DONE

WITH

PHARMACY

SCHOOL

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

April Showers! :D

I've decided that getting married is something I should do more often, because not only do you get to wear a pretty ring and get yourself a husband, but you also get oodles of cool presents!! I could get used to this! :D

Sunday was the second of my Bridal Showers. I've been very lucky in that both my family and Mike's family wanted to throw me separate showers! This one was at a golf course in Lansing and we had a great turn out! All but one of my bridesmaids (who lives in Pennsylvania) made it too, so I got to see my favorite girlies! Beth brought her adorable offspring, Nolan, and he was a BIG HIT. Everybody loved him and I ended up having more pictures of him than anything else! ;) I had a really, really fun time. Debbie and her sisters did an amazing job putting it together for me--I'm such a lucky girl!

Mike and I got some really awesome stuff! I can't wait to unpack it all this weekend. Right now it's a giant mountain in Mike's living room. ;) We finally have a vacuum to suck up my wads of hair off the hallway floor, and a new microwave to replace the one I've moved from dorm to apartment to dorm 14 times!! Kristen also got me my favorite ice cream dishes and Mom passed the family wine glasses down to me. :) It was lots of fun and I got to wear a veil! *SQUEAL*

Okay. That was really fluffy.

This is my last week of pharmacy school and I graduate next Friday.

*SUPERNOVA!!*

Ulcer Fun

So I gave myself an ulcer on my eye last week. I do not recommend this approach to avoid studying. There are several much more enjoyable, much less expensive ways to put off the inevitable, although it did get me one sweet day off of my rotation and the first mid-day nap I've had since finals week my first year of school. Apparently I had some kind of sensitivity reaction to my contact lens solution which was then made worse by my ripping off precious epithelial cells each time I removed my contacts. Uuuugh. Don't get an ulcer on your eye. NOT FUN.

Anyway, over $100 and one 5 mL bottle of Tobradex later and I'm back to wheeling and dealing drugs up in Saginaw (for only EIGHT MORE DAYS!!!).

This past weekend was super special because it was my beloved's 27th BIRTHDAY!!! Oh man he's getting old. He tells his students he's 40 (for respect? I don't know) but coming up soon he won't need to. Geez. I should trade him in for a newer model. ;) Anyway, we had a little get-together at his parents' house for gift opening which was lots of fun as always. They even got him an apple pie (because he hates cake) with candles on it to blow out! Awwww. They also made him clean the gutters though, so that kind of balanced things out.

I tried my hand at jewelry making this weekend because that's something I'm interested in giving a shot post-grad. I ended up making lots of things and it was crazy fun! *EXAMPLE* Unfortunately, the whole time I was doing it all I could think was "I should be studying right now." Studying and thinking about studying is the root of all evil. ALL EVIL.

This weekend I get to chaperone Prom with Mike (:D) and then Sunday is my second BRIDAL SHOWER!! And I'll get to see my girls!! :D I'm so excited.

Fun With Capsules

This little guy is what I use to brew up some capsules for your eating pleasure.

Cookin' Up Some Drugs

Last rotation is Healthway Pharmacy, a specialty compounding pharmacy in Saginaw. So far it's been great!! We get to work in labs and make patient-specific products not available from commercial manufacturers. So far I've made:

• Lollipops
• Capsules (fav!)
• Ointments
• Creams
• Solutions
• Suspensions
• Lozenges

... with plenty more to come I'm sure. It takes me about three times as long to make something as it does the other more experienced lab techs, but they are so patient with me! :) We also make veterinary and sterile products which have been interesting to see. On Thursdays I call every single patient to make sure their product is working well and they don't have any questions/concerns! That's what I call customer service. ;)

I was able to attend my first Baptism today (aside from my own which I naturally don't remember)! Our friends Ben and Allison were having their lovely daughter Myra baptized. It was pretty interesting, but more of a church service and less of a baptism than I was expecting. Lots of singing which I performed horribly out of tune and "Peace be with yous" while all I could think about is whether or not these people wash their hands after using the bathroom. >_<

We went shopping this weekend to get Mike some pants, but didn't end up finding the kind he really liked. I, of course, had no such trouble. I ended up getting two blouses, two pairs of pants, and three cocktail dresses. OMG I have a problem.

This Is It

Tomorrow is April 5th, which means the next 25 days will be the very last I'll spend in Pharmacy School. The very last I will ever be a student. For those of you reading this that have been a student with me, I'm sure you can understand it when I say this: there were times when I thought I'd never reach this point. School has felt like a treadmill--I'm constantly running but not going anywhere. Tomorrow is my last first day and before I know it I'll be walking that stage.

I find myself remembering.

I remember my rejection letter and when I was assigned that fateful number: 195. I remember watching the Waiting List climb higher and higher, and then seeing it reach me. I stood there looking at it, as my life literally changed before my eyes, and the world stopped spinning for the briefest moment. Since then, I have changed tremendously.

My confidence has grown (though I still struggle with it often, but not as much) and my priorities have changed. I've learned the difference between a friend and a true friend. I've discovered how hard it is to make the right decisions, to make them in the right order, and to wait, wait, wait for the rest of my life to start. But life happened to me in Pharmacy School too, and even though I cursed it, cried over it, hated it so much--I can't help but love it a little too. Aside from a wealth of knowledge, it gave me wonderful friends; many I will carry with me forever. It strained my every relationship but made me appreciate each one all the more. It could've torn me away from Mike (and almost did, more than once) but never managed--in fact, it taught us how to love each other better and more completely. It taught me the value of patience and it gave me self-worth the likes of which I didn't know before.

Just like four years ago, I find myself nervous and a little afraid to move forward from here. Something new is happening to me, and though I believe myself to be brave, new things are always a little scary. I remember a quote that helped me back then, and not so oddly enough, it fits even now.

Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.

Spring Break

Although P4 students have no official Spring Break, I sort of got a surprise unofficial one! I was supposed to complete my March rotation yesterday, the last calendar day of March, but my preceptor was on vacation this week so she released me early!! :D I already had Thursday and Friday off for Easter, so I ended up having the entire week off.

My March rotation ended well--I didn't particularly like the Apothecary Shoppe and I didn't exactly give them as nice a grade as they gave me, but that's the way it goes. I pay a lot of money for each of my rotations, and I spent most of this one working on things that the pharmacists didn't want to work on. That aside, it's over now and I'm still rocking out a 4.0 for my final year of school. :D

The NAPLEX is fast approaching and I'm scared to death. I've been studying but it doesn't feel like I know very much and it's putting a huge damper on my graduation excitement. I suppose I'm going to have to separate those two events--I worked so hard that I deserve to really enjoy my graduation. If I'm still far away from being prepared for the NAPLEX then I'll have lots of time post-grad to prepare. And just leave it at that.

With my week off I visited my sister downstate for a few days, which was great fun as always!! We went to see How to Train Your Dragon which was awesome! As some of you may already know, I'm a little obsessed with dragons so seeing this movie was a must for me. I've found that even really, really crappy movies are enjoyable to me if they have a dragon in them. However, such was not the case, for I loved this movie and can't wait for it to be released on video! :D Kristen and I also stayed up embarrassingly late playing Zelda: the Ocarina of Time on the N64 (one of my all time fav Zelda games). I'm really terrible at this game, especially without my brother Chris who has been my walking, talking game guide for every video game EVER since his birth. Even so, I made it all the way to the end!! And luckily Kristen enjoys watching me so that worked out well. ;) I was sad to leave on Tuesday. :(

Now I'm spending the remainder of the week with Mike in Ionia, even though he has school until the end of today. Speaking of Mike, he's like the Super Teacher, which I don't think I've mentioned yet. On top of all the other things Mike does to teach (which is a LOT btw), he's also leading a Google Docs training class for other teachers AND he's been coaching the all new Ionia Lacrosse team!! So he's pretty amazing, but I knew that already. ;)

Monday I start my last month of pharmacy school. OMG. But that's a blog entry in and of itself.

It's also gorgeous out. It's so sunny, warm, and open-the-windows-at-night worthy. Somehow I find myself suddenly on the other side of another winter; a winter that for some reason seemed to be the longest of my life. Yet now it seems to be gone in the blink of an eye, and I realize that nothing is far away anymore. Nothing that I've been counting down to is so far away that I can only stare at it wistfully and wish for time to pass by faster. I don't have to do that anymore. It's so close I can taste it.