Quitting pharmacist job without notice
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No, that is a very important consideration to take when you are deciding a career. It's one of the most important decisions you can make in your entire life, and despite all of the kids idealizing about passion, ROI is a very mature thing to take into consideration. I chose pharmacy because it made sense at the time, but if I were to look into a new career now it would rank much lower for reasons like this.
The pharmacist at the store up the road from my home store quit midshift today. I had to leave my store and go over there to finish up his shift. Day two of being a pharmacist was an interesting day.
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I think it's also important to think about what you really want to do with your life as well. You will have a high quality of life even with your student loans. My debt is about $15o,ooo and I have monthly payments of around $1300. It's a lot to pay, but I still am better off than most people. If you work for a non-profit, which most hospitals are, you qualify for 10 year loan forgiveness. I know I said it's a responsible thing to think about ROI, but at the same time you have to consider your quality of life and job satisfaction. It's not an easy question. I guess you just have to focus on your goals and decide what will take you there. I know many of us have cautioned against pharmacy because of the job market, but that doesn't mean you can't succeed in this field. However, pursuing an MD/DO would be more lucrative and a more secure path to a solid income. Would you rather be a PIC or a primary care doc? Two very different jobs but with potentially similar pay as you mentioned.
There are as many answers to your question as there are people on this earth. However, and this may contradict things I have said to you in the past, if I were you I would think hard on continuing with pharmacy. You are already accepted to start this fall. How much longer would it take to get accepted into med school? Do you have the pre-reqs completed? Are you competitive? Are you willing to wait another year? I know you were in school before, so you are probably closer to my age than a typical applicant. Are you willing to postpone starting your life any longer? Maybe you are. If your ambitions are as such, you should go for the DO. If you think you want to pursue surgery or whatever, then maybe you should take that path.
Pharmacy is a rough place right now. There are new graduates who can't find jobs. However, you are in the SE and that region is not as bad as the NE. No one can predict the future, but you are in an area where opportunities still exist. I graduated in 2013 and landed a clinical job out of school, no residency, in Florida. Three years later I moved into an informatics position and make a retail salary while working M-F, no holidays, no weekends. You are in an area where you can get these jobs without a residency, although you'll need work experience. If you act now you may be able to secure your place.
Even so, the "lab" part of medical school is going to be far more intense than the lab part of AA school. Bear in mind, only the first 2 years of med school are didactic work, the 3 and 4 th year are spent at the hospital doing rotations (or whatever they are called in medical school, plus you have to get through the 1st, intense intern year, before you will move on to the less intense specialty years (and getting into the specialty you want will be highly dependent on your grades during your "lab" 3rd & 4th year.
Of course anything is possible, bu it does seem like the odds are against someone who flunked out of AA school being a success in med school (actually probably even being admitted to med school.) You are going to have to have a very good explanation as to why you will be able to succeed in med school when you didn't in AA school, and telling your interviewer that you expect the hospital part of med school to be less intense than AA school, will not get you admitted. If you are serious about this, you are going to have to show that you've learned to deal with high stress situations better than you were capable of in your AA days.
But it wasn't just a "single F grade", it was your failing out of a professional school in the healthcare field, it was your inability to graduate and be a practicing AA because of it. And yes, I really do think medical schools are going to look at that. Medical schools want to graduate students, it looks bad when they don't, so they only want to accept students that they are 99% sure will be able to graduate. The fact that were unable to graduate from a lesser degree program in the medical field such as AA, will make them extremely wary about taking a change on you by admitting you.
And honestly, I have my doubts about you as well. You came in here all gung-ho about how pharmacy would be your thing, when you really didn't understand anything at all about pharmacy and the daily stresses of the job. I am thinking the same is probably true of you and medical school, I don't think the picture you have in your mind of what medical school, internship/residency, and being a doctor entails matches the reality of medical school, internship/residency, and what being a doctor entails.
And I think you are in denial, if you really don't think the process of becoming a doctor will entail the exact kind of high pressure environment that kept you from graduating from AA school. You say you don't want to be an EMT because of the pressure, do you really think you aren't going to have to respond to codes in the process of becoming a doctor (and it will be worse than AA school, because you will be responding to codes after having worked 80 hours in a week and the past 24 hours with no sleep.) You *will* have to do this before you get to do your easy PM&R field....and just like the majority of pharmacists end up in retail even though the majority want to get into hospital, the majority of doctors end up in a primary care field (IM, peds, etc.) Just like one should NOT go to pharmacy school, unless they would be happy working retail, you should not go to med school unless you would be happy working in primary care--because statistically you will not get a PM&R residency, you are going to get a primary care residency.
Edited to add...but why ask here, why don't you go over to the med boards and ask them what they think your chances are of admission and graduation from a med school?
@PAtoPharm , please don't take this the wrong way because I'm trying to be kind: you seem really lost right now, and that means this is not a good time for you to go back to school. Ask your pharmacy school if they'll let you defer admission for a year and then spend that year working in a pharmacy and volunteering in other health care fields. Figure out what it is that makes you choke in high stress situations and determine whether there's anything you can do to prevent that. Regardless of which health care field you wind up in, you'll have several years of high stress, high acuity work before you're qualified for the cushy gigs.
Yes, I am saying that it sounds like you do not have the right personality for a health care field. At least as an active practitioner, you could probably seek to get into healthcare administration. I think your being unable to handle high-stress situations is the issue. Can you overcome this? Perhaps with the right counseling, management strategies. But I think you need to do this before you commit to another high debt school or you could very well end up with more debt and no degree (or a degree but an inability to practice in your field.) Or maybe consider an ancillary field like nutritionist or speech therapist.
I could be wrong about this, but I think you have to do an internship year before you get into the residency (although the acceptances can be all-in-one, where you are already accepted into the program and you will do your internship year as part of the program.) The internship year can be more or less hardcore than your residency, depending on what specialty you are going into.
You say they are attending programs where they won't be working more than 40 - 45 hrs/week--I'm not clear, is this a promise made to them for future years and they are currently working 80hrs/week, or is the 40 -45 hrs/week to kick in when they hit their fellowship years?
That could be true (although it seems like the adcom isnt willing to say that you would have a good chance at getting admitted at his/her school)--but there are risks with attending a newer school, which doesn't mean you shouldn't go to a newer school, as long as you are aware of the very real risks going in.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. You're positive that you want to do medicine instead of pharmacy now? First, how can you know, when you have so little experience with either field? And second, if you're certain you don't want to do pharmacy, call the school today and tell them you've changed your mind. If you're on the fence about pharmacy, call the school today and ask if you can defer your acceptance for a year. Pharmacy school will only benefit you if you want to be a pharmacist, and there's someone on the waitlist right now who would be thrilled to have your spot. School doesn't start for what, 3 weeks or more? That's plenty of time to find a waitlister who wants the spot - heck, I know a guy who got in off the waitlist only one day before classes started.
There's nothing wrong with being unsure of what you want to do for your career or taking a year off before professional school to get work experience and make sure you're doing the right thing. Going to professional school when you don't have experience in the field, don't know what you're getting into, and are thinking about an entirely different career path is a recipe for disaster. There's still time for you to avoid that.
As for whether you can get into DO school, it would be a good idea to go over to the DO forums as BidingMyTime suggested. I'm sorry to say I think your chances are dismal, but you'd get better information if you ask people who've actually been through the process.
Because pharmacy has had an explosion of new/expanded schools over the last 10 years and they've lowered their standards to fill the seats.
The issue isn't whether you handle the suckiness....the issue is whether you can handle the stress and the need to make immediate decisions. This is something you flunked out of AA school for, and this stress will be even more intense in medical school once you start the hospital portion. You have said you still can not handle this sort of life & death decision making stress any better today, than you could in AA school, so there is absolutely no reason to think that you will be able to handle it in med school. *YOU* know you won't be able to, but you are deceiving yourself into thinking that medical school isn't going to be as stressful as AA school, because you plan to go into PMR, ignoring the fact that you will have 2 years of medical school AND a general internship year with stress & life & death decisions, before you are able to settle down into the less stressful PMR residency.
Um yeah, pharmacy schools have a glut of seats & not enough qualified applicants, so they are taking everybody. If medical schools keep expanding, the situation with medical schools will be the same eventually.
You aren't getting it, because you purposefully don't want to get it. It's not about being smart, I believe you are highly intelligent. It's about you having the character fortitude to handle life and death decisions in stressful environments. You have shown that you could not handle this in AA school, you admit that you still can't handle it. THIS is what medical schools will be looking at--their concern is not that you can't do the didatic work, it is that you won't be able to handle the stress of life & death decision making, which you WILL have to do for at least 3 years before you settle into a PM&R residency. Getting a fantastic MCAT score will do nothing to show that you have overcome your inability to handle stressful life & death decision making. I HAVE ALREADY told you this in a previous post, to improve your changes, both of admission AND actually graduating from medical school, you are going to HAVE to learn to handle life & death stresses. You are going to have to be capable of passing that AA test that you couldn't pass (not saying you have to go back and literally pass that test, but you have to be able to handle the stress so well, that if you were given the opportunity to take that test again, that you would pass with flying colors.)
Again, its NOT about your grades. And even if you do get accepted into med school, there is no reason to think you will graduate when you have done nothing to handle your stress program. You gave yourself the real answer in a previous post, get qualified as an EMT, work as an EMT, this will be evidence that you can handle the real-life stress of the required clinical years of medical school. (and as I added in a previous post, you need to seek counseling in order to learn to handle this stress, so that you could work successfully as an EMT, because at this point, there is no reason to think you could work as an EMT, given your inability to pass an AA test where nobodies life was actually on the line. If you can't handle a simulated environment, what are you going to do in a real-world environment?)
Yeah, well you could end up with an even more tremendous amount of death if you went into pharmacy or medical school and then couldn't actual graduate and/or work in that profession. I understand you want a job that makes lots of money. But your pursuit of such a job, when you aren't capable of doing such a job (because of your handling of stress, not your grades, in case you forgot) could leave you far financially poor than other options. I would suggest thinking outside of the box, there are many companies that will hire someone with an unrelated degree, because of the diversity of opinion they can bring to the company. There are many kinds of jobs for people with biology degrees besides teaching (albeit you would probably have to move to a different area of the country to get those jobs.) As I mentioned, look into other health care related fields, do you like sales, a biology degree could help you get a job as a drug rep. Yes, none of these jobs are going to make big money, especially starting out, but they could keep you from getting further debt with no guarentee of ever being able to make big money.
You can always score well on step 1 and 2 and get a residency. Your problem is that you have no chance of getting into med school after failing out of another easier professional school. You chose pharmacy instead because of the money, but you aren't dedicated.
I don't want to tell you to work towards medical school, because you could waste 3 years trying to get in. You may also get in, waste another 100k in tuition and fail out again. I don't really think pharmacy is good either, you refuse to work as a tech and even after being accepted are flirting with the idea of declining it. You are not at all dedicated to pharmacy, just dedicated to making $$$
There were students accepted into my school that shouldn't have been. From day one I knew which students had no chance. No surprise when they disappear 3/4 of the way through the year. The school did them no favor by giving them a chance; now they have debt to repay. I don't want this to be you if you bust your ass trying to get into med school. It's not an insult to your intelligence, just my honest advice.
I'd honestly consider other careers. Commercial pilots make 100k/yr. People are constantly screaming computer science and engineering on this site. Optometry and dentistry are generally low pressure and offer the option to own your own practice.
If there is anything outside of healthcare I'd go for it. Healthcare is a total **** show. Pharmacy is a mess dealing with the general public, insurance, nurses and doctors. Chains are buying each other out with the low interest environment. Healthcare is consolidating. Jobs are being cut, resources are being cut, and new schools are cranking out graduates at unsustainable levels. PBM's are dipping into pharmacy profits. The political environment is also pretty hostile right now in regards to healthcare.
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Your academic history is pretty damning, but that's not why I think you won't get into medical school - and if you do, that you probably won't graduate. The biggest red flags for you are that you choke in high stress situations, you can't handle fast-paced high-acuity work, your coping skills aren't very good, and you don't appear to have done anything to rectify these problems. I'll be blunt: those are not traits anybody wants in a doctor.
You're a smart person and you can handle the academic work. However, until you deal with your personal issues, you will not succeed in any healthcare job.
Good news: a biology degree does not limit you to the options you listed! You can find some other options here: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/college/ss/Top-Ten-Jobs-for-Biology-Majors.htm And more here: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/common-jobs-for-majors/physical-and-life-sciences And still more here: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/career/a33055/biology-degree-jobs-career/
I second what BMT said about student loans. I'm guessing you still have loans from your AA program, you might still have some from undergrad, and if you go to pharmacy or medical school, you're looking at another $150K on top of what you've already accrued. If you drop/flunk out of pharmacy or medical school (and again, I have serious doubts about your ability to graduate from either), you still have the debt, you won't be able to pay it off, and that will severely limit your prospects for the rest of your life.
Bear in mind that you will have to work during pharmacy school because the intern hours you get from APPEs and IPPEs may not be enough to meet the licensing requirement in your state. Students don't work for insurance companies or PBMs; they work retail, or more rarely, hospital. They're on the front lines getting shouted at by customers or nurses, they're dealing with insurance company BS and addicts who "need they Vicodans NOW, motherf---er", they're making that STAT IV NOW NOW NOW I NEED IT NOW THIS GUY IS CODING. You're going to need those coping and decision-making skills well before you graduate, and you're going to need to work a few years of stressful jobs before you're qualified for the cushy ones.
Again, I can tell that you don't know what you want, and that's okay! Everybody goes through that at some point in their life - sometimes more than once! But if you're feeling indecisive, it's a bad time to go back to school. Get some work experience, learn to handle stress/anxiety, and try to get a more accurate picture of what you'd be getting yourself into. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by entering a program you can't complete (or find out that you hate after 6 months), and don't take a pharmacy school spot away from someone who genuinely wants to be a pharmacist.
You do realize there is a reason why these people make so much money right? If it were easy everyone and their mother would be a doctor. You failed out of an AA program... getting into a low tier med school will be very difficult in your situation but at the same time it is by far the easiest part of becoming a physician.
I don't know if your stats are competitive or not, but how are you going to convince them that you can handle medical school after failing a program that is considered significantly easier? You haven't convinced me, all you have convinced me is that you want to find the easiest way to a 6 figure paycheck. I know you don't have interest in pharmacy because you refuse to step foot in one.
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Clearly you have not listened to anything you've been told. It's NOT your grades, it's your lack of coping skills and inability to perform in high stress situations. You need to deal with this BEFORE you attend ANY professional school, or you will not finish. You cannot wait until your issues crop up again before you deal with them - and it sounds like you don't want to deal with them at all, which is an excellent way to get them to come back worse than ever. Dealing with high stress, high acuity situations will happen all the time in medical or pharmacy school, and you need to be prepared.
As I've mentioned on this forum before, I get that it sucks to be told you're not cut out for your dream job. When I was a kid, I wanted to be the lead singer of a band... only trouble is that the only way I can carry a tune is if someone wrote "a tune" on a piece of paper, put it in a basket and allowed me to carry the basket. A kind music teacher sat me down and gently told me, "You have other gifts. It's time to dream a different dream." Did it suck to hear that at the time? Yes, absolutely! But it was what I needed to hear, and it helped me get on the track I'm on today.
Frankly, I'm done. If you want to ruin your life and the lives of your patients when you panic in an emergency and do the wrong thing, that's on you. But don't say you weren't warned.
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Sigh. It is apparent that you are not reading my posts. It is also apparent that you want to further ruin your life by taking on more non-dischargeable debt and nothing I say will change your mind. But I will reply in the case that someone with a similar story who is willing to listen to reason someday reads this thread.
YES!!!!! I think you would have failed out for the EXACT same reasons you failed out of AA school, that you could not handle stressful situations requiring life and death decisions. I think if you had went to DO school first, you would have failed out, and then you would have been here debating between going to pharmacy school or PA school and everyone's answers would have been the same.....you would not be capable of handling these careers because you can not handle stressful life and death decisions.
The point of being an EMT is for you to LEARN to handle stressful situations, so you could graduate from medical school. I understand that it would take a lot more time, but the reality is, you need this extra learning to graduate from medical school. a Post-Bac is NOT going to help you handle stressful situations. You need a learning situations that WILL help you learn to handle stress and these situations.
I'm just throwing out ideas. So far, the ONLY jobs you have expressed an interest in, are the ones which seem impossible for you to do because of your character fortitude. There are lots of high paying jobs that don't involve health-care, surely you can find some job that you are actually capable of doing that interest you?
and this is why I concede that you could possibly be accepted to med school. BUT you don't seem to get that you will end up failing out at the end, after several years of debt, just as you did in AA school! It's not about figuring out a way to "trick" the school into acccepting you, its about making sure that *you* are actually capable of graduating before you take on 4 more years of debt. I concede that you are probably quite capable of being smart enough & persistent enough to eventually find a medical school that will accept you. But I don't think you can fake competance during stressful situations, and this is what will keep you from graduating, just as it kept you from graduating from AA school. Wanting something very badly doesn't mean that you are physically capable of doing it.
For someone who values high income, that is a ridiculous risk! You most likely will end up with 3 -4 more years of professional school debt, on top of whatever debt you already owe.....and be back at the table with the starting $30,000 - $40,000 jobs you are now turning your nose up at. Except that $30,000 - $40,000 will by far less, indeed very little, after making your school loan payments each month.
Let me guess, you painted the picture to the adcom as an unfortunate failure in just 1 class (as you have in this thread.) I am guessing you did *not* tell the adcom that you failed out because you couldn't handle doing procedures in a stressful test situation. I suspect if you explained to them the exact nature of why you failed out, you would get a different answer from them.
But whatever. It's your life, ignore all the warning signs and advice. It saddens me at how many people have ended up with huge amounts of debt over college choices they should never have made, and college debt that they will have their social security garnished to pay for (assuming we still have social security, but yes, there are college graduates now having their social security garnished because they can't pay off debt they foolishly took on. ) College is always a risk, but done wisely the risk is small. In your case, the risk is huge, I don't understand why you haven't learned from your failure at AA school, why you seem determined to repeat it with med or pharmacy school, but ultimately, its your life, your decision.
YES!!!!! I think you would have failed out for the EXACT same reasons you failed out of AA school, that you could not handle stressful situations requiring life and death decisions. I think if you had went to DO school first, you would have failed out, and then you would have been here debating between going to pharmacy school or PA school and everyone's answers would have been the same.....you would not be capable of handling these careers because you can not handle stressful life and death decisions.
The point of being an EMT is for you to LEARN to handle stressful situations, so you could graduate from medical school. I understand that it would take a lot more time, but the reality is, you need this extra learning to graduate from medical school. a Post-Bac is NOT going to help you handle stressful situations. You need a learning situations that WILL help you learn to handle stress and these situations.
I'm just throwing out ideas. So far, the ONLY jobs you have expressed an interest in, are the ones which seem impossible for you to do because of your character fortitude. There are lots of high paying jobs that don't involve health-care, surely you can find some job that you are actually capable of doing that interest you?
and this is why I concede that you could possibly be accepted to med school. BUT you don't seem to get that you will end up failing out at the end, after several years of debt, just as you did in AA school! It's not about figuring out a way to "trick" the school into acccepting you, its about making sure that *you* are actually capable of graduating before you take on 4 more years of debt. I concede that you are probably quite capable of being smart enough & persistent enough to eventually find a medical school that will accept you. But I don't think you can fake competance during stressful situations, and this is what will keep you from graduating, just as it kept you from graduating from AA school. Wanting something very badly doesn't mean that you are physically capable of doing it.
For someone who values high income, that is a ridiculous risk! You most likely will end up with 3 -4 more years of professional school debt, on top of whatever debt you already owe.....and be back at the table with the starting $30,000 - $40,000 jobs you are now turning your nose up at. Except that $30,000 - $40,000 will by far less, indeed very little, after making your school loan payments each month.
Let me guess, you painted the picture to the adcom as an unfortunate failure in just 1 class (as you have in this thread.) I am guessing you did *not* tell the adcom that you failed out because you couldn't handle doing procedures in a stressful test situation. I suspect if you explained to them the exact nature of why you failed out, you would get a different answer from them.
But whatever. It's your life, ignore all the warning signs and advice. It saddens me at how many people have ended up with huge amounts of debt over college choices they should never have made, and college debt that they will have their social security garnished to pay for (assuming we still have social security, but yes, there are college graduates now having their social security garnished because they can't pay off debt they foolishly took on. ) College is always a risk, but done wisely the risk is small. In your case, the risk is huge, I don't understand why you haven't learned from your failure at AA school, why you seem determined to repeat it with med or pharmacy school, but ultimately, its your life, your decision.
Yes, I took the time to look up the post you had made on the DO board, you asked what your chances of getting admitted to DO school were when you had a 3.45 GPA and an F grade. You did NOT say anything about completely failing out of a professional school, nor did you say anything about the specifically class you got an F in. You aren't helping yourself by not being honest. Post your entire story over there and then see what sort of answers you get. Because yes, a single F in most classes can be overcome with better study methods, what not, but that is a completely different situation than getting an F in a lab because you couldn't handle the stress of making quick decisions in a test environment--this will not be so easily overcome.
Yes, you need to get counseling. That's the only way to overcome your anxiety issues, if indeed they can be overcome. But you also need to consider the fact that this dream might be unreachable for you.
Last post on this topic, for real this time because it's a waste of my time to say the same stuff for months to someone who doesn't listen: I urge you to call your pharmacy school today and tell them you need to defer your acceptance for a year to get your personal **** together. (You don't need to go into detail; just tell them you have a health issue to sort out.) I urge you to get counseling for your stress/anxiety issues, get work experience in a pharmacy, volunteer in other health care fields, and research job options for people with biology degrees. I urge you to drop your snobby attitude towards non-healthcare fields and consider these options.
PAtopharm, face it. You may have the intellect for a medical career, but you do not have the personality for it. I can tell that even never having ever met you.
There is no disgrace in doing something else. You're definitely not going to get rich bouncing from one failed program to another, that's for sure.
There is no disgrace in doing something else. You're definitely not going to get rich bouncing from one failed program to another, that's for sure.
I don't think that's what they are saying. I really don't think anyone here has any sort of ill will towards you. You have to realize that all we know about you is what is presented here, in anonymous text form. You struggled in a previous healthcare professional program. You may have your reasons, they may be valid, and they may be surmountable. However, it's a good point that something like DO school will see that and they will question it. You will need to have a damn good answer, because those programs are far more competitive than pharmacy these days.
We've seen you come here looking for answers, looking for guidance, and you originally came with a lot of misconceptions about pharmacy. I think you've learned and grown since then for sure, but you can't fault people for thinking you are looking for that magic bullet without really feeling out all of your options or contemplating what you are getting into. Again, no one here knows you as a person. All we see is what is presenting, and I think that leads towards a sometimes callous approach in evaluating someone or their questions.
Could you succeed in a DO program? Sure! The fact that you were able to get into a PA program and make it as far as you did shows that you are an intelligent person. Do you feel ready to handle those challenges? Are you aware of the challenges? Only you can know that.
You just need to make a choice very soon. If I was in your position I would continue with pharmacy school. You are accepted, classes start soon. I think you said you were 28 or around there.. do you want to wait another year to get a start on your professional life? If you really think you'll only be happy as a doctor, then go for it. That career is a special calling. It will consume your life throughout school, residency, and most likely in practice. The advice I was told was to only become a physician if you cannot see yourself doing anything else. At least as a pharmacist you have the luxury of it being a job and not your life. There are many challenges in this profession, and it is on a downward trajectory, but there are far worse ways to make a living.
I guess the bottom line is what do you WANT to do? I struggled when I first started as a pharmacist because I had this grandiose idea of what it meant to be a PharmD based on the ideas fed to me by my school. When I actually started working it was a harsh reality check. Eventually I realized I would never be happy if my self-worth was derived solely from my profession, and as being a pharmacist became less of who I am and more of what I do, I found myself becoming far more satisfied with life.
Anyway, this thread is so far off topic I can't even remember what it was originally about. I know I teased you when you first started posting, but that's just my way of unwinding. I can tell you are dealing with some difficult decisions and I can appreciate how genuine and honest you have been in discussing your thought process here. I wish you the best of luck regardless of the path you choose. Just know that if healthcare doesn't work out, Google pays mad bucks.
