At this point in time, choosing to do the elective, VPS3032 Current Aspects of Pharmaceutical Biology seemed to be one of the best choices I've made last year. The unit may have been an almighty mess due to the fact that it was being run for the first time and it's coordinated by wacky Dr. John Haynes - otherwise affectionately known as the kidney man - but it still was a highly enriching and enlightening unit.
Back to the contents of this unit. The study material of this unit was journal articles; journal articles from prestigious journals like Nature or Cell - some by Nobel Prize winning scientists. These articles are what inspire other scientists in the field, what nourishes the PhD candidate but as study material for a bunch of rag-tag 3rd year BPharm undergraduates? Moreover, we were the guinea pigs so we could have very easily ended up failing the unit if it was unbalanced.
They called it a revolutionary teaching method - jokingly I suspect - whereby the contents of the unit were extraordinarily deep, dense, challenging, thought-stimulating and frontier but where examination questions were provided prior to the examination. The latter was the case because of the former. The coordinators and lecturers feared and genuinely believed that we may all fail had we been made to attempt having sufficient mastery over an insurmountable number of cutting-edge research articles for a standard examination. That would've been too ambitious - and suicidal - even for reputable scientists. Another question did remain though: Would providing examination questions make the unit too easy? I can tell you quite straightforwardly: No. In fact, it was still so difficult that students had to collaborate and work together just to manage to cover ground. Thankfully, in the end, my results for the unit indicate that it was balanced, meaning it was neither too easy nor un-doable.
From the beginning, I chose this unit knowing that I would have less time to study for my other units relative to those doing research appraisal and summer research. I chose this unit solely because I am interested in it. I know people who have chosen units based on workload and perceived difficulty. I don't agree with that but they're not me and I'm not them so they can do whatever they see fit. What I enjoyed in the unit were the subjects taught and how surprisingly refreshing it was. I enjoyed learning more deeply about stem cells, cancer and RNAi (RNA interference) - not so much bioinformatics - and how the course was run in the form of brief lectures and enthusiastic, reputable experts and lecturers; interesting, revolutionary articles (probably too many); presentations; and short reports.
Through doing this unit, I've realised a few things. Firstly, a pharmacy career can wait, especially when I practically have it secured already. Secondly, I'd like to do my Masters and PhD, working with the very people who taught in this unit. We'll see if all this can materialise by next year. I don't want my career to be too linear. I like options. I appreciate the financial side of a job but also the more intellectually satisfying side of it and I can attain that by being an expert, probably in the fields of cancer and/or stem cells and/or RNAi; they are three of the most prospective fields in medical/pharmaceutical biology.
If you had the advantage, would you not take them too and breakaway? Would you rather continue to strive in the rat race?
The possibilities are endless, and I plan to seize them.
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