Hi there! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ming and I am a second-year student enrolled in the six-year PharmD program within the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. In today’s blog, I will give you a rundown of what a day looks like as a pharmacy student here at Northeastern along with some advice I would give to other pharmacy students who are also in the same boat as I am. But before I get into it, I would like to give a general overview of what the program is like.
During my time here so far, I quickly realized that pharmacy is an incredibly niche major. Due to it being a relatively small program (with approximately 100 students in each graduating class), not a lot of people know many pharmacy majors unless they are a pharmacy major themselves. But it is also because of this reason that there is such a strong sense of community within the program. As you rise up in the years, you will find yourself enrolled in the same classes as your peers that you’ve met since day one, meaning that you will have the same support system throughout all your six years here. Unlike many other majors who either have a fall or spring Co-Op cycle, pharmacy majors start their first Co-Op during the summer after their second year (PP2) or before their third year (P1) and they switch between Co-Op and classes every semester until their final Co-Op which is in the fall of their fourth year (P4). Each Co-Op lasts for four months instead of six and each student is required to complete three Co-Ops during their time here. Now that you have a general rundown of the program, let’s get into my day.
Today (Monday, September 21st) was a pretty typical day for me, not too busy but also not too free. I had four classes: Human Physiology, Physics for Pharmacy, Organic Chemistry, and Music in Everyday Life. I was scheduled for remote learning for all of my classes today, but I usually would prefer to go in-person because I can’t hold myself accountable if I were to take classes online. I woke up at 7:30am, made myself my first cup of coffee for the day, and got ready by 7:58 just in time for my first class. I set up my laptop and my notebooks on the living room table and entered my first Zoom class for the day.
Human Physiology: Maybe it’s because this class is at 8am, I am kind of glad that I was scheduled for remote learning for this class today. We continued where we left off during the last lecture which was ATP, glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation. The concepts for today’s lesson were relatively straightforward since I learned most of the information back in general biology last year. But the professor did talk about a few more concepts that I didn’t learn which was pretty interesting. The professor likes to do a lot of drawings to help us visualize the concepts better. It sometimes helps, but other times we are left just as confused as before. He also lectures at a pretty fast pace, which means that I usually have to catch up on notes after the lectures. This class is probably leaning towards the more difficult side out of all the classes I’m taking this semester as it’s a lot of memorization along with visualizing concepts which I was never great at. But overall, today’s class was great and it went back pretty fast.
Physics for Pharmacy: I’d say physics is the class I look most forward to because of how good the professor is at explaining the concepts. The majority of lectures in this class is just us going over practice problems, which is really helpful because not only are we able to apply what we learned into practice also the problem sets the professor goes over in class are similar to the ones we will see on our homework and exams. We finished where we left off last lecture which was vectors and started learning about projectile motion. While I did take physics back in high school, I pretty much forgot most of it, so it was refreshing to be learning it again. I’m not worried too much about this class because physics is relatively easy for me (I hope I don’t jinx myself) and that the professor is just really good at explaining the concepts.
Organic Chemistry: Known as the “weed-out” class for most health science/STEM majors, orgo is definitely the class I feel like I’m going to struggle with the most this semester. Today we started learning about acids and bases as well as how different factors affect a molecule’s acidity or basicity. While I did well in general chemistry last year, I feel like orgo is a whole different ball game. The professor emphasized the importance of practice and understanding the concepts rather than memorizing them every since before the semester began on her syllabus, and as someone who usually tends to memorize concepts rather than try to understand them, I feel like this class is definitely going to be a challenge for me. The professor went through the slides pretty fast today, so that means I will have to make up for the missing notes by watching the recording later in the day.
Music in Everyday Life: To be honest, I chose to take this class as my elective because I heard it’s an easy A, but so far I feel like this class is going to be a struggle considering that it’s just an elective class. This class is very discussion-based, meaning that there aren’t many notes to take down. But that means that most of the exam questions are going to be based on what is being discussed in class. In today’s class, we related brain psychology to music and talked about Gestalt’s theory and how that can also be applied audibly rather than just visually. This was my last class of the day so I basically zoned out towards the end of class.
After my classes ended today, I made lunch and my second cup of coffee for the day. I made an omelet with a side of hashbrown. After that, I started watching the recording for my physiology class and completed my class notes. At around 3:30pm I met up with my friend to study at Curry Student Center. It was kind of packed considering COVID and social distancing standards but we made do. I finished my physics homework and did some notes for my orgo class. At around 7pm, I went to get Korean Barbeque with my Barkada fam at this restaurant called Sura located in Medford. It was a really good meal as I haven’t had KBBQ ever since quarantine started and we had a good time catching up. Overall 8/10 would go again. I got home around 10:30pm, did some work, showered, and went to bed.
That was basically a typical day for me (other than the KBBQ part, it was just an impromptu outing), I hope you got to learn more about myself and what it’s like to be a pharmacy student at Northeastern. If you’re a pharmacy major and have questions, feel free to find me on Instagram @mingxye. Till next time!
