medder said:
Do you have weekends free? Summers free? !
If so, do you feel pressured to research or volunteer during your free time, or is it truly free time?
I ask from ther perspective of a pre-med student turning to pharmacy. After researching med student lifestyle, I don't think I can deal with the competitive nature of those 8 years - researching, volunteering, and kissing ass just to get that residency, etc...
It seems like for pharmacy you can do well for yourself by studying and making the grades without the added pressures of needing tons of research/volunteering/brown-nosing to look good. I want my free time to be mine for non-pharmacy related extracurriculars.
Thanks!
I'll answer your questions in order:
Yes, weekends are free, but most people I know work, cuz they're poor and already in debt. My pharmacy school has no breaks at all, but that's only because my school has coop, where instead of say, summer break, our school pretty much gets our feet in the door and makes us get jobs for 4 months at a time. Most schools have at least 1 summer off; not that it really matters because most people are interns in the summer anyways.
It's mostly free time, not pushed to volunteer or anything, but like I said, most of my friends (who don't have daddy/mommy paying their bills) are working to pay rent/have beer money. And when they're not working, they're either getting drunk, getting high, or sleeping, studying too if they're in classes. Not that these are uncommon for college students but at my school, pharmacy to me has a disproportionate amount of alcoholics, which I kinda attribute to how hard it is compared to like, business school; but I digress. The good students study pretty often, and when exams come around, you usually see your whole class, spread out in cliquey groups in the library.
However, I'd also like to point out that I go to a school where the majority of Pharm.D candidates are undergrads (myself included) as opposed to BS holders. Consequently, what I see pharm school as might be different compared to more of a graduate school like UCSF, where I like to assume that everyone has ridiculous undergrad credentials and had to do premed-like overachieving activities to get in, and continue to do overachieving activities.
If you want to go work in hospital pharmacy once you get a Pharm.D, there's a big trend toward having a residency on your resume/CV/whatever. To get a residency, it's preferrential to have lots of extracurriculars and projects and etc, and that's more in the realm of MD overachieving/asskissery. However, it's really not that big a deal, most people I know are involved in APhA or ASHP, and go to midyear converences and stuff. The stuff they want to see is more along the lines of special projects/presentations and being in pharm organizations, as opposed to building houses with habitat for humanity or working in a lab to get your name published. And even then, it's not really that hard, since some internships I know of require you to do projects, and being in a pharm organization involves paying dues and going to meetings.\
In summation, my life is all school and work, but I have plenty of time to go out and do my own thing. It's hard to juggle everything at once, like studying, chores, cooking/eating, working, hanging out, and making money, but most of those you should be able to handle after undergrad.
Oh yeah, and this is from the viewpoint of general life as a P1/P2, not as a prepharm getting past admissions and being a pharm.d student. Getting accepted to pharm school is a whole nother discussion that I'm unqualified to answer. Hope this all helps...
