Don't expect much from me any time soon.

I have three papers due this week and six finals next week, so don't expect me to post anything of substance any time soon.

I'm officially a clinican...I guess.

Tonight was the Bowl of Hygeia. I had to eat a dinner (got some damn good chicken...) and was then forced to sit through numerous speaches just to walk across a stage to get a lapel pin. I remember a poem in there that was tangential to Dr. Suess, but the rest of the speech time was spent daydreaming about how cool it would be to be the guy AAA pays to go around the country rating hotels and restaurants. Free food, free shelter, get to visit EVERYWHERE, AND they give you extra special attention. That would be the sweetest job ever outside of porn star.

Anyway, I wasn't allowed to do anything clinically before I got this pin, but now that I do have said pin, I apparently magically transformed into a person that has permission to treat people in the time it took me to walk across the stage. I thought I felt something funny. From what I've gathered, the pin is like the rings the kids had in Captain Planet. I think I got the pharmacy equivalent of the Earth ring because I keep pointing it at crap and nothing cool happens. Why can't I be the guy that gets the pharmacy equivalent of the fire ring? That would be so useful in the real world. I can see it now.......



Oh well. I think I'm allowed to officially call myself "PharmD Candidate" now. Woohoo.

What's in a name?

I am apathetic because I don't care about school. The prefix a- means against, not, or without. Thus, as a person that doesn't care about school anymore, I am, ergo, not pathetic. Does that mean that people who care about school are then pathetic by definition?

Journal Club.

So I had to get up at 7AM to go do a journal club doohicky at school. We knocked it out of the park. Others...not so much. I was talking to a guy in another room with another professor doing the grilling and I guess they started whipping out questions about intent-to-treat, 5 bazillion different tests statistical test, and other worthless things only a person specializing in drug information would know. It was so bad that my fellow apathetic student actually said, and I am not making this up, "Why are you asking us questions from a class we took two years ago? None of it is in the study! I don't remember any of that crap!" I would have died laughing. That's even more brazen than me. There is no purpose at all to a journal club. It's just to torture us. Just let me get my info from the pharmacists' letter or clinical pharmacology online. They think for me.

You know what pisses me off? Those damned shirts they sell. You know, the ones designed to be worn with a tie? First, they are packaged into a fold that is secured by about 2 dozen straight pins. I swear to God, the next time I buy a shirt, I'm covering my entire body in lidocaine. I felt like a test dummy for a 17 guage 1970's lancet device. Then you have the shirt. Uncomfortable as hell. The tie is what gets me. I guess the knot looks cool, but has anyone ever actually analyzed how retarded a tie looks? Look at me, I have a giant piece of cloth dangling from my neck. What the hell purpose does it serve? Further, aren't we supposed to try to be intellectuals using our brains? Why would I want to tie a device around my neck that would constrict blood flow to my brain?

I hereby proclaim that the poster UTCPharm on SDN forums be issued the following certificate:

Why school is retarded.

At some point every school of pharmacy needs to insert about 8 arbitrary classes into it's cirriculum to surround patho/med chem/pharmacology classes in order to give the illusion that pharmacy school is an intensive 4 year doctorate program. It's really, really sad. It's so sad that it has sucked all of the life out of my soul. It started as I was sitting in this retarded public health class they are moving from the 3rd year to 1st year begining this year. That means we take it with the 1st years, which means everything is dumbed down AND 2/3 of the lecture is describing things we have gone over many times in the "triumvant of hard" (is triumvant a word? EDIT: No.) med chem, pharmacol, and patho/therapeutics.

So I'm sitting there in a diabetes lecture, about to stab my eyes out, and I decide I am going to protest by leaving. So in the middle of lecture, I grabbed my crap and I left. A month later, I take the test, without any real notes to speak of, and I get an "A". So I begin to wonder, "you know, in kinetics, he really doesn't teach, he just kinda goes over powerpoints." A couple months of never going to class later and I still have a very solid B in the course (something like an 88%). Same with patho/therapeutics. I don't go to lecture and my grade is comparable to any other patho class where I have wasted my time to have powerpoints read to me. The only classes I go to are that public health class (the damned woman started taking attendence) and some class about reading pharmacoeconomic literature where the guy also takes attendence.

So I am in class 4 hours a week, plus a 3 hour lab and I STILL have a 3.0 GPA. Now it's not as good as in the past when I worshiped my notes for hours at a time, but the improved quality of life is worth it. Here's a diagram:



See, I am clearly more happy. So to hell with class. Stay home, be a slacker, get the notes off someone else, and be apathetic. It's the key to happiness.

Ahoy-hoy

Good day. I'm a guy from the wonderfully podunt state of West Virginia caught up in the ridiculously pretentious world of healthcare. A pair of opposing forces that set a stage for numerous bizzare and perplexing events. What do you do if a man presents to your pharmacy with a wound from a shotgun shell grazing his chest falls in his outhouse and 14 month old feces gets into his blood stream? Only West "by god" Virginny.

Some more random things about me: I hate people from New Jersey, I have no soul, and I hate drug companies with a passion. I am also the founder of ASSPhART, the Apathetic Society of Student Pharmacists Avoiding Rigorous Tasks. The club is dedicated to doing nothing and avoiding work. So far I am the only member and the only chapter is at my school, WVU (not officially recognized). If you want to join, leave a comment or something. You can send me a check for the $20 registration fee by emailing me for my address.

Stay tuned, I may or may not amuse you to some degree.