Pharmacy school, much like starting any new school, is all about adjustment. For the most part, you roll with the punches until you find your new equilibrium. It's a struggle at times, but eventually you come to peace with the new situation.
Only after that do you realize you see the elephant in the room and discover what is, for most, the biggest struggle to cope with.
Let's face it, if you're in pharmacy school you're highly intelligent. Chances are you did very well in grade school, very well in high school and very well during undergrad. You were the proverbial "big fish in a small pond."
Some people relish this fact and will consistently remind you of how smart they are on a regular basis. These are the people who came very near death during many of my undergrad courses. And I say that with utter and complete certainty.
In pharmacy school it's different. Everyone here is intelligent. For many the pond has grown so huge that not only are you not the big fish, but you very well may be completely insignificant. It's a fact which sneaks up on as you are completely unaware of this change.
In actuality, this alone may explain so many of the frustrations we feel during this first semester. When you're used to getting high As and being the prized jewel of the class, but instead you're fighting tooth and nail merely to get a C... well it's a sobering experience.
I imagine for some this new hierarchy will be exceeding difficult to follow. Already I have noticed some personalities within my class changing ever so slightly. Whether this is attributed to the Big Fish Syndrome or whether it's related to something entirely different I do not know. Yet it is there, clear as day.
So I sit here in the medical library and proudly exclaim that I am a big fish in a huge pond. Except I'm not just a fish... I'm a shark. And I'm gonna come back and bite some ass in the future.
4 comments:
You just wait until that person who defines themself as their 4.0 makes their first B. A certain Student Doctor poster you may be familiar with who identifies herself strictly by her 4.0 because other things aren't impressive got her first B in our therapeutics class, and I haven't stopped grinning yet.
You go homeboy!!
What ever happened to trying your best and being nice to people along the way? Getting straight As wont make you a better pharmacist and it certainly doesn't make you a better person. It is not necessarily the smartest people who become pharmacists...it is the people who work hard and don't give up that do.
That is one of the most amusing parts of pharmacy school. I remember watching people freak out after getting their first B. I just chuckled to myself. I had flat out failed a test or two in undergrad (really an F not those who get a C and claim they failed) and survived. Hey, I even made it into pharmacy school and out the other side.
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