Earning Labor Day Off

I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to Labor Day as much as I did this year. I think this year was the first time in a long time that school was busy enough that I feel I have earned having a Monday off. The amount of material we covered in these first 2 weeks was enough to earn us a bonus pop quiz or two. Though thankfully, our quiz in Infectious Disease ICARE (an intense therapeutics and pharmacology course) wasn’t really a “pop” quiz, since Dr. Johnson warned us that it would be coming.

Given that we did get fair warning I think everyone in the class studied hard for that first bonus quiz. Since the quiz was on Dr. Newton’s (a professor that has been with the pharmacy school since day 1 and one of our first professors) material, he gave us our quizzes in his trademark green alternating with white sheets. He does this so that even if you are tempted to cheat, it wouldn’t do you any good, since your neighbors will have quizzes different from yours (not that he really believed we would cheat, but more so to remove the temptation to do so). He was a professor we had in our P1 year, so seeing those green and white sheets again for a moment made me realize how far I’d come since my first year. So anyway we answered the dozen or so questions, hopeful that our studying would have helped us earn a few bonus points. Unfortunately however, we later learned that the most bonus points we could earn was 1 point regardless if we answered all the questions correctly or just the minimum of five questions. Yeah that caused a minor stir, since many felt that the amount of studying they put into it should have been rewarded with more bonus points.

Something that probably caused an even bigger stir was the school’s final decision regarding how to handle final exam rescheduling for students who would miss some final exams in order to attend ASHP’s (American Society of Health-system Pharmacists) Mid-year convention in Las Vegas. Initially as the secretary for SVSHP (Student chapter of the Virginia Society of Health-system Pharmacists, a branch of ASHP at our school) I had sent out an inquiry as to how many students were interested in attending the convention. I got back dozens of replies, however many students were reluctant to make a firm commitment because of not knowing how the missed finals would be handled. I know many students hoped for the finals being given earlier, so that they could go to the convention without the dark cloud of studying for finals hanging over them while they were in Las Vegas. But when the school formally decided that only two days of finals would be excused and those missed finals (which for the P3 class was a total of 3 finals) would all have to be made up on the Saturday right before winter break, many students were upset. So when I sent out the next e-mail asking “who was still interested in going?”, not surprisingly many students no longer were. I personally do hope to do a residency and believe that by going in my P3 year I will be better prepared for next year when I will be formally applying. So the school’s decision to lump three exams all on one day really didn’t help my dread of finals week. I think I found a way to make it work, but until I buy that ticket to Vegas and actually register for the conference, nothing is set in stone. Right now I am thinking that I’ll probably stay one day less than I originally planned to in Vegas, so that I only need to make up one exam as opposed to three, since the thought of having three exams in one day, is just asking for unnecessary stress and study-induced insomnia.

Another contributing factor to why I looked forward to this long weekend was the fact that I felt like I had spent a lot of time in meetings this past week. I think being involved in school in non-academic ways makes one a well-rounded person and enriches the whole college experience. So I don’t mean to sound overwhelmed by saying there were many meetings. Since it is the beginning of the year the first meetings mostly consisted of: welcome back + here is what we plan to do. Right now at this point in time it feels like this will be a busy year and hopefully I can add “interesting” to that too.