BOOYA

Wil:

Wow is it the end of the [academic] year already?! How time flies, as they say. This year has been magical like you wouldn't believe. I have many great things to report on, stories to tell, and lessons to leave - let us hope I don't get bored before I finish :P


I entered 2010 with bright brown eyes that sparkled enough enthusiasm to light a car on fire. Fresh (or not so fresh...) out of Health Sci, I bounced around with my new found freedom in my very own flat. I could finally cook my own meals, wash my own bedding, clean my own toilets and showers, and empty my own rubbish! I was drugged up on filthy delusion and I flailed my arms around in naive contentment.

Throughout semester one I fed myself the grey slurry that all pharmacy students are forced to swallow: biopharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical science, biochemistry, and physiology. While practical dispensing labs became the highlight of the year, cooking and cleaning and rubbish-emptying became the nuisances of daily living. While my tummy juiced the sciences for all they were worth, I sat through endless lab exit tests, end of module tests, term tests and lab prep material. One after the other, I became obese with knowledge. My brain swelled beyond its bony confines and oozed out of my nose and ears in the form of well structured and reasonable test answers.

Semester two fell out of nowhere like the iceberg out of Titanic. Being one greasy semester wiser and having survived a full TWO day community pharmacy placement, I felt like I truly knew what being a pharmacist was all about. While I rationed the motivational fuel that was my community placement, the looming disaster that were the FIVE end-of-semester exams constantly reared its horribly-disfigured-probably-due-to-surgery-gone-wrong head in my already emotionally unstable mind. While I tried, with varying degrees of success, to push that thought onto the back burner, I trudged day by day through the classes, tutorials, laboratory and workshops. The unforgiving 8am classes wiped all my faith in justice, while the history lectures evoked such fear (and boredom).
During this time of learning to be a good health professional, healthy researcher, and careful thinker (almost), I made some wonderful friends. Meet lithium and Prozac! haa jokes >.>
Actually, I have met some great monkies this year and I've formed friendships that I hope will be as everlasting as covalent bonds (i.e. permanent, but with the odd exception!). I've never played so much Buzz, Rock band, or Wii in my life! (nor have I ever had such an exclusively Asian bunch of friends...)

As doomsday drew closer, 5 exams felt like the blade of my guillotine. The nagging at the back of my head that felt like the annoyance of a mosquito bite grew into the piercing stab of a lumbar puncture. With my palms sweaty and my heart racing, my eyes flew over my lecture notes on the pharmacology and medicinal chemistry of adrenergic drugs and wondered where the hell non-selective beta adrenergic blockers were when you needed them?!
During the daytime, I fitfully induced insomnia with the joy of No Doz. However, the phenomenon known as tachyphylaxis foiled my dependence on the tiny aid of caffeine pills (and now whenever I read or say the word tachyphylaxis, all i hear is Wen Xin saying "TACHYPHYLAXIS!!" trying to imitate a Microsoft text-reader).

My first exam, PHCY219 (Microbiology and Immunology) brought me quiet confidence in my abilities. Studying turned out to be a good decision.
PHCY255 (Physical Pharmacy B) became my joke of the semester (or year, even). I could've done it with my hands behind my back! I could have smashed my face against the desk and even the bloody imprints left on my test paper would have been correct answers!
PHCY258 (Drug Action, i.e. biopharmaceutics ugly and unwanted sister) slashed the rainbow road that PHCY255 had paved for me. Fawcett (a lecturer for this paper) jack-hammered each and every beautifully laid brick. Brick dust (and questions on colorectal carcinoma monolayers) assulted my airways in a way that not even salbutamol could help me!
Drunk with despair, I entered the PHCY259 (Quality of Medicines) exam with standards as low as a cheap whore ready to earn some quick money. Surprisingly, I left that exam feeling mighty self-assured and powerful! It was truly a wonderful day and not even the fact that I spent hours and hours teaching my peers that one calculation question that never showed up in the exam could have brought me down! While the child in me skipped into the sunset and my grown-up self waddled off home like a duck, the giant hypodermic needle stuck in my spine shattered into a billion pieces and flooded my body like a really advanced case of metastases. Like the ultimate boss at the end of a video game quest, life had saved the worst for last. What cruel goddess would blend the subjects of epidemiology, history, health system, drug information and dispensing together to bake the vile cake that is PHYC263 (Pharmacy Practice)? Well, we know the answer to that one - she wears trendy leather boots!

I sat at my exam desk staring at a paper titled, "PHCY263 Principles of Pharmacy Practice." I made scared puppy sounds as the supervisors gave the pre-exam announcements. Looking around me, I swore I saw someone soil themself. "You may now begin" boomed from the speakers as the clock ticked past 9:30am. With hands that could pass as being from someone with Parkinson's, I turned over my exam paper and flicked to the epidemiology section. "It's basically a repeat of HEAL192 (epidemiology paper from last year)! This should be easy!" I thought to myself. My vision wandered sporadically over the words which dictated my doom while my eye muscles twitched in a manner that imitated some mal-diagnosed musculoskeletal disease. My heart stopped - WHAT LANGUAGE IS THIS IN?! My mind blanked in such a way that would make the world's best(?) underachiever proud.

Being the clever boy he was, Wil decided to make up award-worthy nonsense that he could throw up all over his exam paper. Why not calculate the Odds Ratio? Great idea! Wil jabbed away at his whimpering calculator with a finger that could bore holes through the earth all the way to China (or London, actually). With a Cheshire grin, Wil scribbed down that interpretation of his calculated odds ratio and kissed his pen with passion. He was on a roll! Suddenly, Wil's eyes settled on a rather unnerving piece of information given in the study data - the adjusted ODDS RATIO. They had already given you the odds ratio for the study! Weeping, Wil drew thick blue lines over his calculation, invalidating about 5 minutes worth of work. A sad smiley face accompanied these crosses.

Two hours of this torture finally signalled the end of the exam, the semester, and the year. I still believe that 2 hours was much too short for this exam. It was like trying to push a baby out after just 6 months. My exam script would have been VERY messy to mark. Like a post-labour mother, I gave a tired sigh as sweat dripped off my forehead and my muscles relaxed in unison, leaving my body as a thankful puddle on the exam venue floor.

Pharmacy 2nd year 2010 had finally ended for a very happy Wil. He frolicked among the shattered beer bottle glass that littered Dunedin streets as he celebrated having arrived half way through his undergraduate degree. Only two more years to go, he pondered. What would he do with his summer? Little did he know that it would be filled with iron-fisted, headache-inducing slave labour, originating from the depths of literature searching and 9 to 5 work days. Buuuuuuut, that's a blog post for another frivolous day ;)


Mission Complete!