A Year Gone By

My first year of pharmacy school is now complete, and I'm not sure how I should feel about that.  It's at once exciting and daunting for what's to come.  Hopefully everything will go well in the things to come.

It's strange, really.  At the end of every year of school I don't usually feel like I'm much wiser.  I have to do a mental checklist of all the things that I've learned before I can really grasp how sizable the information and skills are.  Is that normal?  Perhaps it's a common notion but I'm not really sure why it's the case.  Maybe it's because each thing we learn leads to so many new questions that once we know something the vastness of what we don't know becomes more apparent.

It's always been a strange feeling to me to have information that I don't even have to think about to recall.  Such is how some of the drugs I've learned about have become.  It's like learning to type on a keyboard.  At first you have to think about every key you press, but as time goes on you just think about the words you're typing and your fingers naturally do what they need to do.  It's a natural process with information that we use often, but every time that I reflect on the matter it feels very odd.  That it should be happening once again should come as no surprise but the feeling arises all the same.


Another thing that comes to mind as many of my friends graduate is that, had I stayed at UT, I would now have a bachelor's degree.  The absence of that milestone makes the education process feel much more like there is no end in sight.  Admittedly, I know there's three years left and then I'll have a doctorate, but three years feels like a very long time at this point.  However, at the end of those three years, will I be sad to have seen them pass?  That's the basis for nostalgia, right?  A part of us wants to relive a time that's gone forever.  I just hope that by the end of these coming three years that I'm that much better of a person and that much more prepared for whatever comes after that.