Sunday, November 11, 2007

UCSF Faculty are awesome!

How I know this? Because I had lunch with one of them and cooked dinner for two of them today. To orient the first and second year students to the three pathways offered here at UCSF, lunch time talks with faculty members are offered once a year. This time around, I choice to have lunch with HP&M faculty member, Glenn Yokuyama. I, along with 5 other students, sat over lunch to talk about our career options, where we saw ourselves in 4 years, what kind of skill sets are offered from each pathway, and what research projects were open. He was super insightful and brutally honest, not swaying any of us to chose one pathway or another. At the end of lunch, he suggested that we make an appointment to meet with him one-on-one to answer any further questions we didn't get answered. It was so reassuring that the faculty member are here to support us in all our endeavors.

Later in the evening, the cabinet members of SNPhA would serve and cook dinner for the Associate Dean of Pharmacy, his wife and the Director of Clinical Pharmacy. The dinner was raffled off at the Spring Community Service Auction to fundraise money for the various community service events put on by each organization. Usually the money goes to supplies for screening or printing costs for pamphlets to be distributed free of charge. Just from conversation, the Associate Dean and Director of Clinical Pharmacy are very student orientated. They want to get to know us and insist that we call them by their first names. It's great because they are so supportive in our endeavors. I found out that Joe (our Director of Clinical Pharmacy) will be featured on Oprah!! How cool is that?!