Changing careers: Headed to pharmacy school

With the end on winter holiday breaks, more than 6,500 students returned to PharmD programs across the United States, ready for another semester or quarter of hard work. UA's 396 future pharmacists have returned to their lecture halls, study groups or rotation sites, with nearly 100 in the last stretch before graduation and another 100 with their first semester of pharmacy school now under their belt. This story focuses on two COP students who came to pharmacy as a profession somewhat later in their lives than most, and showed both tenacity and hope in making a big change in their futures.

From insurance to PharmD: Brittney Dewey

Brittney Dewey worked in the Claims Auto Damage Dispatch Unit at GEICO during her undergraduate studies.

“That job [dispatchers unit] was the bottom of the totem pole in comparison to other opportunities within the company,” Dewey says. “If I wanted to promote within the company to management that meant making sacrifices I wasn’t ready to consider to make, like moving cross country."

In 2009, Dewey graduated from the University of Arizona and was consequently promoted to a better job in the Special Investigations Unit, which reviews cases for fraud.

“My husband was coming home from the military so we decided that he would use the GI bill to go to school and since I got a really great job, there was no need to leave it anymore,” Dewey said.

Dewey liked her new job and the company, but she didn’t feel passionate about her work. . She had always wanted to play an active role in helping people maintain healthy lives, but a fear of blood and needles kept nursing and medical programs at bay.

After a little researching, Dewey explored the option of pharmacy and fell in love. When her husband  finished his degree, she took the Pharmacy College Admission Test and applied to the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy.

Dewey was accepted and began her first set of classes with the College of Pharmacy this year. She stayed at GEICO until one week before school started this past fall.

“What’s really great about the College of Pharmacy is that they record  lectures now, so you can go back … and re-watch lectures,” Dewey says. “I’ve watched many of the lectures over again and I see how many notes I missed the first time around.”

This being her first year, Dewey is open to the many career options pharmacy offers. She thinks she may land on retail pharmacy.

With insurance behind her now, she thinks her career in pharmacy will be “very valuable” for her and her family.

 

How 9/11 changed everything: Charles McFarland

During the early '90s, Charles McFarland received his bachelor’s in civil engineering from the University of Central Florida with high hopes. He got a job right away in Florida, working with an international engineering firm in their water resources department.

He began designing construction plans for stormwater management systems that direct and collect stormwater runoff across parcels of land as well as channel the runoff away from the freeways. His job entailed researching where the stormwater goes when it rains and how to lessen water on the roads to prevent hydroplaning.

For the next 10 years, he moved to several engineering firms, moving up the corporate ladder and finding his niche in designing land development construction projects all across the country.

Having earned his professional engineering license after taking a grueling eight-hour exam, McFarland began to run the scene as project manager. He turned raw pieces of land into shopping centers, gas stations, fast-food restaurants and even multi-family uses such as apartment buildings and townhouses.

“I think of all the projects I had that had to go before a public hearing, I think there was only one or two that didn’t go through,” McFarland says. “But we got it to go through the next month by simply changing a few things on the plan.”

At the height of McFarland’s career, he was working as program manager for an architectural engineering firm in Orlando, designing one particular childcare school franchise across the United States. Business was booming, but not for long.

In 2001, on Sept. 11, the twin towers were attacked and construction nationwide changed almost overnight. New projects dried up and company layoffs began.

“When you have 200+ people working in a building and it’s hard to find a parking space in the morning and three months later it’s easy…the people who worked around you are no longer there… you see it coming,” McFarland says.

After a few months, McFarland lost his job.

He sought a new engineering job but everything had dried up in Florida. In 2003, he sold his house and moved to Virginia. He ran through a series of short-lived engineering jobs, due to the nature of the economy.  Eventually he found himself living in Phoenix.

Trying something else

He had just turned 37 and was tired of the lack of stability in engineering. He met with a career counselor and discussed the possibilities of transitioning into a different career.

“I liked being a civil engineer and eventually seeing the public use one of the projects I helped design and construct, but something deep down was telling me I wanted to go do something else,” McFarland says.

A series of aptitude tests revealed that he would fit well as a doctor, optometrist or pharmacist. His brother was a retail pharmacy manager where he was doing very well and they always talked about how he helped his pharmacy customers understand their medications on a daily basis. He was convinced that pharmacy could be the thing he needed.

McFarland first went back to school at Glendale Community College, leaving his new assistant director of engineering position with a private land developer to become a full-time student.

“That was one of the scariest decisions I ever made to walk away from the only career I have ever known,” McFarland says.

After taking the basic prerequisite classes necessary to get into pharmacy school, he applied to several pharmacy schools but was not accepted anywhere the first time.

Naturally, he approached his Glendale teachers to see why he was rejected. They told him to keep applying and that sometimes it takes a couple of times.

The next year McFarland did his due diligence, applied to several schools and was invited to four interviews across the country. He was accepted by Midwestern University in Chicago and the University of Arizona.

McFarland is now a part of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Class of 2015. He is excited to graduate soon and apply all the knowledge he’s gathered.

“Never give up,” McFarland says about switching careers. “It may take you a bit longer than you expected, but if it’s what you’re meant to do, God will make sure it happens. It just takes a huge leap of faith.”

 

Story and home page photo by Isaac Cox, student communications assistant