About Me--Becoming a pharmacist?

A few months back, I had developed and taught a Mini-MBA class to Harvard affiliated students that were interested in beginning a career in consulting. Before class started, a student asked me "Who are you and what have you done? I just want to know who I'm taking advice from before I start to believe you."

While I thought that was a rather rude introduction, there are parts of what he said that I can appreciate. Before you internalize information, you should make sure your source is creditable. Hopefully I can convince you that the information I am sharing is worth internalizing. Moreover, I hope that you can learn from my experiences.

By way of background, I am probably a little different than the average HBS, Stanford, Wharton, consulting candidate you are used to. I went to a public high school and come from a normal intact Midwestern family. I began college (Denison University: Granville, OH) as a biology major, believing that I would someday attend medical school and become a doctor. Like most that start pre-med, I didnt' finish pre-med. Part way through my education, I realized that I didn't like the hands on part of medicine and instead prefered the intelectual pursuits that medicine offered. As a result, I left college early and enrolled in a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).

There were a lot of reasons to chose MUSC over a more well known program, although I can honestly say that the weather played a major role in my decision making ( I was in college...I didn't think much beyond my next meal). I interviewed all over and when I came to Charleston, SC it was 75 degrees in February, the sun was shining, the ocean was beautiful...I was sold.

After beginning pharmacy school, I worked in at a local CVS to accumulate the hours of experience that are required for certification as a pharmacist. While I was at CVS, the profession of pharmacy began to loose some of its glimmer. I was excited about the $120,000 pay check retail pharmacists received, but was eventually disallusioned by the redundancy of the 12 hour shifts a pharmacist worked. I started to believe that I couldn't spend the next 30 years as a pharmacist and so I started to plan my next career move.

What I loved about pharmacy school was learning the basic biology, biochemistry, and physiology or drugs.....