not to do by observation. There are plenty of places and practices that I would never do again based on my rotations. You also learn other things like I also know that I will not work in a hospital practice who is of a particular religion that has a majority of the population in certain parts of my home state as a practicing Catholic, because I got treated poorly for being Catholic in two hospitals for not being part of that other religion (and yes, I did talk it over with some people who advised me just to let it go but remember when they apply to you later on in life which did happen). That's really your job as well as getting the technical parts in order, which most new graduates lack the sterile compounding and order processing skills to be hired as a pharmacist safely in either normal community or hospital environment.

I do take you to task for your status consciousness. All of us have to earn respect from our peers and our practices, it is not given on name recognition or title unlike other parts of the world, and that is for the better. I really do not give a *$(# if people look down on me as a drug dispenser, because that's my $*@(ing job! I just spent a week back in the hospital order chair and found it to be far less stressful and more productive than the endless bureaucracy rounds that I do normally now, because in this profession, you can point to something tangible and say that this got done because I did it. You are not going to get that sort of respect from your professors, your preceptors, or your fellow practitioners until you can do that work respectably at the level you are supposed to (so not necessarily at full pharmacist level, but at the expectations of your work), and I honestly empathize but do not sympathize with your position.

If you know what you are getting into, then pharmacy can work. The job insecurity, the degrading conditions, and the relentless pressure on getting the process faster with less people, this was the profession I knew and know again now. It is just that we have had some really good times in the past decade that people forgot how the healthcare business usually is. If you are not here to work, then you have no safe place in the healthcare industry, not in pharmacy and not in medicine, nursing, or anything else. There is a principal expectation that you do manage your life secondary to the work, that is part of the professional bearing. If you just want a job, law and healthcare is not ever going to be a good safe place. If you want to get what you put into your work, get an accounting degree and join some company as a junior accountant peon with low but steady pay and growth prospects completely in line with your ability to advance. But for this one, yes, there are rewards, but there is a reason behind why this profession is so hard to deal with even in the best of times.

If it is all about what you want from the profession without recognition at a practical level what you are going to put into it, do us (including yourself) all a favor and find something else where the return on investment is better. Those looking at easy wins though (NP/PA/Comp Sci) are about to find out that the cycle turns as well.

There is one ad hominem comment I want to make. You should have not found out from your school that this practice they were advertising was false before you entered. If you did not do your due diligence in terms of shadowing or have working experience before pharmacy school entry (and yes, it has to be mentioned in the prospectus), then that was bad judgment on your part. There is a reason why the ivory tower has its reputation in general for being unworldly, but if you just blindly accept the propositions considering the extensive financial and professional resource input required, it matters not how good you are as a student if you do not have the requisite worldview to understand that work is what it is.

 

[Apotheker2015]

Can I ask a serious question? Do you think prepharm students don't read the pharmacy forum and see these posts? Do you think if we posted more in the prepharmacy forum we might reach them in time, before they make the switch to pharmacy students and, except in rare cases like @PAtoPharm, it becomes too late?

OP's profile shows 4 messages total. Are you sure this is not ...P@toPh@rm or Ph@rmtoP@ at this point? That was one long winded post.

 

[Apotheker2015]

If you are wondering how the current pharmacy students are doing or what they think about the profession or if you are trying to decide if you should go to pharmacy school, this post is for you.

I'm currently a third-year pharmacy student. Like we all know, pharmacy school workload is extremely heavy. Our class lost some students in P1 year and some more students in P2 year. The IPPEs we had were composed of 1 hospital and 2 retail rotations. Without doubt, the 2 retail IPPE basically used us as free labor. We did not learn much and did not reinforce anything we learnt from school. Our school teaches us the importance of leadership and management, but they never support us to go to any annual meetings or events. If we do, our points will suffer. They also teach us empathy and sympathy but if we do one thing wrong even due to a valid reason, they will not consider our reasons and will just go ahead and harm our grades. They know pharmacy school is hard, but they will keep making new projects and throwing them on students. It is fine if it is worth it, but is it really? Pharmacy school is hard enough. Please give us some space to breath, please be reasonable. I am a straight A student, and I am in Rho Chi. But I'm just frustrated by how inconsiderable some professors can be. If a pharmacy student does something wrong due to lack of knowledge and miscommunication, talk to him about it but do not punish him too harshly. Your decision to give him a C in that one class can cause him his residency later. For example, if a student submitted the assignment late, ask him why before just failing him for that, especially if he has never done it before. It is not worth it. Please. After knowing that going through pharmacy school without a job is basically a suicide, I got a job as an intern at a retail chain. They required us to work every weekend which is fine but to be honest, most of us really hate our job. Retail pharmacy has nothing to do with clinical decisions/ knowledge we learn in school, except for things like immunization and self-care. Moreover, retail pharmacy is an extremely fast-pace high-stress environment to be in. Also don't forget that we have to stand up all days in retail pharmacy. The fact is that a vast majority of pharmacy grads will be in retail one day, and if we hate retail we will have to do residency. Now, getting into residency is difficult, but surviving one is even more challenging. 60 hours a week in average is no jokes. When I enter pharmacy school, I have no ideas that we must do residency in order to be considered for clinical positions. It will be a huge sacrifice (Effort, finance, time, hobby etc.) if we do decide to become a resident. AND even if we do residency, there are no guarantees we will get the job we desire or just to get a non-retail job that comes with good benefits. No matter what we choose, we will end up with five digits student loan post-graduation. For someone who go to a private school like me, the cost will for sure be over 150k. Paying these off is a chronic issue. Pharmacist salaries are really not that much after paying student loans. Last but not least, you think pharmacy is a highly respected profession? I don't think so. I used to think we are, and I am still hoping we will. I am speaking from my limited view as a pharmacy student, but from what I have seen, we do not get as much respect as we deserve. In retail, they only hire us to be there so they won't get into law suits and to make profits. They don't really care much about patient-care. In hospital, well, depending on specific institutions, but even some Bachelor nurses will look down on us a a drug dispensers. I evidenced my preceptor got yelled at a physician for suggesting him to make a change in therapeutic interventions. Unfortunately, I don't think we are respected as much as we think. I and many of my friends in pharmacy school have cried so many times. We are not mentally weak, but sometime the stress from school, job, future really cause us to lose our control over the situation and the ballon eventually explodes.

I am personally in the place where I am so lost about what to do with my future. I don't want to do retail, but I am not sure if I am ready for residency. I need money to pay off my loan, and I also can't change profession due to the same issue. I am stuck. If anyone has any suggestions or experience with this, please let me know. I will highly appreciate it.

I don't want to say that I regret going into pharmacy school because it is too late. But for people who are considering pharmacy school, please take everything I have mentioned seriously.

Are you okay with being yelled at by people? Are you okay with doing 1-2 years of residency? Are you okay with the extreme workload of pharmacy school? Are you okay with your weeks being bombarded with projects? Are you okay with working extensively during school to be considered for a retail job and residency? If you choose pharmacy for financial security, that will be even worse because of the mentioned loan issues.

Last word, please consider your options carefully. If you love pharmacy so much and really want to be in the profession, then please consider your choice of schools carefully.

Hey Rho Chi,

paragraphs and indentations for the love of the baby Jesus!

 

[Abby Atwood]

If you are not applying your clinical knowledge in a retail setting, you are doing it wrong.

Also, you don’t want to be a victim. No one wants to be a victim. Own whatever part you played in your academic outcome. If something more important was going on, own your choice to put school second. It’s empowering 🙂

 

[PharmRX0308]

If you are not applying your clinical knowledge in a retail setting, you are doing it wrong.

Also, you don’t want to be a victim. No one wants to be a victim. Own own whatever part you played in your academic outcome. If something more important was going on, own your choice to put school second. It’s empowering 🙂

So, I came from a different place than you were and retail and hospital operations was what we were being trained for, not clinical care. That said, I can understand your position to an extent, and I will answer the rest as if I were more clinically minded.

The job that schools recruit you for is a fiction in practice. This is both from the intellectual arrogance of the academic culture in Pharmacy, but also from the need for professional enrichment where academics and hospital pharmacists wanted something to show for themselves as retail took home the money.

I am a harsh grader as an academic, and I was a pharmacy student myself and worked atrocious hours as an intern (I was a F/T intern with benefits all three years of school). There is a reason for this, pharmacies then and now are about process, not practice. If you cannot follow a process, there is little need for you in operations. The goal is to get good enough to see to your commitments without overdoing it. Most PhD faculty find student supervision to be a chore; it does not pay the research bills, and unless you were a pharmacist yourself, it is hard to identify with students. On the other hand, due process, late turns, can I eat those? I am not kidding when I say that pharmacy school used to be a one strike and you were out (Florida, Iowa, and Michigan were notorious for this). To get any consideration at all was a reform long time in coming, but there are still professors that put the burden on the students to get their affairs in order. I explain to my students that I frankly do not care if you know how to practice if you cannot follow the process.

Oh yes, I was used as free labor in my clerkship as the rest of you too. That is the point, to actually learn the job under controlled circumstances. But what I find annoying is that students are not introspective enough to figure out that what you are also supposed to learn is what to do and what not to do by observation. There are plenty of places and practices that I would never do again based on my rotations. You also learn other things like I also know that I will not work in a hospital practice who is of a particular religion that has a majority of the population in certain parts of my home state as a practicing Catholic, because I got treated poorly for being Catholic in two hospitals for not being part of that other religion (and yes, I did talk it over with some people who advised me just to let it go but remember when they apply to you later on in life which did happen). That's really your job as well as getting the technical parts in order, which most new graduates lack the sterile compounding and order processing skills to be hired as a pharmacist safely in either normal community or hospital environment.

I do take you to task for your status consciousness. All of us have to earn respect from our peers and our practices, it is not given on name recognition or title unlike other parts of the world, and that is for the better. I really do not give a *$(# if people look down on me as a drug dispenser, because that's my $*@(ing job! I just spent a week back in the hospital order chair and found it to be far less stressful and more productive than the endless bureaucracy rounds that I do normally now, because in this profession, you can point to something tangible and say that this got done because I did it. You are not going to get that sort of respect from your professors, your preceptors, or your fellow practitioners until you can do that work respectably at the level you are supposed to (so not necessarily at full pharmacist level, but at the expectations of your work), and I honestly empathize but do not sympathize with your position.

If you know what you are getting into, then pharmacy can work. The job insecurity, the degrading conditions, and the relentless pressure on getting the process faster with less people, this was the profession I knew and know again now. It is just that we have had some really good times in the past decade that people forgot how the healthcare business usually is. If you are not here to work, then you have no safe place in the healthcare industry, not in pharmacy and not in medicine, nursing, or anything else. There is a principal expectation that you do manage your life secondary to the work, that is part of the professional bearing. If you just want a job, law and healthcare is not ever going to be a good safe place. If you want to get what you put into your work, get an accounting degree and join some company as a junior accountant peon with low but steady pay and growth prospects completely in line with your ability to advance. But for this one, yes, there are rewards, but there is a reason behind why this profession is so hard to deal with even in the best of times.

If it is all about what you want from the profession without recognition at a practical level what you are going to put into it, do us (including yourself) all a favor and find something else where the return on investment is better. Those looking at easy wins though (NP/PA/Comp Sci) are about to find out that the cycle turns as well.

There is one ad hominem comment I want to make. You should have not found out from your school that this practice they were advertising was false before you entered. If you did not do your due diligence in terms of shadowing or have working experience before pharmacy school entry (and yes, it has to be mentioned in the prospectus), then that was bad judgment on your part. There is a reason why the ivory tower has its reputation in general for being unworldly, but if you just blindly accept the propositions considering the extensive financial and professional resource input required, it matters not how good you are as a student if you do not have the requisite worldview to understand that work is what it is.

Thank you. I really appreciate what you have shared. Lots of the info are really valuable to me. You are absolutely right that I should have physically shadowed a pharmacist before entering the field. I think what I did is also what many other students may do, so this is definitely one thing the pre-pharmacy students can learn from.

 

[PharmRX0308]

If you are not applying your clinical knowledge in a retail setting, you are doing it wrong.

Also, you don’t want to be a victim. No one wants to be a victim. Own own whatever part you played in your academic outcome. If something more important was going on, own your choice to put school second. It’s empowering 🙂

Thank you, Abby. I really need lots of encouragement and empowerment to keep going. I realize I always have job and school my priorities for the last 3 years, and they have really drained me over time. I study without breaks, and my breaks are usually just filled with working hours. I think I'm just quite stressed out and burned out at the moment from all that.

 

[PharmRX0308]

realize

OP's profile shows 4 messages total. Are you sure this is not ...P@toPh@rm or Ph@rmtoP@ at this point? That was one long winded post.

Hi, I have 4 messages total because I'm quite new to our forum. I personally don't know P@toPh@rm, if that helps clear up something.

 

[PharmtoCS]

There goes another set of starry eyes.

 

[statepharmagent]

Are you okay with being yelled at by people? Are you okay with doing 1-2 years of residency? Are you okay with the extreme workload of pharmacy school? Are you okay with your weeks being bombarded with projects? Are you okay with working extensively during school to be considered for a retail job and residency? If you choose pharmacy for financial security, that will be even worse because of the mentioned loan issues.

Are you ok getting bitched at by LVNs with 6 month certificate training for hospital? Also, 1 to 2 years of residency doesnt even increase your pay for the most part. A lot of specialized positions pay considerably less than retail...that's if you even get a job in those specialties. Most likely the residency will allow you to enter the "Who wants to get an interview for this per diem position" game at a random hospital somewhere.

As for me, I wish I could go back to my 3rd year and walk straight out of pharmacy taking that tuition hit. It'd still be so worth it to do something else with my career.

 

[Apotheker2015]

Hi, I have 4 messages total because I'm quite new to our forum. I personally don't know P@toPh@rm, if that helps clear up something.

Sure, I will take at face value. I finally got myself to read your entire post. All I hear is "victim". Snap out of it! The sooner you do that, the faster you will start making lemonade like every well-adjusted emotionally intelligent adult eventually does. You are probably young and that's fine. You will figure it out.
I wish I could help you. However, I can't simply because you did not state anywhere on your post WHAT you need help with or HOW we can help you.

 

[Amphetamine Salts]

going to pharmacy school now is a negative EV move. similar to poker, every move you make has an expected value. going to pharmacy school has a negative expected value. which means you should expect to lose value in the long run


actually nevermind that is not entirely true. the point is though that pharmacy is very saturated. i would not have done it again. being an APPE student and have passed over 5 rotations (remaining rotations will be extremely easy), i am essentially graduated and just waiting until it's July for me to take the naplex. at the moment my primary issue is finding a job, which we all know is the major issue with pharmacy at this time

 

[farm4real]

So, I came from a different place than you were and retail and hospital operations was what we were being trained for, not clinical care. That said, I can understand your position to an extent, and I will answer the rest as if I were more clinically minded.




The job that schools recruit you for is a fiction in practice. This is both from the intellectual arrogance of the academic culture in Pharmacy, but also from the need for professional enrichment where academics and hospital pharmacists wanted something to show for themselves as retail took home the money.

I am a harsh grader as an academic, and I was a pharmacy student myself and worked atrocious hours as an intern (I was a F/T intern with benefits all three years of school). There is a reason for this, pharmacies then and now are about process, not practice. If you cannot follow a process, there is little need for you in operations. The goal is to get good enough to see to your commitments without overdoing it. Most PhD faculty find student supervision to be a chore; it does not pay the research bills, and unless you were a pharmacist yourself, it is hard to identify with students. On the other hand, due process, late turns, can I eat those? I am not kidding when I say that pharmacy school used to be a one strike and you were out (Florida, Iowa, and Michigan were notorious for this). To get any consideration at all was a reform long time in coming, but there are still professors that put the burden on the students to get their affairs in order. I explain to my students that I frankly do not care if you know how to practice if you cannot follow the process.

Oh yes, I was used as free labor in my clerkship as the rest of you too. That is the point, to actually learn the job under controlled circumstances. But what I find annoying is that students are not introspective enough to figure out that what you are also supposed to learn is what to do and what not to do by observation. There are plenty of places and practices that I would never do again based on my rotations. You also learn other things like I also know that I will not work in a hospital practice who is of a particular religion that has a majority of the population in certain parts of my home state as a practicing Catholic, because I got treated poorly for being Catholic in two hospitals for not being part of that other religion (and yes, I did talk it over with some people who advised me just to let it go but remember when they apply to you later on in life which did happen). That's really your job as well as getting the technical parts in order, which most new graduates lack the sterile compounding and order processing skills to be hired as a pharmacist safely in either normal community or hospital environment.

I do take you to task for your status consciousness. All of us have to earn respect from our peers and our practices, it is not given on name recognition or title unlike other parts of the world, and that is for the better. I really do not give a *$(# if people look down on me as a drug dispenser, because that's my $*@(ing job! I just spent a week back in the hospital order chair and found it to be far less stressful and more productive than the endless bureaucracy rounds that I do normally now, because in this profession, you can point to something tangible and say that this got done because I did it. You are not going to get that sort of respect from your professors, your preceptors, or your fellow practitioners until you can do that work respectably at the level you are supposed to (so not necessarily at full pharmacist level, but at the expectations of your work), and I honestly empathize but do not sympathize with your position.

If you know what you are getting into, then pharmacy can work. The job insecurity, the degrading conditions, and the relentless pressure on getting the process faster with less people, this was the profession I knew and know again now. It is just that we have had some really good times in the past decade that people forgot how the healthcare business usually is. If you are not here to work, then you have no safe place in the healthcare industry, not in pharmacy and not in medicine, nursing, or anything else. There is a principal expectation that you do manage your life secondary to the work, that is part of the professional bearing. If you just want a job, law and healthcare is not ever going to be a good safe place. If you want to get what you put into your work, get an accounting degree and join some company as a junior accountant peon with low but steady pay and growth prospects completely in line with your ability to advance. But for this one, yes, there are rewards, but there is a reason behind why this profession is so hard to deal with even in the best of times.

If it is all about what you want from the profession without recognition at a practical level what you are going to put into it, do us (including yourself) all a favor and find something else where the return on investment is better. Those looking at easy wins though (NP/PA/Comp Sci) are about to find out that the cycle turns as well.

There is one ad hominem comment I want to make. You should have not found out from your school that this practice they were advertising was false before you entered. If you did not do your due diligence in terms of shadowing or have working experience before pharmacy school entry (and yes, it has to be mentioned in the prospectus), then that was bad judgment on your part. There is a reason why the ivory tower has its reputation in general for being unworldly, but if you just blindly accept the propositions considering the extensive financial and professional resource input required, it matters not how good you are as a student if you do not have the requisite worldview to understand that work is what it is.

One learns more about process as a pharmtech than in pharmacy school

 

[Chriskahn]

they never support us to go to any annual meetings or events. If we do, our points will suffer. They also teach us empathy and sympathy but if we do one thing wrong even due to a valid reason, they will not consider our reasons and will just go ahead and harm our grades.

Sound like you go to a bad school. It may be ranked high, but that doesn't necessarily mean its a good school. My school is rank somewhere in the 30's last I checked and they offer travel grants to go to midyear, legislature day, pharmacy competitions, etc. School obligations, even exams, can be rescheduled no problem. Professional events have priority.

Another school in my state, ranked top 10, doesn't offer travel grants according to one of the residents that just graduated from there.

As for work, well, work is work. You can get yelled at just as much as retail in a hospital. You have to have a thick skin working as a healthcare professional in general.

You can yell at me all day long for 6 figs/year I really don't mind

 

[wagrxm2000]

We need a character limit on posts. Do you guys really get through the whole thing?

I read a paragraph then scroll down and notice it's a full sized research paper and stop.

 

[Rouelle]

We need a character limit on posts. Do you guys really get through the whole thing?

I read a paragraph then scroll down and notice it's a full sized research paper and stop.

Agreed. I read enough to see it was a pre-pharm post and skipped the rest.

We might grant a waiver to the character limit to @lord999 who uses a lot of words but says some intelligent things. 🙂

 

[DrVader]

If you are wondering how the current pharmacy students are doing or what they think about the profession or if you are trying to decide if you should go to pharmacy school, this post is for you.

I'm currently a third-year pharmacy student. Like we all know, pharmacy school workload is extremely heavy. Our class lost some students in P1 year and some more students in P2 year. The IPPEs we had were composed of 1 hospital and 2 retail rotations. Without doubt, the 2 retail IPPE basically used us as free labor. We did not learn much and did not reinforce anything we learnt from school. Our school teaches us the importance of leadership and management, but they never support us to go to any annual meetings or events. If we do, our points will suffer. They also teach us empathy and sympathy but if we do one thing wrong even due to a valid reason, they will not consider our reasons and will just go ahead and harm our grades. They know pharmacy school is hard, but they will keep making new projects and throwing them on students. It is fine if it is worth it, but is it really? Pharmacy school is hard enough. Please give us some space to breath, please be reasonable. I am a straight A student, and I am in Rho Chi. But I'm just frustrated by how inconsiderable some professors can be. If a pharmacy student does something wrong due to lack of knowledge and miscommunication, talk to him about it but do not punish him too harshly. Your decision to give him a C in that one class can cause him his residency later. For example, if a student submitted the assignment late, ask him why before just failing him for that, especially if he has never done it before. It is not worth it. Please. After knowing that going through pharmacy school without a job is basically a suicide, I got a job as an intern at a retail chain. They required us to work every weekend which is fine but to be honest, most of us really hate our job. Retail pharmacy has nothing to do with clinical decisions/ knowledge we learn in school, except for things like immunization and self-care. Moreover, retail pharmacy is an extremely fast-pace high-stress environment to be in. Also don't forget that we have to stand up all days in retail pharmacy. The fact is that a vast majority of pharmacy grads will be in retail one day, and if we hate retail we will have to do residency. Now, getting into residency is difficult, but surviving one is even more challenging. 60 hours a week in average is no jokes. When I enter pharmacy school, I have no ideas that we must do residency in order to be considered for clinical positions. It will be a huge sacrifice (Effort, finance, time, hobby etc.) if we do decide to become a resident. AND even if we do residency, there are no guarantees we will get the job we desire or just to get a non-retail job that comes with good benefits. No matter what we choose, we will end up with five digits student loan post-graduation. For someone who go to a private school like me, the cost will for sure be over 150k. Paying these off is a chronic issue. Pharmacist salaries are really not that much after paying student loans. Last but not least, you think pharmacy is a highly respected profession? I don't think so. I used to think we are, and I am still hoping we will. I am speaking from my limited view as a pharmacy student, but from what I have seen, we do not get as much respect as we deserve. In retail, they only hire us to be there so they won't get into law suits and to make profits. They don't really care much about patient-care. In hospital, well, depending on specific institutions, but even some Bachelor nurses will look down on us a a drug dispensers. I evidenced my preceptor got yelled at a physician for suggesting him to make a change in therapeutic interventions. Unfortunately, I don't think we are respected as much as we think. I and many of my friends in pharmacy school have cried so many times. We are not mentally weak, but sometime the stress from school, job, future really cause us to lose our control over the situation and the ballon eventually explodes.

I am personally in the place where I am so lost about what to do with my future. I don't want to do retail, but I am not sure if I am ready for residency. I need money to pay off my loan, and I also can't change profession due to the same issue. I am stuck. If anyone has any suggestions or experience with this, please let me know. I will highly appreciate it.

I don't want to say that I regret going into pharmacy school because it is too late. But for people who are considering pharmacy school, please take everything I have mentioned seriously.

Are you okay with being yelled at by people? Are you okay with doing 1-2 years of residency? Are you okay with the extreme workload of pharmacy school? Are you okay with your weeks being bombarded with projects? Are you okay with working extensively during school to be considered for a retail job and residency? If you choose pharmacy for financial security, that will be even worse because of the mentioned loan issues.

Last word, please consider your options carefully. If you love pharmacy so much and really want to be in the profession, then please consider your choice of schools carefully.

There are two types of pharmacy professors. PhDs who want to play pharmacist and PharmD who want to play doctors. The PhDs have never placed one toe in a actual pharmacy. The PharmDs couldn't hack retail so now they follow a doctor around in a hospital with a clipboard and think they are making a contribution. These people should not be teaching. Pharmacy school is a scam, it is designed for colleges to make money. All PharmD 6 year programs should be converted back into a Bachelors degree. These people should not be teaching.

 

[Amphetamine Salts]

i don't think pharmacy school was INTENDED to be a scam, i feel that it sort of became that way. overtime as the saturation grew, now it's starting to feel very much like just milking the cow until the inevitable crash happens. i think job outlook for pharmacist is something like 1-3%. that's pretty embarrassing. there's just 0 need for additional pharmacists, no one gives a **** about them. compared to something like a solar panel installer which has 100%+ job outlook, and requires merely a high school diploma to be offered employment (of course you'll need some training/certifications i believe). but anyway, a job like that which pays ~35-40kish a year is probably the smarter decision to make in terms of raw finances compared to going to pharmacy school. go to school for 6 years, make 100k+/yr, and be in tremendous debt in a career with **** opportunity? or go to school for 0 years, do some minimal training, little to no debt, tremendous job opportunity, and make 35-40k/yr. seems like an obvious choice

 

[lord999]

We need a character limit on posts. Do you guys really get through the whole thing?

I read a paragraph then scroll down and notice it's a full sized research paper and stop.

Sorry, I'll try on not being so verbose. Old work habits die hard.

 

[Rouelle]

Sorry, I'll try on not being so verbose. Old work habits die hard.

Come on, now. Didn’t you see you were getting a free pass? At least for now...

 

[Modest_anteater]

If you are wondering how the current pharmacy students are doing or what they think about the profession or if you are trying to decide if you should go to pharmacy school, this post is for you.

I'm currently a third-year pharmacy student. Like we all know, pharmacy school workload is extremely heavy. Our class lost some students in P1 year and some more students in P2 year. The IPPEs we had were composed of 1 hospital and 2 retail rotations. Without doubt, the 2 retail IPPE basically used us as free labor. We did not learn much and did not reinforce anything we learnt from school. Our school teaches us the importance of leadership and management, but they never support us to go to any annual meetings or events. If we do, our points will suffer. They also teach us empathy and sympathy but if we do one thing wrong even due to a valid reason, they will not consider our reasons and will just go ahead and harm our grades. They know pharmacy school is hard, but they will keep making new projects and throwing them on students. It is fine if it is worth it, but is it really? Pharmacy school is hard enough. Please give us some space to breath, please be reasonable. I am a straight A student, and I am in Rho Chi. But I'm just frustrated by how inconsiderable some professors can be. If a pharmacy student does something wrong due to lack of knowledge and miscommunication, talk to him about it but do not punish him too harshly. Your decision to give him a C in that one class can cause him his residency later. For example, if a student submitted the assignment late, ask him why before just failing him for that, especially if he has never done it before. It is not worth it. Please. After knowing that going through pharmacy school without a job is basically a suicide, I got a job as an intern at a retail chain. They required us to work every weekend which is fine but to be honest, most of us really hate our job. Retail pharmacy has nothing to do with clinical decisions/ knowledge we learn in school, except for things like immunization and self-care. Moreover, retail pharmacy is an extremely fast-pace high-stress environment to be in. Also don't forget that we have to stand up all days in retail pharmacy. The fact is that a vast majority of pharmacy grads will be in retail one day, and if we hate retail we will have to do residency. Now, getting into residency is difficult, but surviving one is even more challenging. 60 hours a week in average is no jokes. When I enter pharmacy school, I have no ideas that we must do residency in order to be considered for clinical positions. It will be a huge sacrifice (Effort, finance, time, hobby etc.) if we do decide to become a resident. AND even if we do residency, there are no guarantees we will get the job we desire or just to get a non-retail job that comes with good benefits. No matter what we choose, we will end up with five digits student loan post-graduation. For someone who go to a private school like me, the cost will for sure be over 150k. Paying these off is a chronic issue. Pharmacist salaries are really not that much after paying student loans. Last but not least, you think pharmacy is a highly respected profession? I don't think so. I used to think we are, and I am still hoping we will. I am speaking from my limited view as a pharmacy student, but from what I have seen, we do not get as much respect as we deserve. In retail, they only hire us to be there so they won't get into law suits and to make profits. They don't really care much about patient-care. In hospital, well, depending on specific institutions, but even some Bachelor nurses will look down on us a a drug dispensers. I evidenced my preceptor got yelled at a physician for suggesting him to make a change in therapeutic interventions. Unfortunately, I don't think we are respected as much as we think. I and many of my friends in pharmacy school have cried so many times. We are not mentally weak, but sometime the stress from school, job, future really cause us to lose our control over the situation and the ballon eventually explodes.

I am personally in the place where I am so lost about what to do with my future. I don't want to do retail, but I am not sure if I am ready for residency. I need money to pay off my loan, and I also can't change profession due to the same issue. I am stuck. If anyone has any suggestions or experience with this, please let me know. I will highly appreciate it.

I don't want to say that I regret going into pharmacy school because it is too late. But for people who are considering pharmacy school, please take everything I have mentioned seriously.

Are you okay with being yelled at by people? Are you okay with doing 1-2 years of residency? Are you okay with the extreme workload of pharmacy school? Are you okay with your weeks being bombarded with projects? Are you okay with working extensively during school to be considered for a retail job and residency? If you choose pharmacy for financial security, that will be even worse because of the mentioned loan issues.

Last word, please consider your options carefully. If you love pharmacy so much and really want to be in the profession, then please consider your choice of schools carefully.

First off great post and thank you for contributing to the community. However, "if you are trying to decide if you should go to pharmacy school, this post is for you." I think you posted this in the wrong subthread. You posted this in Pharmacy, i think u may have meant to post it in Pre-pharm so the new, young, native eyes could see it. THank you Sir/Madam.

 

[Modest_anteater]

Can I ask a serious question? Do you think prepharm students don't read the pharmacy forum and see these posts? Do you think if we posted more in the prepharmacy forum we might reach them in time, before they make the switch to pharmacy students and, except in rare cases like @PAtoPharm, it becomes too late?

"except in rare cases like @PAtoPharm, it becomes too late" 🤣

 

[PAtoPharm]

"except in rare cases like @PAtoPharm, it becomes too late" 🤣

Pharmacy school wasn't a total bust for me. At least I had the opportunity to raise my GPA in a relatively short period of time, which is what I was going to have to do anyways to have a shot at getting accepted to PA school or of getting re-accepted to AA school.

 

[Amphetamine Salts]

Pharmacy school wasn't a total bust for me. At least I had the opportunity to raise my GPA in a relatively short period of time, which is what I was going to have to do anyways to have a shot at getting accepted to PA school or of getting re-accepted to AA school.

i have a question for you, why are you insistent on going to one of these higher education schools? have you ever thought of saying "**** this i'm going to hustle to make money". why are you even going to PA or AA school? it doesn't seem like you have a remote interest for that, seems like you're insisting on higher education being the holy grail of success. also, i personally think you should have finished what you started. switching between different schools and programs absolutely SUCKS. all that debt, all that time. finish what you started, always

 

[PAtoPharm]

i have a question for you, why are you insistent on going to one of these higher education schools? have you ever thought of saying "**** this i'm going to hustle to make money". why are you even going to PA or AA school? it doesn't seem like you have a remote interest for that, seems like you're insisting on higher education being the holy grail of success. also, i personally think you should have finished what you started. switching between different schools and programs absolutely SUCKS. all that debt, all that time. finish what you started, always

Part of my reasoning is that AA/PA school will actually end up costing less in the long run than it would've cost me to just finish pharmacy school. That's not even taking into consideration the fact that the job market in either of those professions is so much better off, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. If I could go back, I would've considered doing something like an associates or bachelors program to become a radiation therapist followed by a one-year certificate program to become a dosimetrist earning $110k+ for less than $30k total in loans to pay back. It's unreal that there are now multiple career paths to earning a six-figure income that involve spending so much less money and time in school than it takes to become a pharmacist, and which also benefit from having much better job markets than pharmacy as well.

What's the point in someone finishing what they started (pharmacy school in this case), just for the sake of being able to say they finished it? Especially when the future looks this bleak on an industry-wide scale, it seems like a terrible idea to follow through on becoming a pharmacist just for the sake of making a statement.

 

[PharmtoCS]

i have a question for you, why are you insistent on going to one of these higher education schools? have you ever thought of saying "**** this i'm going to hustle to make money". why are you even going to PA or AA school? it doesn't seem like you have a remote interest for that, seems like you're insisting on higher education being the holy grail of success. also, i personally think you should have finished what you started. switching between different schools and programs absolutely SUCKS. all that debt, all that time. finish what you started, always

lol I think he is at the bargaining stage now. He definitely showed his denial (not listening to us when we told him not to go to pharmacy school) and anger (being rude, calling us names, etc) phases.

I wonder how he will be like when he shows his depression stage.

 

[PAtoPharm]

lol I think he is at the bargaining stage now. He definitely showed his denial (not listening to us when we told him not to go to pharmacy school) and anger (being rude, calling us names, etc) phases.

I wonder how he will be like when he shows his depression stage.

Bargaining, depression stages? What are you talking about? What, exactly, am I bargaining over?

... Oh, I'm assuming you've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to get accepted to any other health professions programs? I'm not putting a play-by-play on here, but you'd be surprised at how welcoming programs (yes, including established, well-reputed ones) in at least one of those professions are to applicants like myself.

 

[Apotheker2015]

Sorry, I'll try on not being so verbose. Old work habits die hard.

Nope. No need to do that. You always bring value to the table.

 

[Apotheker2015]

Job market sucks. You are a slave to whoever your boss is. I wouldn't do this again.

Amen

 

[Old]

i don't think pharmacy school was INTENDED to be a scam, i feel that it sort of became that way. overtime as the saturation grew, now it's starting to feel very much like just milking the cow until the inevitable crash happens. i think job outlook for pharmacist is something like 1-3%. that's pretty embarrassing. there's just 0 need for additional pharmacists, no one gives a **** about them. compared to something like a solar panel installer which has 100%+ job outlook, and requires merely a high school diploma to be offered employment (of course you'll need some training/certifications i believe). but anyway, a job like that which pays ~35-40kish a year is probably the smarter decision to make in terms of raw finances compared to going to pharmacy school. go to school for 6 years, make 100k+/yr, and be in tremendous debt in a career with **** opportunity? or go to school for 0 years, do some minimal training, little to no debt, tremendous job opportunity, and make 35-40k/yr. seems like an obvious choice

I know people who own/operate a food booth at a couple of county fairs per year. They clear over 20k in cash profit. Work a couple of weeks a year and clear over 20k. Doubt much gets reported for taxes. I am sure if they went to 5 or 6 fairs a year selling the same food product they would make as much as pharms do working all year. So, who is smarter?

 

[awval999]

I know people who own/operate a food booth at a couple of county fairs per year. They clear over 20k in cash profit. Work a couple of weeks a year and clear over 20k. Doubt much gets reported for taxes. I am sure if they went to 5 or 6 fairs a year selling the same food product they would make as much as pharms do working all year. So, who is smarter?

You can only "hide" so much cash profit. $10k over the course of the year, probably. Sure, deposit $200/week in cash.

But not $100k. No way to get that much into a bank or whatever without bank SARs.

 

[Old]

You can only "hide" so much cash profit. $10k over the course of the year, probably. Sure, deposit $200/week in cash.

But not $100k. No way to get that much into a bank or whatever without bank SARs.

Do you have to put it in the bank? Buy gold, silver or antiques. Use it for household expenses, car repairs etc. The list is endless. We all kind of look down on food vendors at fairs etc. After all we have a college degree. Our feet don't even hit the ground when we walk. They aren't 100k in debt, answering the drive thru, doctors calls and bitching customers. Often times they are smarter than we are.

 

[DrVader]

Bargaining, depression stages? What are you talking about? What, exactly, am I bargaining over?

... Oh, I'm assuming you've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to get accepted to any other health professions programs? I'm not putting a play-by-play on here, but you'd be surprised at how welcoming programs (yes, including established, well-reputed ones) in at least one of those professions are to applicants like myself.

Have you considered going into business? You have the personality for it?

 

[owlegrad]

I know people who own/operate a food booth at a couple of county fairs per year. They clear over 20k in cash profit. Work a couple of weeks a year and clear over 20k. Doubt much gets reported for taxes. I am sure if they went to 5 or 6 fairs a year selling the same food product they would make as much as pharms do working all year. So, who is smarter?

That is amazing but hardly representative of most food venders. I know someone who tried to operated a food booth at a county fair and faired (get it?!) terribly, she had to stop due to not turning a profit. How many units of food do you have to sell to clear 20k in profit?

 

[PAtoPharm]

Have you considered going into business? You have the personality for it?

No; I really don't think I do.

 

[PharmtoCS]

Pharmacy school wasn't a total bust for me. At least I had the opportunity to raise my GPA in a relatively short period of time, which is what I was going to have to do anyways to have a shot at getting accepted to PA school or of getting re-accepted to AA school.

Bargaining, depression stages? What are you talking about? What, exactly, am I bargaining over?

... Oh, I'm assuming you've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to get accepted to any other health professions programs? I'm not putting a play-by-play on here, but you'd be surprised at how welcoming programs (yes, including established, well-reputed ones) in at least one of those professions are to applicants like myself.

"oh, maybe I did get something from pharmacy school after all"

 

[Chriskahn]

It always makes me laugh when I hear about easy jobs that anyone can do without a degree that makes bank. "I know this one guy that sells hot dogs at a fair over the summer and he makes 80k every summer just selling hot dogs! You should really get into the hot dog business!"

Then someone actually bites on the idea and invest in a hot dog stand and end up losing money because nobody wants to spend $7 for a crappy hotdog when they can spend $8 for a slightly less crappy hot dog with cream cheese from another hot dog stand 10 yards away

 

[BidingMyTime]

i am essentially graduated and just waiting until it's July for me to take the naplex. at the moment my primary issue is finding a job, which we all know is the major issue with pharmacy at this time

FYI, no employer cares that you are "essentially" graduated, and nobody is going to hire you now for a job you won't be able to start until next June. 90 days ahead of time is the maximum you can expect, and if you are in a saturated area (including all major US cities), then nobody is going to hire you until you have your license in hand.

Part of my reasoning is that AA/PA school will actually end up costing less in the long run than it would've cost me to just finish pharmacy school. That's not even taking into consideration the fact that the job market in either of those professions is so much better off, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. If I could go back, I would've considered doing something like an associates or bachelors program to become a radiation therapist followed by a one-year certificate program to become a dosimetrist earning $110k+ for less than $30k total in loans to pay back. It's unreal that there are now multiple career paths to earning a six-figure income that involve spending so much less money and time in school than it takes to become a pharmacist, and which also benefit from having much better job markets than pharmacy as well.
What's the point in someone finishing what they started (pharmacy school in this case), just for the sake of being able to say they finished it? Especially when the future looks this bleak on an industry-wide scale, it seems like a terrible idea to follow through on becoming a pharmacist just for the sake of making a statement.

Blah, blah, blah. You really didn't answer his question. Except you did. He was asking why you want/wanted to be a pharmacist/PA/AA. And your answer is money. And that was the point of his question, picking a career goal solely because of money is a horrible idea and destined to failure. As you've seen twice now. I've told you this before, so I know you don't care, but I'll repeat it again for the newbies reading here. FIRST AND FOREMOST, look at your interests AND aptitudes. THEN look at what sort of job would utilize those interests and aptitudes. THEN AND ONLY THEN if money is your primary objective, pick the job utilizing your interests and aptitudes that will make you the most money. So the real question you were being asked PA, is what are your interests and aptitudes that led you to consider being a pharmacist/PA/AA? And it's the fact that you've never articulated any, that people don't have high hopes of your succeeding in this 3rd professional school go-around.

 

[PAtoPharm]

FYI, no employer cares that you are "essentially" graduated, and nobody is going to hire you now for a job you won't be able to start until next June. 90 days ahead of time is the maximum you can expect, and if you are in a saturated area (including all major US cities), then nobody is going to hire you until you have your license in hand.



Blah, blah, blah. You really didn't answer his question. Except you did. He was asking why you want/wanted to be a pharmacist/PA/AA. And your answer is money. And that was the point of his question, picking a career goal solely because of money is a horrible idea and destined to failure. As you've seen twice now. I've told you this before, so I know you don't care, but I'll repeat it again for the newbies reading here. FIRST AND FOREMOST, look at your interests AND aptitudes. THEN look at what sort of job would utilize those interests and aptitudes. THEN AND ONLY THEN if money is your primary objective, pick the job utilizing your interests and aptitudes that will make you the most money. So the real question you were being asked PA, is what are your interests and aptitudes that led you to consider being a pharmacist/PA/AA? And it's the fact that you've never articulated any, that people don't have high hopes of your succeeding in this 3rd professional school go-around.

You know how there are those people in pharmacy, medical, dental, PA school that make you think, "geez, how did that guy/girl manage to even pass general chemistry or physics?" And then you're even more shocked when you hear about them graduating a year or two later? Yeah, at least two of those people managed to pass AA school and graduated in the c/o 2017 that I would've been in. During a lab session, the instructor asked one of these students what they should do for a patient in "X" scenario, and they answered, "Make them hypoxic." That's like the anesthesia equivalent of a pharmacist telling someone, "Take 5 g of cyanide." Some of these people are boneheaded stupid, and yet they just barely managed to pass. It's all a matter of putting in more practice time outside of regular lab hours, which I failed to do the first time around.

I don't even care about arguing with people on here anymore. At this point, all responses from others revolve around some variation of "We've already paid off our loans and saved up for retirement, but what have you done?," instead of refuting any of the fact-based statements I make about the current state of the pharmacy profession. At this point, I'm just passively watching the black hole that the entire profession is swirling around, just because it's both entertaining and awe-inspiring to witness the for-the-worse developments that seem to be occurring on a near-weekly basis. How could things possibly get worse for pharmacy? My money's on a wage freeze at CVS.

 

[Deja]

wait, do you guys really just take the yelling by patient/other health care providers without saying anything back? lol

 

[BidingMyTime]

"Take 5 g of cyanide." Some of these people are boneheaded stupid, and yet they just barely managed to pass. It's all a matter of putting in more practice time outside of regular lab hours, which I failed to do the first time around.

No, the reason they passed is because they had a passion about the subject, because inspite of their boneheadedness, they couldn't imagine doing anything else, so they figured it out, put in all the extra studying time needed, and made it work.

But when one doesn't have any passion for a subject, then it's pretty hard to force even minimal studying.

Which is exactly why you said you couldn't do pharmacy. That you had no passion for it, that you didn't care about the subjects, and you couldn't force yourself to study for it.

This is why picking a job solely for money is always a bad idea. One should pick a career field because one has interest or aptitude in the subject (and as you pointed out, sometimes a lack of aptitude can be overcome with very hard work....but one can't force an interest or passion for a subject.)

You know this, yet you want to deny it and try yet a 3rd time.

 

[Old]

That is amazing but hardly representative of most food venders. I know someone who tried to operated a food booth at a county fair and faired (get it?!) terribly, she had to stop due to not turning a profit. How many units of food do you have to sell to clear 20k in profit?

I have known these people for over 20 years. They purchased an existing business from another vendor. Actually have a wooden structure on the fair grounds to sell their product. Came up with something different, kept everything clean and are very friendly with customers. They have been clearing around 20k per year. Not a made up story. Do all food vendors make that much I don't know. Know of a person who bought a hot dog cart to pull behind their car. Got a city permit and sold hot dogs by the little park in the town for several hours daily. Mainly during the lunch hour. Other restaurants complained to the city which made purchase a daily permit and other requirements that put them out of business. They were patients/customers of mine. They were clearing 200 to 250 a day, 5 days a week. Just a summer business but they did well until the city put them out of business. My point is there are many other ways to make a living or extra money without going 200k in debt. Survival skills so to speak.

 

[BidingMyTime]

They have been clearing around 20k per year. Not a made up story. Do all food vendors make that much I don't know. . My point is there are many other ways to make a living or extra money without going 200k in debt. Survival skills so to speak.

No. The vast majority of food venders don't make 20K in a few weeks of work. Not that I doubt your story, MTM businesses exist by showing all the converts the one or two stories of someone who became a millionaire working for the MTM. But the vast majority of people going into to MTM or the food business are going to fail.

But, you are correct, in that there are plenty of ways to make a good living without becoming a pharmacist.

 

[Old]

No. The vast majority of food venders don't make 20K in a few weeks of work. Not that I doubt your story, MTM businesses exist by showing all the converts the one or two stories of someone who became a millionaire working for the MTM. But the vast majority of people going into to MTM or the food business are going to fail.

But, you are correct, in that there are plenty of ways to make a good living without becoming a pharmacist.

Don't know about the food business for others , only the people I know personally. I think selling at fairs and events are different than the grind it out mom and pop restaurant business. I think that most of the owners operate on a cash only basis for everything that they do. Difficult to tell how much they earn. Just because they drive an old car and wear old clothes doesn't mean they are poor. some of the wealthiest people I ever met lived in a very rural area. You would never know they had a dime. In actuality they inherited 100's of millions of dollars in trust funds. People used to try to give them winter coats since theirs were torn. They got quite a chuckle out of that. really nice people.

 

[Rouelle]

You can only "hide" so much cash profit. $10k over the course of the year, probably. Sure, deposit $200/week in cash.

But not $100k. No way to get that much into a bank or whatever without bank SARs.

I would think you could “hide” much more than $10k/yr. Less online shopping, more in-store. All groceries, gas, clothes, department store purchases, Christmas/birthday gifts, restaurant/bar tabs get paid cash. Seems like you could easily utilize $50k cash if you really tried.

 

[quickpic007]

You know how there are those people in pharmacy, medical, dental, PA school that make you think, "geez, how did that guy/girl manage to even pass general chemistry or physics?" And then you're even more shocked when you hear about them graduating a year or two later? Yeah, at least two of those people managed to pass AA school and graduated in the c/o 2017 that I would've been in. During a lab session, the instructor asked one of these students what they should do for a patient in "X" scenario, and they answered, "Make them hypoxic." That's like the anesthesia equivalent of a pharmacist telling someone, "Take 5 g of cyanide." Some of these people are boneheaded stupid, and yet they just barely managed to pass. It's all a matter of putting in more practice time outside of regular lab hours, which I failed to do the first time around.

I don't even care about arguing with people on here anymore. At this point, all responses from others revolve around some variation of "We've already paid off our loans and saved up for retirement, but what have you done?," instead of refuting any of the fact-based statements I make about the current state of the pharmacy profession. At this point, I'm just passively watching the black hole that the entire profession is swirling around, just because it's both entertaining and awe-inspiring to witness the for-the-worse developments that seem to be occurring on a near-weekly basis. How could things possibly get worse for pharmacy? My money's on a wage freeze at CVS.

Wow!! I'd be bitter too if my "boneheaded stupid" AA classmates graduated and started printing money/saving lives while I removed myself/was removed from AA school and went to a high dollar pharmacy school. Even more bitter if I did not finish pharmacy while new grads and current pharmacists start at 120K plus, many of whom have zero debt thanks to working hard/state school.

I will give you credit for assessing the job markets mostly correct though. There are better deals than RX, pa np dosim compsci accounting etc

PS I would have Loved a wage freeze at my CVS wage when I was still there. Holla!!!