Pharmacy Technician Birthday Surprise!

Job Interview!

I have to interrupt the 5th Annual NCPPS reporting to report some good news! Today is my birthday and what do I wake up to? And email from a staffing agency, the wonderful Aerotek Scientific (which helped my cousin get his first temp job), and they contacted me saying they're looking to fill some pharmacy technician positions!

The surprise is that I never submitted my information to them. They got my info from the Pre-Pharmacy Association that I helped to found.

It caught me off guard and I was nervous, so I drank some water and ate some breakfast before I made the call. My phone interviewer was a lovely person, and after the standard questions of when you'll be available, what kind of shifts do you want, how far are you willing to commute, and what kind of pay you're looking for (My answer: Anything and everything, and I'm not looking for pay, I'm looking for experience and the opportunity to work with a pharmacist so I can get a letter of recommendation.), it turns out that the position is at UCSF itself!

I have an in person interview Friday, I just need to bring in proof that I have my license, two professional referrals, and answers to questions such as - Why Pharmacy? - Explain some situations where you had to multi-task in a hectic enviroment - and so on.

I don't know a better way I could have started my birthday.

The plan: Find my proof, because it seems to be misplaced, find a second person to give me a professional referral (already asked one), and make sure I have some clothes for the interview.


Quick Update

As for the 5th Annual NCCPS reporting, for my previous reports, I always brought my netbook and typed as speakers talked, making it easy to come home and reformat the information into complete sentences and paragraphs. My netbook battery no longer holds a charge. So I took my ipod nano and recorded audio and wrote notes on the supplied notepad. I'm going to have to relisten to the audio and hope it recorded decently before I can sort out all the information. It'll get up here, but it may take some time as I still have school to manage, so please bear with me.


And Thanks

This is long overdue, but thanks Elaine and California Pharmacy Schools and most recently Lucia for leaving positive comments. It's surprising how a simple comment of appreciation can help to motivate me to keep up with the updates.

5th Northern California Pre-Pharmacy Symposium - Part 2

Ok, that was a lot of information for one day. It's going to take me a while to break it all down. I will say that it was a fantastic event, and there were more workshops that I would have liked to have attended that I wasn't able to go to. I'll probably go again next year. It was certainly worth the $15 registration fee and $8 parking.

I do have some other things I need to take care of today, but for a quick sneak peek, here's how my day went.

I woke up and couldn't find my wallet (Email said to bring ID), so I spent my morning flustered, and eventually just left with my passport instead. The event itself was contained within three floors of the same building, breakfast was the regular (and perfectly acceptable) muffins, bagels, fruit, juice, and water.

The keynote speakers were fantastic. Very good presence and rapport with each other, and lots of great information.

The pharmacist panel was equally worthwhile to witness.

The Dual Degree workshop wasn't paced as best as it could have been so three of the six topics had to be rushed, but there were some handouts to take home.

Lunch may have been the most info packed session of all, because I sat at the table with an IT Pharmacist. Something I hadn't known existed until today.

The Northstate session I chose really broke down their new Team Based Learning approach to teaching (They used to have some lecture incorporated into their curriculum for their first year, and it's all gone now.)

Pharmacy School Fair is what you would expect (in a good way) and was able to get info from all the out of state schools, something I'm very much lacking in.

Ran into some friends during the break, two brothers (one of which was accepted into Pharmacy school this year), and got some info from them.

And closed with the Drug Development workshop. There was lot of information, but I feel like I new most of that already thanks to studying to be a pharm tech. I wish I had chosen to go to the Disaster Preparedness workshop instead.

All in all, like I said, it was an excellent day and well worth it. I would recommend it to anyone, and will go again next year if I have the chance.

5th Northern California Pre-Pharmacy Symposium - Part 1

A real update! Tomorrow I'm going to the 5th Annual NCPPS at UC Berkeley, hosted by The Pre-Pharmacy Informational Learning & Leadership Society (PILLS).  . Here's the tentative schedule as posted on their website.


(Gonna be a big day ahead of me. I've always wanted to attend one of these, but something always came up.)

9:00-9:45	Registration and Breakfast
9:50-10:00	Welcome
10:00-10:50	Keynote Theodore Tong, Pharm.D.; Glenn Y. Yokoyama, Pharm.D., FCSHP, FAPhA; Sharon Youmans, Pharm.D., MPH
11:00-11:45	Session A (Choose 1 option)
	Pharmacist Panel Clinical, Academia, Compounding, TBA
	Pharmacy School Information Session University of California, San Diego
	Pharmacy School Information Session University of the Pacific
	Pharmacy School Information Session University of Southern California
11:45-12:30	Session B (Choose 1 option)
	Pharmacy School Information Session Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences
	Pharmacy School Information Session University of Maryland
	Pharmacy School Information Session University of Minnesota
	Pediatric Workshop Lisa Musick, Pharm.D, BCPS
	Dual Degree Workshop Peter Dean, MS
12:30-2:00	Lunch and Student Panel (Choose 1 panel only)
	(12:30pm-1:15pm) - Student Pharmacist Panel 1
	(1:15pm-2:00pm) - Student Pharmacist Panel 2
2:00-2:45	Session C (Choose 1 option)
	Pharmacy School Information Session California Northstate College of Pharmacy
	Pharmacy School Information Session Western University
	Pharmacy School Information Session Touro University
	Home Care Pharmacy Workshop Shannon Reidt, Pharm.D, MPH & Sara Lofstrom, MA
3:00-3:45	Pharmacy School Fair
3:45-4:00	Break
4:00-4:45	Session D (Choose 1 option)
	Pharmacy School Information Session UCSF School of Pharmacy
	PharmCAS Workshop Sara Lofstrom, MA
	Drug Development Workshop Tao Wang, MD, PhD & Henry Leung, Pharm.D
	Disaster Preparedness Workshop Theodore Tong, Pharm.D
4:45-5:00	Closing & Raffle