- I had two pharmaceutical industry placements in the second half of the semester: at Douglas Pharmaceuticals and Propharma. Douglas Pharmaceuticals is on the same road as my church out West Auckland, so it was cool just having to make a five minute trip for once, rather than having to make an hour-long trip to the city.
We got a tour around the plant, which felt like exploring a candy factory! There were heaps of machines making drugs, and we had to wear protective clothing to enter certain rooms. We also got to see these workers in these spacesuit-like-suits washing rooms. My friend's dad works at Douglas, and so when one of the workers smiled and said 'hi' to me, I assumed that was him!
The second industry placement was a half day at Propharma, this time in North Shore. At first I had no idea how I was going to get there, and was originally planning on skipping a class so I could catch the train there. Luckily one of my classmates offered me a ride there and back which saved a lot of time and hassle.
Propharma wasn't as interesting as Douglas as it was mainly a warehouse where they sort out drugs to send off to pharmacies who have ordered them. One good thing though was that they gave us the answers to the questions in our workbook and also provided food, even though it disappeared quite fast!
- We had a couple of group projects that were due towards the end of the semester. Our pharmacology student project required us to come up with our own lab experiment to test a hypothesis. I felt really bad about this one because I didn't contribute as much as the other two in the group!
- The bus lockout occurred towards the end of semester which was a little disruptive as it meant having to wake up earlier to get down to the train station to catch the train into the city. The train stop was a lot closer to campus though which was a lot more convenient though. I have to say it was fun at first to catch the train, but that was probably due to the novelty factor. After a few days of catching the train the excitement factor dropped off a bit. I was amazed at how full the train carriages got though! I don't think I'd ever seen the trains that full!
The morning after the pharmaceutics formulation assignment presentation Angie wanted to catch the train with us, and so she walked to our house in the morning (how she wakes up so early in the morning I'll never know!) before we took her to the train station. That's where we caught up with another guy from Rutherford, Matthew and joined him on the train.
- As for the other group project it was a formulation assignment for pharmaceutics where we had to write a report explaining our choice of formulation for an ocular drug (for the eyes), and then do a presentation in front of a couple of lecturers who would be marking us and asking a few questions at the end. Our group went first. I did the easiest part, which was to explain the anatomy of the eye and explain how LASIK works with the help of a little animation. Our presentation wasn't too bad. The scary part was the question session at the end, but the girls answered the questions quite well, and us guys were saved by the projector bulb blowing! We ended up having to change tutorial room because of that!
- Because I regularly finished class late in the day and stayed at Grafton to study for a while after class, I would usually walk down K' Road to catch the bus late at night usually after 8.30pm. Lately there had been guys at intersections holding these big signs advertising their escort service, the 'honk if you love sex!' kind. Occasionally they would hold the sign at me as I stood beside them waiting at the intersection for the lights to change. There was this one time though when I was standing at an intersection near one of the signholders who was talking to this girl. The girl then finished talking to him and came over to me and asked
"Hey, would you like to come and have a drink with me?" (pointing to some place further down the road).
Thinking that she had something to do with the escort club, I told her I apologised and told her I was rushing to catch a bus, which was kinda true. To confirm my suspicions, the guy at the next intersection who was holding an escort club sign also was standing with a girl!
- Even though I've been stuck in Grafton all semester, I've been able to return to civilisation by catching up with a few people over in the city campus. Throughout the second half of the semester I had to attend a few Dessert Club meetings, but sadly I couldn't make it to any of their events! I think we actually only held one event in that time - a Dessert Night! Our planned Amazing Race had to be cancelled due to a lack of interest.
- I also got to get my first photo taken with someone graduating - Janey, from Dessert Club! I caught up with a few others at Albert Park and we were waiting on the others for quite a while and time was approaching 2pm, which was when I had a tutorial on! I really had to go, but my friends were urging me to just wait a little longer so we could all get a photo together. Eventually all of us old Dessert Club Committee members got together and had our photo taken before I rushed back up to Grafton to sneak into my tutorial. Fortunately it was just a quiz competition on bipolar disorder between our and another tutorial class.
I also managed to catch up with my friend Angie for lunch at Albert Park before we had a little walk through campus and caught up with this girl Cathie, who used to go to Rutherford before defecting Rangitoto College!
I also regularly bumped into my second year pharmacy friend Scholastica! We went over to the hospital for lunch once and she explained to me the menstrual cycle (for study purposes of course!). Funnily enough, a couple weeks later while studying for my exams in the cafe and sorta...chatting with Angel my pharmacy friend, I ended up trying to explain the menstrual cycle to her! I still don't think I can fully memorise it though...
- We also had a bit of car trouble during the semester as well. The first time came at the worst possible time - assignment hand-in time! I had spent all of a Sunday night and Monday morning working on my pharmacology report and had it finished about an hour before it was due. My mum drove me into the city, but as we were driving along the off-ramp, I could hear something rattling. Very soon I could smell a burning smell and smoke began to come out from under the bonnet, so we pulled into a side street which was just down the road from the Grafton campus. I jumped out and ran through the rain to Grafton to hand in my assignment. Being so puffed out (a sign of how unfit I am!), I walked back to the car and we rang AA. The guy determined that the cap for something was missing and he'd have to call a tow truck. After another half hour of waiting, a tow truck came and we took a ride all the way back to the mechanics in Henderson!
On our way to what we thought would be our last ever accordion lesson a week or two later, we were driving through Hobsonville when we could smell a burning smell again and so we pulled over again and called AA. Once again, the tow truck was called and we were taken to the same mechanic in Henderson. Hope he didn't mind seeing us again!
- October was a sad time for us in terms of learning the accordion. We would have our last ever accordion lesson with our accordion teacher Campbell. What makes it sad is that we've been learning the accordion for over ten years, and have been learning from Campbell for more than three years at least! We were going to stop learning last year but decided to continue for slightly longer. Unfortunately we weren't able to enter the world championships due to uni and everything else being a distraction.
We ended up leaving Campbell with a shield/trophy that said on it:
THE ANDERSONS' FAVOURITE ACCORDION TEACHER
Campbell Bettridge
Campbell Bettridge
Just because we aren't taking lessons anymore doesn't mean we've stopped playing the accordion though as these holidays have proven!
- APSA (Auckland Pharmacy Students Association) elections were quite hotly contested this year! Only the president, vice-president and marketing rep's positions had one nominee running. We had very interesting campaign speeches, which included Eddie (a 2nd year student running for education) playing his ukulele, many of them trying to bribe us with lollies, Lisa and Sofie (two 3rd year students running for social reps) dressed up as Sailor...Moons (?) dancing and chanting, while Taniya (2nd year running for treasurer) doing a little dance for us, Patrick and Wasif doing a rap for sports rep and Himesh (2nd year running for treasurer) playing Who Wants to be a Pharmacist...Millionaire? with us. There were plenty of third year and second year students running for the positions which made things a little difficult for me as I'm friends with most of them! My friends Eddie, Kathleen and Ziheng were all running for education rep, while my friends Susannah and Hannah were both running for welfare rep. I had no idea who I was going to vote for! I did make some promises in advance before knowing who would be running, so I had to fulfil those promises.
What was a real shame was the voting process. This time instead of doing a paper vote, the vote was conducted through the uni website. However, it stuffed up and didn't let some people to vote, and so another vote was required. Something happened with the vote count though and because some votes were so close, a 'tie-breaker vote' was required for some positions.
Congratulations though to all those who did win, and commiserations to those who missed out!
Apparently things did get a bit heated with some contestants dissing others behind their backs (when one thought the other was a friend!). After the results were announced as well, some third years weren't happy at hearing that they had been beaten by a second year and were even considering getting people to sign a petition for a revote! In the end things cooled down and the results stood.
- One of the most difficult things of the semester were dispensing labs! We were often required to dispense two prescriptions in the space of three hours, which was not much time for us! What was even worse were the dispensing assessments! The first one was a practice, and so there wasn't much on the line. We had to do different tasks at each of nine stations. We were only given ten minutes for each station. The first practice assessment didn't go too well for me, but the second one wasn't too bad. I passed at least! How it works is that you have to pass the dispensing stations to pass, regardless of whether you make it over 50%. Quite a few people scored more than 50% but failed the dispensing stations, and so failed the assessment overall!
- APSA (Auckland Pharmacy Students Association) elections were quite hotly contested this year! Only the president, vice-president and marketing rep's positions had one nominee running. We had very interesting campaign speeches, which included Eddie (a 2nd year student running for education) playing his ukulele, many of them trying to bribe us with lollies, Lisa and Sofie (two 3rd year students running for social reps) dressed up as Sailor...Moons (?) dancing and chanting, while Taniya (2nd year running for treasurer) doing a little dance for us, Patrick and Wasif doing a rap for sports rep and Himesh (2nd year running for treasurer) playing Who Wants to be a Pharmacist...Millionaire? with us. There were plenty of third year and second year students running for the positions which made things a little difficult for me as I'm friends with most of them! My friends Eddie, Kathleen and Ziheng were all running for education rep, while my friends Susannah and Hannah were both running for welfare rep. I had no idea who I was going to vote for! I did make some promises in advance before knowing who would be running, so I had to fulfil those promises.
What was a real shame was the voting process. This time instead of doing a paper vote, the vote was conducted through the uni website. However, it stuffed up and didn't let some people to vote, and so another vote was required. Something happened with the vote count though and because some votes were so close, a 'tie-breaker vote' was required for some positions.
Congratulations though to all those who did win, and commiserations to those who missed out!
Apparently things did get a bit heated with some contestants dissing others behind their backs (when one thought the other was a friend!). After the results were announced as well, some third years weren't happy at hearing that they had been beaten by a second year and were even considering getting people to sign a petition for a revote! In the end things cooled down and the results stood.
- One of the most difficult things of the semester were dispensing labs! We were often required to dispense two prescriptions in the space of three hours, which was not much time for us! What was even worse were the dispensing assessments! The first one was a practice, and so there wasn't much on the line. We had to do different tasks at each of nine stations. We were only given ten minutes for each station. The first practice assessment didn't go too well for me, but the second one wasn't too bad. I passed at least! How it works is that you have to pass the dispensing stations to pass, regardless of whether you make it over 50%. Quite a few people scored more than 50% but failed the dispensing stations, and so failed the assessment overall!
- At times I felt as though I just wasn't cut out for pharmacy. We had weekly tutorials for pharmacy practice where we had to discuss cases in groups and then present a roleplay to the class where the patient discusses their symptoms with the pharmacist. I would NEVER go up and do the roleplay, until one week when some of the group members egged me on to have a go. The cases were focusing on eye and ear problems, with our group's particular case about some person with...some ear problem I can't remember. Anyway I had to play the pharmacist, and I did it completely wrong! I pronounced the name of the drug wrong for a start, and when asked by the patient how the drug (eardrops) should be administered, I told the patient that the head should be tilted and the eardrops applied to the ear. Someone asked whether the patient should be standing or sitting, and this is where I sorta said (as a guess):
"Sitting or standing it's really up to you..."
That's when the class started cracking up laughing and I was told you should be lying. I was just standing there a little embarrassed!
Exam Period
- There was only about a week between the last day of lectures and the first exam (oral exam) which was on the first Wednesday of exam week.
This time my oral exam for pharmacotherapy was the first exam while the written exam for the same paper was the last exam only a week and a half later. My oral exam was just after midday this time around.
The day didn't start off well when I caught the train in and got off at the wrong stop. I only discovered this after I had gotten off the train! I was in the middle of Newmarket, instead of near Grafton! I wandered down the main street looking for the nearest bus stop, till I found the right one and fortunately caught the bus to Grafton.
As for my performance, unfortunately it was quite similar to that last semester. was given ten minutes to prepare two cases that were given to me - one was on bipolar disorder and the other one on Type II diabetes. I was much more familiar with the diabetes case and spent slightly longer time preparing for it. I was not really confident with the bipolar case, and this showed when I went into the first exam room with the two examiners to talk to them about the case.
I was sweating profusely and had to say 'I don't know' to quite a few questions! While the patient in the case had lithium levels greater than normal, what the examiner steered me towards was the conclusion that the patient was dehydrated!
The second case was a lot more straight forward. I managed to answer a few questions. There was one moment though when she asked me a question and I said hyperglycemia was possible. That's when one of the examiners asked me what I said, and I started to think whether I said the right one out of hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia! It turns out I was right the first time!
I spent the rest of the afternoon studying with my friend Scholastica before catching up and studying with Natalie till late at night.
That was because the following day was...MEDSCI305 exam!! I was really worried about this exam because I hadn't done so well in the mid-semester test. What made it worse though was that once I caught the bus I started to feel a bit funny. I thought that maybe I was just full from eating several buns for breakfast, but I was feeling worse as time went on. It was once I got to Avondale that I felt like I could no further, and emptied a plastic bag I had and got off at the next bus stop. It was just as well, as I vomited into the bag as I was walking down the road to the nearest public toilet! I didn't make it so instead I just sat at the bus stop and rang my parents to come pick me up.
My mum decided to take me to see the doctor so that maybe he could give me a medical certificate just in case. I didn't get to see my family doctor because she was busy, so I didn't know this doctor too well, and while he told me it was probably just a tummy bug, he said I had to see the uni to get a form for him to fill out first. After he gave me an injection of metoprolol (which was a drug I had to know for the exam later that afternoon!).
I felt a lot better in the afternoon though so I had no excuse not to sit the exam :( It didn't go so well, which was not unexpected.
As soon as the exam was over, I went over to the computer just to have a quick look at the news and noticed a flash mob had been dancing around the streets that day and were due to randomly start dancing down at the viaduct, or at some place called Vulcan Lane in ten minutes time. I quickly texted Aonghas and we started making our way down there.
We were walking down this side street though and noticed some teenagers sitting on the ground which was weird. There were also quite a lot of teenagers walking around for a Thursday afternoon on a school day, wearing nice clothes you don't usually see them wear at such a time. They were standing in groups, quite a few of them were looking at the jewellery displays at the nearby jewellery store, which was also unusual as you don't get that many people looking at jewellery! Surely all these people were pretending to be normal and were part of this flash mob! We sat on a nearby bench and were very soon joined by some 'office workers' who sat next to us. Aonghas was sure they were in on this flash mob but I wasn't so sure.
We stood a little closer to where we thought the action would take place, and some guy came up to us and asked if we were part of the flash mob. We told him we weren't, and then he asked if we knew some guy called xxxx, to which we said we didn't. It was really weird becaues he seemed to know quite a bit about flash mobs.
That's when it started! All the people we assumed to be in on it like the young guy dressed up as an office worker on crutches all came together and started dancing in sync with each other! While they didn't do such a good job pretending to be 'normal' people, their dancing wasn't too bad!
Anyway, I had a weekend before my next four exams (one being a dispensing assessment). I even skipped church to study!
My next two exams were on pharmaceutics and pharmacy practice respectively, and they weren't so bad. I did have to guess quite a bit though!
All my remaining exams were at Tamaki and so I had to get to uni early in the morning to catch the uni bus to Tamaki. Many of the students were already at Tamaki by the time I got there, which meant the buses weren't so crammed.
Because our exams were only two hours long, it meant we had to wait another hour for the buses to come (because exams are usually three hours long). I spent the time discovering new places and buildings in Tamaki I never knew of before, such as the games room!
Before my last exam, I had my final dispensing assessment which was compulsory to pass in order to pass the course. There were tales from other students of having to dispense these really difficult medicines, but I was lucky all I had to do was to count pills and not label anything difficult like asthma inhalers! I was afraid I had done something wrong though, and would have to resit the following week.
We would be told the next day if we'd have to resit, which was also the day of our final exam! The final exam was the written exam for pharmacotherapy and I have to admit I had slacked off slightly as it was the last exam, and I had also thought I was going to fail that paper after screwing up the oral exam the week before. The exam wasn't so bad though, and I managed to write a whole lot of rubbish!
By 11.30pm, I was free! After taking the bus back to the city, I celebrated by buying Wendy's, the perfect way to the end the year.
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