Breaking Point (with pharmacy school)

I think I am at my breaking point with pharmacy school. University of Houston College of Pharmacy, for all of you prospective pharmacy students. Their expectations have just become completely unreasonable to me.

There is this concept, completely foreign to the administrators, of "give and take". If you have a curriculum that has been known to be intense in past years, what makes you think that it's okay to just keep heaping on the responsibilities and time commitments without working with us to trim the load in other areas? We are only human. We can only take so much.

And by the way-- NEWS FLASH, we have other commitments outside of school. If we were on an isolated island with room, board, and maid service provided then MAYBE we could handle the increasingly unrealistic expectations. Again, NEWS FLASH: I have an apartment I have to clean, meals I need to cook, a husband, laundry. Laundry that has been piling up, a living room that is increasingly cluttered, my waistline is expanding because of increased eating out.

What the hell do these people in charge think we are doing? Sitting around twittling our thumbs, waiting for our next assignment? Oh, I know what they think-- they think we are robots. They think we get home from school and plug ourselves into some machine, go into stand-by, and recharge. Meanwhile in stand-by, we download all the knowledge they just gave us and read the book simultaneously. That way, we can regurgitate it effortlessly and word-for-word on their next exam, which is not only multiple choice, but short answer and fill-in-the-blank.

We are overwhelmed, behind on everything, and constantly stressed out. It is IMPOSSIBLE to be caught up with reading and notes with this schedule, and have any semblance of a life.

I hear what some of the faculty are thinking: It was hard when we went through it, we didn't have any multiple choice exams. Yeah, but you also didn't have as many requirements, either. If all we had was therapeutics and maybe one other class, you bet your ass we could sit down and memorize algorithms and guidelines all damn day.

But we don't just have two classes. We have five. Our last semester of pharmacy school, and we are in class literally every day from 8a-4p. WHEN ARE WE SUPPOSED TO STUDY? WHEN ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DECOMPRESS?

HOW IS THIS REALISTIC?

It's not. It's ridiculous.

And if I survive this semester, and if I somehow manage to get my PharmD, this school will not see a SINGLE CENT of my money. Not only that, but I absolutely will NOT recommend it to prospective students either. There is a reason I have NEVER volunteered to work at the interviews as an ambassador. I can't tell these people with a straight face, that this is the place they want to spend the next four years. Not when it has made me so miserable.

Do we have some great professors? Absolutely. But unfortunately they cannot make up for the absolute disregard in which we are treated. NOTHING is collaborative, it is all a servant-master interplay. Students are the servants, told what to do, and the administration (and some professors) are the dictators.

They have their lip-service Dean's Luncheon bullshit, where issues are raised and practically nothing is ever done. We can negotiate our exam dates. Why thank you mas'sa! But if you had decent coordination between the classes, we would HAVE TO NEGOTIATE exam dates because you would have all gotten together and worked it out yourselves.

Don't kid yourselves, U of H. I can't wait to get the heck out of there. I am a pretty reasonable, hard-working person, but you have pushed me to my absolute limits. I'm done. It's over between us. This is strictly business. And when I leave, that's the last you'll hear of me. Good riddance.

I will be contributing to my esteemed undergraduate school University of Texas at Arlington, where I didn't even get a degree but I was treated with more respect and felt more a part of the community than I EVER have here.

What a joke.

And has anyone even sat down with us and said, "You know what, I know it's difficult to have this new IPPE requirement that will be taking 13 hours out of your week that you would usually have to study. But we are going to work together to make it through this."

Absolutely not. And that is unforgivable.