Imagine suddenly being thrown into a lecture theatre wearing your school uniform with around fifty first year Pharmacy students, all ecstatic about finally completing High School and about to begin their Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science Degree at Griffith University. This was certainly something I had never dreamt I’d be doing. The options we could choose from were Psychology, Dentistry and Oral Health, Nursing and Midwifery, Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, Public Health and finally Pharmacy.  I applied to participate in the Pharmacy day.

The day began with the head of the Pharmacy school, Nerida Smith, welcoming all the new pharmacy students to their course and highlighting important issues they would face throughout their time at the University. She explained to everyone that they were now health professionals.  Wow! What a wake - up call!

The morning progressed with power point presentations from various pharmacy lecturers, showing students possible career pathways they could take upon successfully completing the course.  In addition to this, multiple pathways of how to become a registered pharmacist were explained.  This involves undertaking a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science, then a Master of Pharmacy and then the fun part: an internship before you can apply to the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia.  All of this taking a total of five and a half years!

The lecture lasted about two hours and I never even managed a yawn. It was a rewarding experience, with lots of information to soak up. Interestingly though, our Academy was brought up in many of the lecturer’s speeches, with maps of where the school was located on the campus and even a newspaper article displayed on the projector screen. Our most embarrassing moment was when one of the lecturers told the audience there were in fact QAHS students in the audience and we had to stand up.

After the lecture we all were taken to what was called the ‘bomb shelter’, which was a ‘nick name’ for the barbeque area, where we had previously had the social gathering the day before school started. This was probably the best part of the day! Having the chance to eat a sausage or two, free drinks all round and have a chit-chat with the first year students eager to know what the Academy was all about. But aside from the fun and games, I seized the opportunity to stop gorging on food and talk to a few senior lecturers about what my future plans were in life and how I could go about achieving them.

The day was amazing; not only for the educational experience and the wonderful food, but also to be thrown in the deep end, as if I was a first year student entering the university world. The day gave me yet another reminder of what I wished to achieve, time-frames and how to get there. To those who chose not to seize the opportunity to go to any of these days, you don’t know what you missed, but there is always next time!

Year 11 Student