Lucky Guy 10

This will be the first time I wrote Lucky Guy in the comfort of my home in Kuching rather than in Melbourne. Can’t believe it had been a one and a half month hiatus since I wrote the last post on this subject.

This chapter was supposed to be on recollections of my third year second semester in the Parkville campus. And then I recalled that all the highlights had already been documented in past-posts. So instead of rewriting it, I just put the relevant links on the post and do a quick recap.

The most memorable part of that particular semester was my involvement in the organization of a charity concert. I never did this kind of thing before. When we first hatched the idea in the library, it sounded so exciting, but gradually, the idea grew into such a huge monster that it was scary. Our organizing naiveté was exposed time after time, but we did get through it in the end and came out with a wealth of experience.

I also commenced my first pharmacy placement during the semester. We were to complete four different 3-week placements as part of the course, and for the first one, I got to do it in a rural community pharmacy in Bairnsdale. It was my first exposure to real life pharmacy and I found the placement quite interesting. 

At the end of the year, I applied and was accepted into another Summer Vacation Project. This time I was attached to the Royal Melbourne Hospital doing a project examining the outcome of patients using high cost medications. The project lasted six weeks and I got to present it in front of personnel from the pharmacy department in the hospital as well as the pharmacy practice department in Uni, which was an unforgettable experience.

Academically, it was not too bad as we have only nine weeks worth of material to study instead of the usual 12. We also have only 5 subjects compared to 6 in the first semester.

I continued to be involved in the Global Friendship Series and the Student Ambassador Program, which taught me a lot of things and enable me to have fun in Uni while making friends outside my usual circle. I also commenced work as a Disability Liaison Unit notes-taker, spending two hours a week on the job.

Overall, it was a very eventful semester, and the need to juggle my time certainly made me feel more like a pharmacy student. Or else most probably I will be bored to death. Studying pharmacy by itself doesn’t really need 24 hours per week.