What do you wish you had known when you started pharm school?

[legrita]

School starts very soon for the class of 2007/6. P2s, P3s, and P4s+, please enlighten us. Give us the dirt. I need all the advice I can get. Thank you.

Rache

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[legrita]

well I guess I'll try to get this started. Here's what MOST of the med school students said when answering this question:

"Don't go to class unless attendance is requried. I wish I hadn't . Your exams will mostly focus on the most irrelevant trivia from the handouts. Spend your time memorizing as much of that as possible. If you spent from 8-5 studying (go somewhere else, don't stay home), then you'd have much more free time to go out, work out, whatever."





I am currently interning at a hospital and I have had the priviledge of bumping into 2 upperclassmen. They practically gave me the same advice....This is shocking to me as well as a little scary. I can't imagine skipping a Pharm class!!!!! Maybe I think this way because I haven't started. PLease tell me what you think...They said that they preferred spending the class time studying (if the teacher was a bad lecturer) instead of fall asleep in the class.

Also, they said they didn't buy the majority of the textbooks.

For those of you in school already, please let us know....for those of you who aren't...what do you think?

Rache

 

[LVPharm]

Originally posted by legrita
well I guess I'll try to get this started. Here's what MOST of the med school students said when answering this question:

"Don't go to class unless attendance is requried. I wish I hadn't . Your exams will mostly focus on the most irrelevant trivia from the handouts. Spend your time memorizing as much of that as possible. If you spent from 8-5 studying (go somewhere else, don't stay home), then you'd have much more free time to go out, work out, whatever."

Rache

Wow, that's gotta depend on the program, cuz I'd tell you that if I were to skip my 1st year classes and try to rely on the handouts, I would've flunked a great many of the exams. Quite a few of my profs make it a point to leave important stuff out of the handout to encourage attendance, and give pop quizzes that often have questions that...tada!....show up on the exams.

If I had it to do over again...I wouldn't change a thing I would have jumped on a couple of intern positions at the beginning of the year that are no longer available so that I could start accruing hours earlier on...but academically? Not much...maybe spend more time learning pharmacokinetics...I had a brief "end-of-the-year swoon" so I didn't perform quite as well on that exam.

Oh, most of the class material is available on the school's FTP server....(publicly accessible ) No textbooks are required (except for a Pharm Calc book), but I chose to purchase Koda-Kimble's "Applied Therapeutics" Dipiro's "Pharmacotherapy", Goodman & Gilman's, Dr. Lacy's "Drug Information Handbook", and a Remington's.....just to have for my own, and avoid having to fight over copies at the library

 

[rutpharm]

I would advise going to all your classes until you have decided if the class is pointless. If you're not going to learn in class than don't bother going. If you just start skipping classes out of the blue that's probably the quickest way to get kicked out of school.

 

[Modnar]

^^ Not to mention that it's awfully silly to pay all that money to take a class if you aren't going to go.