Personal Statement - Rough Draft 1.0

(Image from minoritylawstudents.org

I was in the shower, and the beginning to this attempt at a personal statement came to me.  It wasn't something I was actively trying to figure out.  So as soon as I was finished, I sat down at my computer, and started to type and this is what came out.

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The coin spun. My eyes traced its path. I caught it and slapped it onto the back of my other hand. Heads. My major was going to be physics.

The problem with being good at everything, the problem with being told you can be anything, is that you have everything to choose from. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but I was supposed to pick a major, so I flipped a coin. I transferred to San Francisco State University with 112 units, just one year out of high school. The problem was that I had no motivation. Physics interested me, but that was it. I had no goal. I tried to force my way through it, but there was no motivation and I was depressed, and physics wasn’t meant to be.

I took a semester off to work construction for my dad. The time off of school, working with my hands was meant to give me time to consider where my future would take me. My brother was a marine reserve, and my parents suggested looking into the armed forces. I stepped into the Air Force recruitment office, and we had a talk. I was given a list of careers that the Air Force could train me in, but jobs such as mechanic or pilot didn’t interest me. Then at the end one word popped out amongst all others. Pharmacist. I scanned the rest of the list but my eyes popped back up to that one word. It’s not something I had ever considered before, but it seemed like it could fit me. I didn’t join the Air Force, and instead returned to school. I didn’t have a fully realized goal in my head, but at least I had a potential concept in my head that could help guide me.

I returned to school taking classes in biology and chemistry, and decided it was time to join an organization. School as a physics major was just a place to be. I wanted it to feel like a place I belonged. So I joined Alpha Phi Omega, a national co-ed service fraternity. It caught my eye because it was nothing like what my expectations of fraternities was like. I did hundreds of hours of community service, and enjoyed how much immediate satisfaction I could have in helping out others, and I enjoyed how much it was helping myself grow. I ended up helping to recruit and coordinate translators for the 42nd International Children’s Games, I spear-headed the Multi-cultural AIDS Awareness Day on San Francisco State University three years in a row and got to meet Mayor Gavin Newsom. I believed in the purpose and potential of the organization and so held positions coordinating our service program, developing our membership, and coordinated it all as president.

This satisfaction led to being president of the Fraternity Sorority Council, being a committee member of the Office of Student Programs and Leadership Development, and eventually founding a Pre-Pharmacy Association at San Francisco State University as the founding vice president. The problem was that this is where my priorities lied. All of my attention lay in these organizations. And when it seemed as if some people in my fraternity were slowly changing the atmosphere to a social fraternity and away from its stated purpose of being focused on service, I focused my energies in protecting something that I felt was worthwhile, and my grades fell.

There were other reasons. The first close death in the family happened when my grandma died, and I withdrew from most of my classes. I successfully lost thirty pounds after living with being overweight my entire life, only to tear my ACL playing volleyball, and losing my ability to run, sinking me into what may have been more than a minor depression. But the fact of the matter is that I had been a bad student. My priorities weren’t balanced and I wasn’t taking a long view of the future. I had a talking point in my head, in pharmacy, but it wasn’t something I truly believed in. And so my grades fell, not because I tried and failed, but because I didn’t try at all, to the point of forgetting about midterms because my attendance was abysmal.

And then it happened. I got put on academic probation by the school. I finally took a real look at my academic career, and saw that it was leading me nowhere. It was time to give up on biochemistry as a major, and time to give up on pharmacy. I switched to psychology because it had also interested me, and I began wondering what kind of future I could have in that field.

Then it struck me. During my year away from pharmacy, I rediscovered the joy of learning. I rediscovered that it was the challenging classes that were the most engaging, and were the classes that I did the best in. And I discovered that I missed pursuing pharmacy. When I left physics as a major, I felt relief. I was happy that it was no longer the path I was on. But it wasn’t happening this time. I enjoyed my classes in psychology, but I missed pharmacy even more.

My time with the Pre-Pharmacy Association had transformed that talking point in my head, into a true desire, and I hadn’t realized it. There was always parental pressure on me to enter the health field among other things. I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor and work with a lot of blood. Ignoring all that, pharmacy fit. The breadth of opportunity that I only learned by participating in the PPA amazed me. When you’ve been told you can be anything, you want to be everything. And the pharmacy profession seemed to embrace that concept. Research, improving the health of others, teaching, management, and so much more. Even constant encouragement for leaders who want to help change the field. A profession that is directly related to one of the major topics of the present days in healthcare.

In just two semesters away, I realized what I had given up in forgoing pharmacy. It wasn’t something I could do. If I try and fail, then so be it. But the attempt had to be made. So with the newfound resolve, I took steps to give myself the best chance possible of making it into the field that was meant for me. I even started a blog 2pharmschool.blogspot.com to ensure that I would keep focused. Pharmacy was no longer just a word to say. There would be no toss of a coin this time. I knew what I wanted. I finally had a goal.

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Ok, this is very rough.  First of all, I copy/pasted this into PharmCAS and the word count was over 6k characters.  PharmCAS has a limit of 4.5k.  I'm going to have to cut it down by 25% for it to even be accepted.  (Word 2007 doesn't do character count!  My old version of Word was able to!  Shame, shame, shame, Microsoft.)

I like the image of a coin flip starting out the personal statement, in terms of being catchy.  Now is it a good way to present myself?  I'm hoping by the end, it shows how I've changed, but I'll have to get more opinions on it.  And of course the concept is there, but the wording can be improved.

The next thing is,that most of the statement is explaining away faults, and not enough promoting any positives.  I'd like to have that more balanced.  Although at this point I have no choice but to incorporate my faults into my statement.  I don't have the luxury in being able to choose from a wide variety of topics to address.  I still need to also make sure it's clear as to why I'm pursuing pharmacy and what I have to offer.

Pharmacy School Admissions - The Truth... and other links

As you can see on the right, I've added a bunch of links to various blogs and websites.  There's a nice list of all the California pharmacy school websites, as a well as a link for the rankings of all the pharmacy schools in the US.  (I believe it's all of them at least.  I haven't checked the whole list.)

There's a link that least to a list of (potentially) interesting blogs to read that are written by pharmacists.  It's long list and I've only checked out the number one blog on that list, The Angry Pharmacist.

And for more advice and insight into the process of getting into pharmacy schools, I have a section for admissions blogs and sites.  The one that I just finished reading through is Pharmacy School Admissions - The Truth

Although I'm not quite clear as to who the exact person writing most of the entries is, it is someone who has experience as an admissions officer, and it is an extremely helpful blog.  It began at the end of April, and there are updates pretty much every day, answering a question that was emailed in, or pointing out something of interest.

For me, personally, the most interesting aspect of it were all the entries dealing with the PCAT.  I live in California, and the California schools don't accept the PCAT, so I have very little exposure with anything dealing with the PCAT.  Back when I just believed I was going to go to pharmacy school, but didn't do any research on the admissions process, I figured that I'd just apply to all the California schools.

But if I'm to be realistic, since I have a low GPA that I still need to fix, researching and applying to out of state schools is something I have to do, on top of looking into the California schools.  With those schools (and assuming I do excellent on the PCAT, which I know I'm capable of doing if I apply myself), I have that secondary academic measurement on my application that can balance out my GPA.

All the advice on personal statements is also excellent, with several entries dedicated to showing snippets of specific examples with what should be changed and why.  And coming up soon will be many questions geared towards the interview process.

I will certainly be checking out that blog regularly.

Who am I? Part 3

So I'm looking at pharmacy schools, and studying to be a pharmacy technician, but who am I?  At what point am I at in getting into pharmacy school, and why am I at this point?

So I took a look at reality and saw that pharmacy might not be possible.  I didn't know what was going to happen anymore, but just knew that I needed to graduate, and so switched to Psychologyas within reach as I had wanted it to be at this point in my life.

As soon as I made the switch, I knew it was a good idea.  Part of that was simply because while my plan was derailed, I was taking control of what was happening.

For the next two semesters I loaded my schedule with as many psychology classes as I could take.  And while all the classes were interesting, a full load of psychology classes was most definitely much easier to handle than biology and chemistry classes.

Some of the classes that I took, I took simply because they were easy, and I wanted to fix my GPA.  But it turned out that the classes I loved the most were the ones that were the most challenging.  Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Psychology were my favorites by far.

If I couldn't do Pharmacy, I was considering applying for the masters program in psychology research at San Francisco State University as an alternative.  In my head, that as actually my new path, and not just an alternative.  Pharmacy was too just far away, and I needed my career now.

There were two major things that I took away from this.

First,  I need a challenge, and I need to keep things fresh.  I did the best in the classes that were hardest.  I shot to the top of those classes because they were new and interesting, and they captivated me.  I had to force myself to pay attention to those easy classes.  A similar result to this was when I tried to immediately retake a couple of my bio and chem classes.  It was just hard to focus when I was relearning the material.  I didn't do bad in those classes the first time because I didn't understand what was going on.  I did bad because I was a bad student and missed a lot of classes and didn't put in any effort.  If I was to redo it, and if I had to retake classes, I would not do it immediately.  I would have given myself a break so the classes wouldn't feel like such a chore.

Second, by taking this year away from biochemistry and pharmacy, I found that I really missed it.  It's something that I wanted to go back to.

I can't tell you just yet what it is about pharmacy that attracts me, I just know it's there.  I'm a very analytical person, but it takes me a while to understand my own feelings, and then be able to verbalize them.  That's something that I hope to be able to accomplish through writing about my experience through this blog.  It's something I'll need to be able to do to write my personal statement.

I took time away from biochemistry and rediscovered my passion for learning.  I took time away from the pharmacy path, and found the drive still within me.  The beginning's of this blog has shown you the first steps, and by the end I will be in pharmacy school and on my way to my career.