I Went To School To Be A Doctor
Revisiting what I wrote yesterday. You know, about challenging myself to write one blog post per week for 52 consecutive weeks. I don’t think that goal is ambitious enough so I’m upping it to one post per day for 52 consecutive days. Same number of posts to be produced, compressed window of time to establish daily writing habits instead of allowing myself a week’s worth of procrastination before posting… So to re-confirm, one post per day for 52 consecutive days and this is day two. Oh, and I’m also not editing. Editing is a barrier to posting (I tend to edit myself into inaction instead of just moving on. I’m deliberately NOT going to edit this word salad in the spirit of pushing ‘Publish’.
You read the title correctly, I went to school to be a doctor. Technically… By doctor I mean pharmacist, which is a doctor, but who do you know that refers to their pharmacist as ‘Doctor’? Chances are low you call the person behind the Walgreen’s counter “Doctor” although they have earned that distinction. Anyway, I began fall semester 2012 as a member of the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy’s class of 2016. I don’t think anyone plans to fail, I certainly didn’t, but I didn’t not plan to fail. I mean, once I was accepted into school I just kind of… quit trying so hard. Like I had gotten what I wanted (acceptance into a high-ranking school for a well paying profession) and that was enough. Sure there were extraneous circumstances that reduced my focus on pharmacy school, my wife and I had our first child the week before my first day of class so I had a newborn at home that needed me which made it difficult to commit myself to the work. I also hated pharmacy. That’s weird for someone who put a lot of effort into trying to be a pharmacist, but I hated the job (Note, I never worked as a pharmacist as I never graduated pharmacy school, but I did work at a Rite Aid as a pharmacist’s intern while in school and it was not a good experience for me).
I limped through my first year of pharmacy school, getting put on academic probation after the first semester because I got straight Cs (pulling from memory here on my grades, but they were not good). I followed up a straight Cs effort in the fall semester by getting an A in Over the Counter Medications class, more Cs, and a D+ in Physiology. I remember one 10 point quiz that I missed (my fault that I missed the quiz) being the difference between passing and not. The professor wouldn’t budge on the grade nor give me a chance for extra credit and I don’t blame him one bit. I didn’t deserve a chance at extra credit. I got a D+ because that’s the grade I earned.
That D in physiology violated the terms of my academic probation and I was thus kicked out of the program due to academic underperformance. Even though I hated pharmacy, I didn’t want to get kicked out of school. I worked really hard to get in and thought that if I could just make it through school, I could find another path besides retail pharmacy that would pay well enough for this whole shit show to be worth it.
I had the option to appeal the school’s decision to kick me out and that’s what I did. After filing the appeal, I was interviewed by some of the professors in a boardroom-like setting. I told them about struggling with a new baby at home (true, but our son isn’t why I performed poorly. I shit the bed, plain and simple), dealt with health issues (thyroid cancer and surgery to remove the tumor), and a mixed bag of mental health struggles stemming from the cancer diagnosis. I was overwhelmed and drowning, I was on a clear path to success in school but somehow I was more lost than I’d ever been. I asked for another shot at school and they were kind enough to give it to me under one condition… I would be rolled back into the class of 2017. I would repeat my worst classes in the fall (Physiology and I believe Drug Design was the other, could be wrong about that) and in the following spring pick back up the full class load. I accepted the terms and left the academic offices of UK COP as a newly minted member of the class of 2017.
That was in the summer of 2013, probably early to mid June, and I would pick up with class of 2017 in August. So, I had about 6 weeks of downtime without school. During that 6 weeks I worked at Rite Aid and during that time I grew to resent the pharmacy profession and resent myself for being the position I was in. Being unhappy led me to seek other options and the week before school started back up again, I informed the college of pharmacy that I was dropping out and had enrolled in UK’s mechanical engineering program. No more dreams of medicine, I wanted to build something and an engineering degree was my ticket to a fulfilling career.
Or so I thought.
