I say 16-24 hrs during school, and full time or more during summer, which is what I did.
(1) It's a balancing act, try to be flexible about work within the limits to accommodate tests. Try to anticipate working well ahead of changing study work load.
(2) Be dependable and steady at work. Pharmacy is a small world. Nothing burns bridges faster than be known as a sh*ty unreliable intern.
(3) Good GPA isn't just a number. It's scholarship $$$, awards and honors that you can't buy, tax free, no effect of FAFSA. Working doesn't always pay more than studying more.
(4) Your post graduation plan. Residency? Keep a 3.5 GPA to be safe. Retail? Doesn't matter. Low GPA already, no chance for scholarship $? Might as well work.
(5) type of work. Hospital? You can often study on the job. Retail? No time to even take a piss. Guess which one is easier on your grades.
(6) Scheduling matters. I scheduled to working every weekend, then picked up a open shift when nothing is due. 16-24 hours/wk interfering with school at all.
(7) Summer = $$$. Work 40-60 hours during the summer and you can easily make as much in those 3 mo as in the whole school year. Learn to save rather than spending in on H&B.
Nice poll. Everyone should have answered the "depends on your schedule" question. It also depends on your priorities. If work is what you want to do most, then you can probably work 40+ hours. It won't leave much time for study or social life, but it's doable. If, on the other hand, you want to go to a bunch of basketball games and concerts and go out partying all the time, you may not even have enough time for class, let alone work. I also agree with whoever said it depends on your goals. If you're shooting for Rho Chi/residency, less work will suit you better. If you're pretty set on chain retail pharmacy, you'll want to put in as many hours as you can with a prospective employer and get your foot in the door. In the first year, I worked 25 hours a week outside of pharmacy because I got paid a lot more and I have a lot of bills. It was really hard, and I didn't have time to be very involved in extracurriculars or social events. But it can be done.
I second this. As I mentioned above, I didn't work in a pharmacy during the year, but I started to a couple weeks ago. That's made me a better pharmacist (in training) than the entire first year.
The difficulty of the pharmacy school and the amount of studying one needs to succeed are grossly overrated for most people with intelligence higher than that of my shoes. Most people, who don't have issues like being a single parent with a very young child, or two-hour one way daily commute to and from school, should be able to work 15-20 hours a week and do well in school and still have time to have fun.
It's easy enough to work one or two nights a week (4, 5 or 6 hours) and then work 8, 10 or 12 hours on a weekend. No one actually studies as much as they like to think/say they are. 🙂 And most people don't realize how much time they waste on stupid crap that they can't even remember doing. Like being online, for instance.
Good thing I didn't know that when I was in school! It must have been my ignorance of the fact that allowed me to graduate with a 3.8 GPA working at least 16 hours every week... that's in addition to taking an extra five credit hour foreign language class every semester in P-2 and P-3 years (that's Spanish in P-2 year and Italian in P-3 year), helping take care of my father as he battled cancer during my P-2 year, being very active with a student-run clinic and APhA... and having an hourlong one-way commute every day to top it off. 😀
I did sleep about 5-6 hour a night when I was at school... can't quite do it anymore. Overall, I notice how my body just can't handle some things I used to pull off easily when I was 20. 🙁
Pretty much the same as with research experience. 😀 Business acumen, analytical thinking and communication skills are a lot more important. Though positions like my current one are not entry-level positions, so you can't get them out of school anyway. 🙂
Business intelligence, which means market and competitive analysis to support commercial, scientific, and new business development strategic decisions. Basically, I read a lot about what's going on - be it clinical studies reports, pre-clinical publications, patents, government legislation or regulations, competitor companies' financial reports or press releases, trade journals, internet - a lot of different things. Then I decide what's important and what's not and analyze it and then talk about it with people who will need this information to make decisions. Or, alternatively, people who have a question come to me and ask me to analyze the situation. All kinds of questions from simple and straightforward to very complex. Also it is a very collaborative position, so I interact with almost every department within the company and get their input, or provide my input for them - so I am in the middle of all things and wear a few different hats. That's what makes my job so interesting, and also so challenging. My current position is the third one I hold in this field, and all three have been a little different, but all three I really loved. To me, it's important to enjoy my work, so I am quite picky in terms of both job descriptions and the company climate - in a wrong climate my job would turn from a dream job into a nightmare where I would feel useless and frustrated...
You certainly do. As the amount of information increases, you will fail. No one can know every side effect of every one of 10,000 drugs out there. If you try to memorize them all, you will waste a lot of time and you still will not remember them all accurately, unless you are a robot. You need to learn to separate what's important and what's not, and not waste your time. It's not just about getting grades, it about life in general. 🙂
Pharmacy school IS the time to explore all options. That's why doing things other than studying is so important - you get hands-on experience. And rotations help gain that experience too, but they come during the fourth year - and if you are going to do post-graduate training, you need to be prepared already in October of your fourth year, as ASHP Midyear in early December is when you make your final decision(s).
Again, I am taking this discussion to the Industry 101 thread. 🙂
