I've answered this question so many times that I hope that this explanation is consistent with what I've said before.😳
I've always wanted to enter a health-care field because of its direct, positive, and tangible efforts and benefits for my fellow humans. I would have done something with computers had I not learned that my attention span at staring at a computer screen FOR A JOB was low. Of course, the "helping people" reason only went so far and it didn't address which health care field was most palatable to me. With my experiences with nurses and dentists, I knew that the daily routines would be a turnoff everyday. PAs, OTs, PTs, and other allied heath professions didn't fill my need for having a predominant role. No offense to those professions but I felt like that I would always be that figurative "second-fiddle" to someone. I became a pre-med while augmenting my course work with pre-pharmacy courses.
That "second-fiddle" rationale for those other health care professions played part of the role in becoming a pre-med over pre-pharmacy. At the time, I felt that become a physician would put in a better position to directly influence patient health outcomes than a pharmacist would. So, I spent almost three college years gearing toward becoming a physician with pharmacy a continuing interest. That's not to say that pharmacy school was a backup plan; I was doing research while interacting with local pharmacists, pharmacy students, and pre-pharmacy students. Also, I shied away from obvious pre-medicine volunteering positions and selected a patient volunteering position that would serve the diagnosis role of the physician and the counseling role of the pharmacist. I never worked because it would have suggested a strong commitment toward one profession.
Mental fatigue set in in the second semester of the third year and I became more aware of the negative aspects of a physician. The long hours, the on-call, and even the ultra-competitive nature of the pre-meds around me took a toll on my life. From a high school student who drifted to As and a college student who was doing okay with a lot of effort, my life became "tired" as I began losing the motivation to even get out of bed. Dysphoria was common, and depression-like symptoms were occasional It got so bad that I even had a counseling session at one point in my final semester.
A little stress and drama ran my life for the last two years and I did not want my job to amplify that ten fold. At this point, I was around a lot more pre-pharmacy students and my cumulative interactions suggested that pharmacy was a more stable career that had the level of patient influence I desired. So, from a full-fledged pre-med, I turned into a pre-pharmacy/pre-medicine student during the latter half of my undergraduate work and an exclusive pre-pharmacy student during the last year and a half in college. I applied to medicine schools to keep a promise to my parents, but I was going through the motions relative to my more aggressive applications process for pharmacy school.
Despite a stumbling-like finish to my undergraduate degree, I was able to learn about pharmacy to articulate a genuine goal to the unmerciful adcoms who like to figuratively eat "backup pre-meds" for lunch. My desire to go into pharmacy was genuine; that's all that mattered and it showed up in interviews and personal statements. I ended up getting accepted into three pharmacy schools, selected one through a very tough decision, and moved on long before said decision.
I'm now a P1 and I never really care about the "what ifs" during my college years. I plan to work next semester with the excitement with counseling, dispensing, calculating, medication management and all the stuff I've experienced so far in just one semester. I chose correctly.
