The title is a reference to a "Guide to Industry" document from a Reddit user. This document is eerily accurate, which you will see once you read through this post.
My motivation for doing this: recently I've been thinking about writing from my perspective as a pharmacist: my journey, finances, thoughts, experience, and where it's all led me. Here it is.
It all started after I graduated last year. I was finishing up the remainder of my student loans by paying rent while living in downtown toronto - a dangerous decision. I didn't want to give up this newly found nice quality of life living in a condo at the waterfront with only 2 other roommates (my previous residence was in a 7-bedroom house I shared with some pharmacy upper years). I had some trouble getting licensed due to the pandemic and due to a disclosure on my application leading to a full blown investigation, but that's a story for another day. While dealing with the headache of administration, I had to make money somehow, so I started working part time as an intern at Shoppers Drug Mart while applying to jobs. Fortunately, a couple months later I got a job at a pharma company, a 1-year contract starting 3 months after graduation. My friend referred me. Going into the job, I thought "we'll see, I might not want to stay for longer than a year anyways," mainly because I didn't want to limit my growth to one place. I was right.
The day I got my offer, I was moving into a new condo closer to the green TTC line. I felt it was a good move at the time. In September, I started working from home, learning the ropes of this hidden industry. There were frustrating moments and rewarding moments. I became more motivated to work for self-development and to add projects to my repertoire. The corporate environment was really daunting to navigate at first, but I think people are used to being disingenuous. During one of our year-end work meetings, the company invited a high-profile manager of a basketball team (guess which) to speak to us about creating high-performance teams and passion. A lot of the things he talked about didn't apply to us. Basketball and drug manufacturing, really? He felt so passionate about his work it made me depressed. Sports is a very different industry to be in, mostly because of the public entertainment factor. I didn't think this needs to be spelled out. When he spoke about throwing his very being into basketball, the passion was there, and it felt really inspiring to be a part of his journey. When I looked around the event hall, I didn't see the same level of passion. A sad reality, but I'd rather be on the realistic side of things than tell myself lies. Ironically, if people were listening to him they'd be throwing away their corporate jobs in pursuit of their true passions. I did not attend the rest of the work meeting. The impostor syndrome felt too strong and I didn't feel like I belonged with this group of people anymore, a feeling that would sit with me through the rest of this contract.
I spent the raw winter months in Hamilton cat sitting. Unfortunately a couple of my friend's plants died under my care. Again, I felt very fortunate that the company closed for 2 weeks in the winter, instead of having to work holiday shifts at the pharmacy. The winter break was very needed.
~The New Year~
Somehow, everything became too much for me to deal with. Not just the stress from work, but I was also dealing with a very stressful roommate situation that led me to move out in early 2023. I hastily moved into a new basement apartment and continued working. My support network contributed to my strength and allowed me to keep going. I debated with myself back and forth, and started taking antidepressants. They helped. I wonder how many pharmacists are in the same boat as me.
Even though I received my license in the new year, I didn't work until the summer. I didn't feel ready to start signing off on prescriptions, and even tried a training shift at one store. Prescribing for Minor Ailments had just been authorized. At first, I felt disgusted at the lack of training I received, but I wasn't surprised. There was no training for new pharmacists. I have been very anti-Shoppers as a result of some horrible placements. Some of my classmates told me they have been only taking clinical shifts, not feeling ready to prescribe yet either. When I felt ready to wield my new pharmacist title, I found a relief pharmacist job at a small Shoppers store in downtown Toronto. I managed to do a couple of evening and weekend shifts each month. The transition from calling myself a student/intern to calling myself a pharmacist felt very strange. I don't think I felt comfortable with this new identity for a while. After all, you have direct responsibility if a dispensing task goes awry and harms a patient. I kept with this schedule for a few months, becoming more and more disillusioned with the necessity of working.
Since I moved to a different area of the city, I needed to work at a pharmacy closer to me, again, to maintain my license. I guess a blessing in disguise is that as a pharmacist, you don't need to worry about finding a community pharmacy job due to the mass pharmacist shortages that plagued Toronto since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Shoppers recruiters send out mass email notifications about which stores are looking for part-time and full-time pharmacists, and the list for southern GTA was endless. I found another part-time dispensing position at a pharmacy nearby with a roster of homeless people that needed OAT. It definitely made for some interesting conversations.
Slowly, without realizing, I became an anti-work believer. Having the full-time pharma job meant I needed to balance my patient care hours needed to keep my new license with the 9-5 hybrid work that came with the corporate culture. At this point, I was ready to transition into full time remote work no matter how frustrating, because of the awfulness of the alternative reality waiting for me.
We are now in summer of 2023. I switched to a different antidepressant, because it was making me too sleepy in the daytime, despite taking them at night. The withdrawal made it hard to work for a week. Fortunately the company wasn't keeping tabs on who was online at what time of the day. My hybrid job became a game of how long I could keep my Teams status online for while struggling to concentrate to track and complete the tasks I was given. I gave up on trying to go to office 2-3 times a week, because some people on my team didn't go that often. I was still feeling this impostor syndrome, but now there was a new feeling: I didn't care about producing excellent work anymore, I just wanted to leave this position and find a team that actually valued my input. Why didn't I apply to internal jobs at this point? Probably because I felt burdened with all the things I needed to adjust, and income came first. An excerpt from my diary: "it feels like I've been running a marathon with no time to catch my breath these days. There's always things that need to be done at all times."
I decided to use the 10 vacation days I was allotted on a vacation. Upon my return, I gave 2 months notice to my landlord and signed a new lease for an apartment. I spent most of the fall months packing and finishing up my contract. They made the decision to hire another candidate to replace me instead of extending my contract, which was communicated to me in the summer. I saw it as a win-win. Clearly I wasn’t a good fit for the team because they didn't know how to use my talents and I didn’t show enough “initiative” to do a manager’s job. It felt good to leave the job and the basement.
Reading my previous journal entries, I realize I wasn't happy at this job for two reasons: the corporate environment (everyone says you should pursue extracurricular projects, but somehow all of the projects I’d asked to be on didn’t lead to anything) and the seemingly futile work I was doing, all the while trying to get the team to reply to my e-mails. As a recent graduate, I should consider myself lucky to get this highly coveted position, but I came to realize I disagreed with the way the team operated, the imbalance of resources compared to the amount of work that needed to be done, and the limitation to my development if I had stayed longer in this role. I am now happily settled in another apartment and am slowly reprocessing the year that went by. Quietly finishing my contract job without extension, moved 3 times, lost 2 friends in this process of self-development, transitioning between 3 part-time pharmacist jobs. At least I still have the energy to keep taking shifts at a new Shoppers near me. I am now motivated by the prospect of leaving Shoppers to transition into an independent pharmacy. At this point, I would still like to work in pharma because of the perks. I still feel lethargic when thinking about returning to full-time work, but at least I have more experience and more of a say in where I am working.
My experience transitioning from school to work was not a smooth progression and definitely not the mainstream experience. In writing about this I realize that I've been at odds with myself the entire time. A sort of "identity conflict." After working my butt off in school, I wanted to relax but instead dived straight into full-time work. I definitely complained about burnout more than once that year. But what did I expect? My identity as a pharmacist took time to develop, and it took many months for me to feel comfortable practicing as a pharmacist, time that I could have spent working and not caring about "the bigger picture of patient care." Money is important at this time, and I felt I was putting myself at risk, moving right after leaving my full-time job. But I am proud that I was able to make it this far. Am I proud of being a pharmacist? I guess we will see as I grow more into the role. Ever since those American pharmacy walkouts happened, change is not too far away.
Topics for next time:
A pharmacist's status in society?
The path to being an MSL is a mainstream one
Job hunting: faking it, impostor syndrome, seeing where you are truly at
Applying for EI
The 4-day workweek, universal income, and other financial things of interest
