Hey guys!
It's the first day back at school and I hope all of you had as great a summer as I did. Like most incoming P3's I spent the summer working on earning my intern hours and trying to enjoy my last summer. And boy time flew by quick!
I wanted to share with you all a little about what a normal pharmacy school summer is like. At PCOM you get two summer breaks off. Since we get out of class early every day (only until noon on most days) we go a little later into the summer. This year we finished in early June (just in time for me to be off for my birthday). I took a little bit of time off that first week to relax and recover. Since I love backpacking so much we decided to go to Fort Mountain in North Georgia. It was beautiful and so much fun!
Here are some photos of my trip:
I then started working full steam. I work two jobs currently, first as a pharmacy intern and secondly as a research assistant. This summer I usually worked in the lab in the mornings and in the pharmacy in the afternoon and evening. It made my days really busy but I was able to usually get the weekends off by setting it all up that way.
The point of working so much during the summers of pharmacy school is to earn your intern hours. As of now, pharmacy students must earn 1500 intern hours in order to sit for their licensing exams in Georgia. At PCOM we earn 1000 hours from our IPPEs and APPEs. Georgia requires that you earn the other 500 hours on your own. If you put in a little bit of effort you can easily earn all of your hours over those two summers.
Working so much did make the summer fly by for me (or maybe it just went so quickly because it was my last!) but it was still really great. I was even able to take a few days to myself to escape to the beach and get a little tan before classes and orientation.
Next week I'll be sure to post to tell you a little about this years orientation!
Katie