Mom is the pharmacist of the house

Coming home to LA for thanksgiving was awesome. Nothing beats a home cooked meal. Surprisingly the cool, brisk winter of San Francisco made its way to LA. I don't think it's ever been so cold. I started to feel a small tickle in my throat and I asked my mom if she had any airborne or a chinese medical herb I used to take as prevention for the cold. Instead, she gave me a a bottle of chinese medicine, Diclofenac and Chlorpheniramine. From my 1.5 years of pharm school, I remembered Chlorpheniramine is first generation antihistamine that causes drowsiness but I totally forgot what Diclofenac was used to treat. - Perhaps some anti-inflammatory like Ibuprofen? I was hesistant and told my mom that I would be okay without. She insisted that this was a miracle drug and had already filled a glass of water for me. What do I do? My mom is trying her best to look out after me and if I took a pill, the concentrations would be so low that I would not be at risk for any serious condition. I was hesistant. The tables still haven't turned- despite my 1.5 years in pharmacy school- nothing has changed. My mom still acts like the pharmacists at home.

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?!

Happy Halloween!

For many of us pharmacy students, we celebrated Halloween on Saturday- the Halloween Carnival and Health Fair then the Halloween Party at Suite 181. Now it's crunch time. Sucks, ain't it? It's Halloween and we had exam. It's Halloween and I'm here in the library studying for my Physio midterm on Monday. It's okay, I was never a huge trick or treater anyways.

A historic day

Little did we know that today would be a historic day. Our most lovable physical chemistry professor would teach his last day of physical chemistry after 40 years. Our Pharmaceutical Chemistry professor was very fond of this professor and asked that we spend the first portion of our class standing in on his last class. Our associate dean and the head of the physical chemistry department said a few words before Dr. Shetlar lectured. Watching the entire P2 class stand in the aisles , I almost shed a tear because I realized what an impact he has made not only on my first year of pharmacy school but our entire class- he made physical chemistry enjoyable. We are all very fortunate to have Dr. Shetlar be part of our lives.

Flabbergasted

http://www.ronpaulnews.net/2007/10/ron-paul-on-msnbc-live-with-dan-abrams.html

I think I like this guy.

My brain hurts

The Physiology midterm is by far the hardest exam I have taken so far in pharmacy school--I came out and my brain hurt.

On another random note- I had a bag of instant Japanese noodles- you know, the ones that come with packets of spices, oil,and the occasional dehydrated 'vegetables'--and on the bag there was a very interesting tag line " Supin- Made from the best Japanese Technology".

Procrastinating

After 3 whole hours of grinding 7 teabags of green tea, measuring out ingredient equivalents, melting butter, and frosting... I've completed my first batch of GreenTea Cupcakes for tomorrow's bake sale. Now my only problem is to resist the temptation of eating one before tomorrow morning.