The backstory

I'm not just bitter about pharmacy, I'm bitter about lots of things.

I'm that special kind of person that many people don't like to be around.  I notice the bad things in life.  I never (take time to talk about) how I stop to smell the roses.

I do take time to talk about those assholes blasting their base from their cheap ass cars with sound systems that cost more than the purchase of the trailer they live in ruining my walk in the park.  I don't really let them ruin my walk, but let me tell you, if it was legal, my contemplations of my ability to effectively perform a sniping maneuverer with a rifle would go much further.

Get the picture?  So, it takes a special kind of person to share in this life.  A special kind of person who can appreciate my thoughts and feelings without feeling like they want to go kill themselves after dealing with me.  A special kind of person to commiserate.  Lets leave it at I don't have lot of close friends, but I do have a wonderful significant other.  One who feels the same way I do and never tires of hearing me bitch.  We're two peas in a bitter rotten pod, and we love it.

I was bitter all through pharmacy school.  I was your favorite person who pointed out what you didn't want to hear.  I made enemies of teachers and students alike, yet still managed to be the youngest Dr. of Pharmacy graduate I have encountered, and in the top of the class (Rho Chi, yeah, I'm bitter and smart).

I regularly found ways to "call your baby ugly" when I questioned the necessity, validity and importance of tasks that instructors ("Dr.'s" of pharmacy who 2 years after graduation insisted that everyone within the college, including students who would be their peers in 6 months, call them such) had spent their hard time thinking up.  It almost got me into trouble a few times.  But how can you reprimand somebody for asking "why are you making me put a test in my CV/Resume and grading me on this?  I would never  do that in real life?  If this is an exercise in preparation to teach me how to prepare an effective resume, why don't you just tell me if what I prepared was effective or not?" (Yes, I got called in for a sit down based on that interaction). You can't base life or success around a checklist.  Sorry.

The instructors I took issue with were generally women, and generally spent no or minimal time working in the real world.  "Those who can't, teach" (or should I say, only teach) when it comes to people who were educated to work with real people and perform real life tasks, but instead go straight back into a classroom a reteach what the "learned" but never practiced and certainly never mastered.  Then they come up with "new" ways you should do things, things that they have and will never be able to apply in practice, but are positive that you should do in the same way.  On the flip-side, I did fine with nerd PH.D's who were not pharmacists, and were doing exactly what their education taught them to do: work in a lab.

Students that appreciated the cushy-feely attitude these half rate instructors provided didn't appreciate me.  Idiots that got into school based on quotas (you know what kind I'm talking about), or the "hardship" of being stupid enough to get knocked up at 18 and then think that someone else should pay for school for them didn't appreciate me either.  Not many people appreciated with me, but they couldn't argue with me either.  Or if they did, I'd just walk away.  "I'm here for school fuckers, come graduation day, sayonara!" And that is what happened, I finished and never looked back. I said goodbye to about 5 people at graduation and got the hell out of there.  I'm keeping in contact with one instructor.  They are bitter too.  They hold people accountable, hate fluff, and are more than adequate in their job.  They also chose to leave the school (go figure).  People hated this person for liking me, we made sure to sit together at my graduation banquet.

Despite being in the top of my class and holding positions in a national pharmacy organization (that has very few student positions) that actually gets things done, and has the money to do so (because that's how it works in this world), as opposed to *cough, clear throat AP, cough cough HA* who puts out a magazine full of fluff and gives out a enough titles and awards to sound like the Special Olympics, I was never recognized or appreciated (i.e. given a scholarship) for my accomplishments.  If only I had created a situation for myself where I was too poor to pay for school, but could drive a new car (unlike my '89 american made machine that never dies), or had spread my legs without thought for the future and then relied on others to reward me for my mistakes.  C'est la vi.  I can't go back and make fucked up decisions now.

I didn't attend high school graduation or prom (or the pharmacy school prom either- yes, they had a prom), but if I had, I may have even said fuck it and not attended this one.  However, I felt I should afford the few family members that appreciate me and my hard work the opportunity to see me graduate at least once.  The only reason I attended my class banquet is because I did the right thing and paid my class dues- dues that were supposed to make sure we got a nice gift for ourselves at graduation (which we didn't) but was instead were used to by food for events that the class "leadership" (i.e. the only idiots stupid enough to think anyone gave a shit what they thought) thought up and only they went to.  Yeah, money well spent. Fuck.  So I had free tickets- and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to use them (and make a point of showing up, under-dressed with my whole family in jeans, when others wore tuxs and fancy dresses) just to prove the point, going to something I had paid for, and potentially upset others with my appearance, both the act of being there (poor them, they thought they could forget about me) and my physical dress.  I drank.  I bitched a lot.  I got to point out to my second half all of the assholes that I had bitched about for 4 years.  I didn't drag him down to the shithole I went to school in, so he never had the pleasure of meeting these characters.  He had a good job, at home, we had no intention of moving.  Four years isn't that long when you're united in bitterness and love for each other.

So, there's no love lost between my, my institution of higher learning, or the assholes I spent 4 years being stuck there with.  It was just another opportunity to bring the bitterness to the next level, another event in a long line of similar situations.  I've been a loner for a long time, and some how life keeps reinforcing my outlook.