Today, I passed by some of the pharmacy students I serve as a teaching assistant for, and I saw them drawing and discussing different organic chemistry pathways structures and pathways. I was not sure what course exactly they were studying for but seeing those structures reminded me of a time some years ago, when I and my classmates were in that same position, spending endless hours trying to understand and figure out structures and pathways.
Then, it felt like our lives depended on knowing these things. We would try to devise means of remembering the ones we could not understand. Sometimes, we would sleep in class overnight reading and reading, getting flustered and frustrated. Some of my classmates would consume caffeine from their preferred source to keep them going.
So, when I saw those students, I started to think about my classmates that I was still in contact with and there was no one that I could say was using benzene ring and phosphoenolpyruvic acid in their day to day operation or interaction with their patients and clients.
I know some of my classmates who are involved in bench science pharmaceutical research and development, production or quality control would need to use this knowledge in their daily operations, but for most of us, we may have to think for some minutes before drawing a benzene ring, because we are not using it in our current career paths.
It dawned on me that even if a lot of us were not directly using that knowledge today as pharmacists or otherwise, we had to go through that rigor and learn those complex and difficult material in order to graduate from pharmacy school. Then I thought to myself, is it not amazing that in life, we are sometimes required to pass through difficult and complex things, not necessarily because in 5 to 10 years, we would be dealing with those exact things, but because those things are a part of what is required for us to graduate and move to the next level.
When we are done with that school and we graduate, we may not need to ever look at a benzene ring again but going through that process of studying and figuring hard things has equipped us to deal with other kinds of hard things. It is in the future that we understand that it was not always about the alkanes, alkenes and alkynes or the trichomes and stomata. It was about the training and about the process, and whether or not benzene ring or botanical names were an important part of our future or next level, we had to learn it then in order to graduate and move on.
If we begin to grumble about how we don’t need this course or material in the career path we intend to choose, we end up staying stuck, we do not learn the lesson, pass the test, graduate and move on.
The thing in life is, it is not always about the “usefulness” or “uselessness” of the exact subject or material we have to learn now to our next level. Instead it is about the process. It is about being equipped for the future. It is about training and preparing us to be respondents to “hard things”, it is about equipping us to be able to effectively serve others in our future profession, but most of all, it is about putting us in a position where in the future, we can see people going through those kind of difficulties and struggles, and we can tell them “this too shall pass” “you can make it through” “you can do it” “this was how I did it” and they will believe us only because they know we have passed through that stage or difficulty.
Our ability to learn the hard things, to study complex materials and “graduate” becomes a lifeline for them to hold on to, a testimony that no matter how hard the material may be, it is possible to come out on the other side thriving. This is part of why our struggles are nothing to be ashamed of, there is absolutely no need to pretend like we are so good that we never struggled, it is our ability to identify with and empathize with people that makes true heartfelt service possible.
Today, a lot of my classmates are in different paths and fields, some are even in fields unrelated to pharmacy, some are in the business and finance sector, some in leadership and management, some in real estate and investment, some in catering, but one thing a lot of them share in common is the ability to make good use and even excel in whatever field or path they have chosen, some have even gotten so dynamic and flexible that they switch from pharmacy to other fields and back to pharmacy and I think that whether they know it or not, those endless hours of difficult pharmacognosy and crazy pharmacology all served one way or the other to make them learn and adapt fast and even thrive in their endeavors.
The summary of the story is when life gives you hard situations, it is only a set up to enable you deal with greater things. Learn the lesson, pass the test, graduate and move on!