You Load Sixteen Tons and Whaddya Get?
'Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.'
-St. Jerome
Maybe part of the problem is that this past decade and change the devil has always been able to find me with time on my hands. One of the things I've spent a lot of time thinking about is what I should do to try to get my life back on a 'normal' track, and work and a job often pops to the top of that list. It's often the first thing anyone asks you after you introduce yourself, 'So, what do you do for a living?'. In my case, that's always opened up a ridiculous can of worms and while disability has given me huge amounts of free time and enough income to survive, it's probably time to find something more now that the medical issues allow it. It's a weird situation to be in as all I've really got is way too much education and a personal resume that looks like a nightmare. Who really needs or wants a person with an ABD PhD and hasn't worked since graduate school due to disability? I'm pretty sure that anyone in HR would instantly recognize me as a proverbial shitburger when it comes to employment.
One possible solution to this problem is nepotism. Shelley's a pharmacist with Costco and I think I'm going to try and get a position as a Pharmacy Tech. It's hardly where I thought I would have ended up all those years ago when I turned up my nose at finishing my Pharm D degree and becoming a Pharmacist to persue the PhD instead, but she has the friends and contacts to get people to overlook a resume that will be filled with so many red flags it'll look like National Day in downtown Beijing. And besides, nothing about this life has turned out quite as I had thought or hoped it would. I thought, at first, that to become a Pharmacy Tech I would have to actually go back to school and get some sort of certification but it turns out the certification process consists of a 2-hour multiple choice test. I was a little worried that it would entail a lot of biochemistry and organic chemistry, which I only have vague memories of, but it looks like there's very little that actually requires any sort of science background and most of it appears to be straight memorization. I can finally figure out just how much of my brain has atrophied and whether I still have the chops to cram large amounts of information into my noggin.
I even found a site with 75 sample questions (https://www.pharmacyexam.com/index.cfm/category/136/technician-sample-questions.cfm) and I'm going to find some time this week to take it as it if were the actual exam and see how far I get with no preparation or really, anything other than basic knowledge. Then it'll be down to actually studying for the exam and we'll see how it goes. I looked up the pass rate for the most recent year and the stats were:
2018: 48,862 Exams Administered - 28,058 Exams Passed - Pass Rate: 57%
I guess we'll find out if I'm actually smarter than the average bear.
I told Shelley about my plans and she seems open to the idea. Apparently her and her fellow pharmacists spend a lot of time griping about the fact that their pharmacy technicians are idiots. She actually reached out to a few friends and it looks like she knows a couple who are in pretty desperate need for techs right now. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to get certified, but this could actually be something that works out. If nothing else, it's at least a step forward and if it pans out, it'll be just another part of reclaiming the life I thought was beyond reach. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but at least I think there's a path to follow.
'I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...'
-St. Jerome
Maybe part of the problem is that this past decade and change the devil has always been able to find me with time on my hands. One of the things I've spent a lot of time thinking about is what I should do to try to get my life back on a 'normal' track, and work and a job often pops to the top of that list. It's often the first thing anyone asks you after you introduce yourself, 'So, what do you do for a living?'. In my case, that's always opened up a ridiculous can of worms and while disability has given me huge amounts of free time and enough income to survive, it's probably time to find something more now that the medical issues allow it. It's a weird situation to be in as all I've really got is way too much education and a personal resume that looks like a nightmare. Who really needs or wants a person with an ABD PhD and hasn't worked since graduate school due to disability? I'm pretty sure that anyone in HR would instantly recognize me as a proverbial shitburger when it comes to employment.
One possible solution to this problem is nepotism. Shelley's a pharmacist with Costco and I think I'm going to try and get a position as a Pharmacy Tech. It's hardly where I thought I would have ended up all those years ago when I turned up my nose at finishing my Pharm D degree and becoming a Pharmacist to persue the PhD instead, but she has the friends and contacts to get people to overlook a resume that will be filled with so many red flags it'll look like National Day in downtown Beijing. And besides, nothing about this life has turned out quite as I had thought or hoped it would. I thought, at first, that to become a Pharmacy Tech I would have to actually go back to school and get some sort of certification but it turns out the certification process consists of a 2-hour multiple choice test. I was a little worried that it would entail a lot of biochemistry and organic chemistry, which I only have vague memories of, but it looks like there's very little that actually requires any sort of science background and most of it appears to be straight memorization. I can finally figure out just how much of my brain has atrophied and whether I still have the chops to cram large amounts of information into my noggin.
I even found a site with 75 sample questions (https://www.pharmacyexam.com/index.cfm/category/136/technician-sample-questions.cfm) and I'm going to find some time this week to take it as it if were the actual exam and see how far I get with no preparation or really, anything other than basic knowledge. Then it'll be down to actually studying for the exam and we'll see how it goes. I looked up the pass rate for the most recent year and the stats were:
2018: 48,862 Exams Administered - 28,058 Exams Passed - Pass Rate: 57%
I guess we'll find out if I'm actually smarter than the average bear.
I told Shelley about my plans and she seems open to the idea. Apparently her and her fellow pharmacists spend a lot of time griping about the fact that their pharmacy technicians are idiots. She actually reached out to a few friends and it looks like she knows a couple who are in pretty desperate need for techs right now. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to get certified, but this could actually be something that works out. If nothing else, it's at least a step forward and if it pans out, it'll be just another part of reclaiming the life I thought was beyond reach. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but at least I think there's a path to follow.
'I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...'