Beginning the last semester of the P1 year.

It has been a while since I have updated the P1 blog. The weather has been getting colder for the past few days. We are expecting another encounter with snow tomorrow. This might be a good motivator for me to stay home and study for our upcoming pharmacogenomics exam on Monday. I anticipate this semester to be quite intensive based on our schedule. There is an exam almost on a weekly basis, mainly from the course in pharmacogenomics or the IBHS series.

Another new interesting tidbit for us students in Ashburn is that we have finally moved to the new building. The new classroom can seat 46 people ideally, but the design of the room is best suited for 40 students. One row of seats doesn’t provide a good view of the presentation screen. The transition wasn’t smooth during the first week since there was no fridge, microwave, and vending machines for us to utilize. Also, the video conferencing system wasn’t working exactly in tiptop shape. The video signal would suddenly disconnect periodically. A new gimmick we have to get use to as well is that our microphones are always on. Any slight noise will be picked up and transmitted to the main campus.

During the second week of the semester, my classmates and I attended the Fraternity Round Robin event on the main campus. Each fraternity was given 15 minute for introductions and intermingling. The three professional pharmacy fraternities are Kappa Psi, Kappa Epsilon, and Phi Delta Chi. Also there is an honor fraternity called Rho Chi which, is limited to the top 20% of the class. Afterwards, each fraternity held a rush event in the following days.

Guess that will be it for this post and stay tuned for more updates.

Last Semester of Classes

So last week was the first week of my last semester of classes ever! If you got a little confused by that last statement, I am basically saying I am almost done with pharmacy school classes! The classes that I have this semester consist of: pharmacy law, sterile compounding, patient assessment II, ICARE: GI/nutrition, ICARE: neuro/psychiatry, ICARE: musculoskeletal, institutional practice elective, and pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenetics III. So although this will be my last semester of classes it will not be my easiest.

In addition to classes some of the organizations I am involved in are also busier in the spring. A major example is Kappa Epsilon. This past week has been Greek Week at pharmacy school. At SU, pharmacy fraternities are not allowed to recruit new members until the spring semester. On the first day of Greek Week we have an event called Round Robin where interested 1st and 2nd year pharmacy students get a brief introduction to all three different fraternities that we have. Then each fraternity hosts an event on its own on a separate date so that prospective members get a better idea of what each one is about. Kappa Epsilon had a luau theme on Tuesday night with plenty of good food to enjoy and various activities that allowed the interested students to mingle with existing members. Although I think we should have done the limbo before we ate all that food.


Another organization I am involved with is Rho Chi. Rho Chi is an honors fraternity that recruits the top 20% of the P2 class during the spring semester of pharmacy school. In the not too distant future we will be sending invitations to these smart pharmacy students to join. This weekend we are holding a health fair in conjunction with the APhA-ASP (American Pharmacists Association-Academy of Student Pharmacists). This health fair will be held at a local soup kitchen here in Winchester, where our target population probably does not receive proper health care. So it will be interesting to see how we can help them. I hope this will be a mutually beneficial experience, in that this under served population gets some health advice and that we pharmacy students can improve on our patient interaction skills.


Besides all this we will be finalizing our rotations for the upcoming P4 year. So as you can imagine although this will be my last semester of classes, it will be a very busy one.

Outside of class

Another week has gone by, although this one seemed faster than most since we had Labor Day off. This week was filled with all our typical classes and at the moment nothing really stands out to mention from class. So I think I will talk about activities that occurred outside of class this time.

On Thursdays we have something called “Seminar Hour” where no pharmacy students have class at that time so that they can attend an organization’s presentation or activity. There are various organizations that are active here at BJD, from the professional e.g. APhA-ASP (American Pharmacists Association-Academy of Student Pharmacists) to the fraternities e.g. Kappa Epsilon and others. Every week a different organization hosts the seminar hour. This Thursday APhA-ASP was hosting. They had Cindy Warner, President Elect of VPhA (Virginia Pharmacists Association) and Tim Musselman, Executive Director of VPhA come and talk to us about what VPhA does and what we as students can do to become active with this state level organization that represents pharmacists of all fields. In addition to that they also came to present Jamie Larson, Michelle Chandler, Julie Horak and I with a plaque for winning the state-wide Self Care Competition.

The Self Care Competition was where we represented BJD and competed against Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, Hampton University School of Pharmacy and Appalachian College of Pharmacy. The competition was held back in August at VPhA’s Annual Convention in Virginia Beach, VA. So the four of us were very excited and dressed up ready to be presented with our plaque… but there was no plaque. For some reason the plaque wasn’t ready yet. So we just took our pictures with the representatives of VPhA and sat back in our seats empty-handed. At least we took pictures at the competition to prove we had won. Since we won this past year, it can now be said that every Virginia pharmacy school has won the Self Care Competition at least once.

Later that same day was the Greek Olympics. At BJD we have three pharmacy fraternities: Kappa Epsilon, Phi Delta Chi and Kappa Psi. I personally am a member of Kappa Epsilon, so if I do seem biased towards them there’s a reason for it. Every fall we hold Greek Olympics, where all three fraternities and anyone from the P1 class (first year pharmacy students) who wants to participate, compete in outdoor games. The first year pharmacy students are their own separate team because they are not recruited to join any fraternities until the spring semester of their first year. So on Thursday practically everyone who was a member of one of the three fraternities was wearing their fraternity’s t-shirt, Greek letters were everywhere. The games we played consisted of a three-legged relay race, hula hooping, egg holding relay race, water balloon toss, spinning with your head on the bat then running relay race (if you know the official name please enlighten me), and the classic tug of war. Last year Phi Delta Chi had won, so there was an air of competitiveness between us (Kappa Epsilon) and Phi Delta Chi. To ensure that games were fair, each fraternity’s president was keeping track of points for all the groups.

Kappa Epsilon is filled with more girls than the other fraternities but we sent out our guys to represent us in the hula hoop competition (ironic isn’t it?). Although they did respectably we ended up losing that competition (no surprise there). However we did redeem ourselves in the water balloon toss, since we came in first place in that event. Of all the games the one that gets the most competitive is tug of war. Kappa Epsilon and Phi Delta Chi were the first two groups to compete. Although I have to say Kappa Epsilon really tried, Phi Delta Chi still beat us. Overall it was a day of friendly competition that ended with Phi Delta Chi winning the whole thing again, but we placed a respectable second. There’s always next year!