Why and How I Ended Up Getting Into Pharmacy School

05/18/2021

With my current job as a COVID clinic pharmacist, I have the pleasure of meeting roughly 180 new faces on the daily. A couple of the most memorable questions I get are, “How did you get into pharmacy?” or “My son/daughter is extremely interested in pharmacy as a career, what tips can you give a college student?”. I will begin to answer these questions by first summarizing my undergraduate career at the University of California, Riverside.

Upon entering college, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. What I did know was that I was interested in studying something related to the life sciences, mathematics, and fitness - a strange combination, I know. The thought of attending graduate school (medical, pharmacy, or physical therapy) was always in the back of my mind. To keep my options open, I chose Biological Sciences as my major, as this would cover all prerequisites I needed for the possibility of graduate school in the health sciences. I prepared myself well for this possibility by maintaining a competitive GPA and obtaining various leadership positions throughout college. Fast-forward to my third year at UCR.

It was the summer before my third year at UCR, and I knew it was time to get serious about choosing a career path. Most graduate health science programs open up their applications in the summer. Students usually begin applying the summer before their senior year, to be able to enroll the following year. Still not knowing what I wanted to do, one of my friends suggested I get into some sort of volunteer program to “test the waters”. Within the next month, I applied and accepted a volunteer position at Kaiser Permanente’s 24-hour outpatient pharmacy at the Riverside Medical Center. Each week I would spend about 16 hours acting as a pharmacy concierge and shadowing pharmacists. I took note of the organized workflow, the easygoingness of the staff, and especially the compensation pharmacists received. I felt like I now had enough information, to make the decision.

With pharmacy experience under my belt, I figured it seemed like a pretty structured and chill 6-figure job: +1 for pharmacy. At the time, one of my main hobbies was bodybuilding and supplementation (pre-workouts, protein powders, creatines, etc.). I was genuinely interested in how these compounds could interact with our bodies, to increase energy and stimulate growth. Another +1 for pharmacy/pharmacology and another reason to choose it as a career. I had many friends going the medical route, and I knew it was a much more rigorous path to follow: +1 for pharmacy. The nail in the coffin was researching different pharmacy schools within California, and realizing I would be a competitive candidate for my top 3 schools. Looking back, the reasons I came up with for myself weren’t the strongest… but that’s a discussion for another article!

And thus, I graduated UCR and applied to pharmacy school in the summer of 2015 (yes, I took a gap year), and enrolled at the USC School of Pharmacy in the fall of 2016.

UCR graduation in June of 2015.