Recap of Pharmacy Semester 1

Two weeks had already passed into this new semester in a blink of an eye. Time to do some recap about my Pharmacy course for the first semester.

Although i had done enough research prior to the start of the course, but the reality was hard enough to hit me.First, let's talk about the units that I took during the first semester: Physiology, Organic Chemistry, Physicochemical Basis Of Pharmacy and Pharmacy, Health and Society(PHS in short). Basically, for Monash's system, all the units are quite integrated, meaning there are several 'subjects' in a unit.

Physiology was rather straight forward, learning all the stuff about the human body as well as touching on a bit of biochemistry(Kreb's cycle etc.) and membranes stuff. I took this subject quite lightly and screwed up in the exam. =( Sigh. Last minute memorising just won't work at uni level.

Physico was a tough nut though. Basically this whole unit is all about calculations and the concepts behind it. From ionic equilibrium to thermodynamics to phase equilibrium and even electrochemistry. Not forgetting to mention, integration and logarithms!!! @_@ Surprisingly some of my friends in other uni did not have to go through all these. Well, in the first year, to say the least. I dread calculations, a lot, but somehow managed to score the highest for this paper. @_@

Moving on is organic chemistry, which is subject i dread the most, and still dreading. This was one of the reasons i opt NOT to take up pharmacy last time. It's almost the same as A-levels chemistry but it is more deep, especially in the conformations and stereochemistry part. Somehow until today i still can't appreciate the relevance of this unit but time will tell. Needless to say i screwed up too. D: Anyway, all hope is not loss, just that more practice and hardwork is required.

Last but not least, PHS, which is a relatively new subject. In this unit, we talk about communication, pharmacy laws and codes of conduct, Medicine Management Pathway (most of it based on the Australian system though), pharmaceutical calculations, very basic pharmacokinetics and routes of administration etc. The unit coordinators also threw in statistics and probability which made the unit really challenging. And i thought i've seen the last of statistics during my AS times. Sigh. Adding on to that, I had to memorise 22 commonly prescribed drugs (including their drug class, adverse effects and other relevant points) as well as part of the exams.

That pretty sums my first semester's syllabus i guess. Why am i writing this article at this hour is because i have to do a 2000 word psychology assignment which is due in 4 weeks time, and it's about time i brush up my writing skills.

Kthxbai. =D