Pre-Pharmacy Existential Crisis
Day 1
When I got accepted into college and declared my major as Pre-Pharmacy, the next step was to meet with an advisor and register for my classes. The typical advice for Pre-Pharmacy was to be assigned to the Biology department. It was also recommended to register for 18 credit hours per semester to complete the Pre-Pharmacy requirements in the coveted 2 years. So, there I was, a Pre-Pharmacy Biology student with 18 credit hours on her schedule. This included Bio 1101 plus lab, Chem 1101 plus lab, English Composition 1101, some freshman intro orientation course, World History, and Philosophy & Ethics. Awesome!
The year started off with a bang! Chem 1101 was a little review from the high school chemistry I took, and then much more. Bio 1101 was a review of the Hierarchy of Life and then dove straight into evolutionary taxonomic Latin. Literally, I was learning Latin! The only other stunner was Philosophy & Ethics. Here I was, brought up in the Christian faith, and the best advice I got regarding my spiritual survival of university-level Evolution and Philosophy & Ethics was “learn just what you need for the test and ignore the rest”. Oh great!
Crisis Ensues
So, at 18 years old, I have my first major existential crisis. A 2-pronged crisis regarding the battle between humans’ philosophy of life and my belief in spirituality, as well as the evolution of life and my belief in Creation. This results in several C’s on my transcript (which caused another, albeit slightly less severe crisis).
When I knew there was no recovering of my grades, I sat in my advisor’s office, distraught and holding my head in my hands. I remember saying “all of this taxonomy means nothing to me on the path to becoming a Pharmacist”. In the Biology department, this path was leading me to classes like Botany and Evolutionary Biology. He simply nodded, and said, “what if you moved to the chemistry department?” “What?! Change departments? Pre-Pharmacy Chemistry? That’s a thing?!?! Why did nobody tell me that was a thing?!?! Where do I have to sign????”. We filled out the “Change of Major” form to get me to the Chemistry department and he happily signed off as my former advisor.
A Clear Path
When 2nd-semester registration opened, I met with my new advisor – a Chemistry professor. I still had 16 hours of credit hours. Bio 1102 plus lab, Chem 1102 plus lab, English Composition 1102, PE, and Spanish were ahead of me. The weight was lifted because I could finally finish Biology and “learn just what I needed for the test”. This semester’s transcript has many more A’s and B’s on it and my path to Pharmacy was much more clear. I knew the future held stops by Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Physiology on the map.
Why did this change from Biology to Chemistry make such a big difference? Part of it was because my original plan was to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree before I went to Pharmacy School. (That plan changed, but that’s a story for a different day.) Another part of it was because Chemistry was the first science that allowed me to reconcile science with my faith on a scale that I was comfortable without another soap opera-worthy existential crisis.
So what’s the point of this story?
You have to find what works. What fits with your natural bent and the values and beliefs that are planted so deep inside of you that nothing that you can perceive could remove them from you. If you approach your health and your healthcare relationships and decisions in this way, you will find what works for you.