Drug-related university pathways?

[smokedup]

Obviously being a user/browser of this site, drugs, their pharmacology and their related effects on humans and animals fascinate me. Can anyone steer me in the right direction as to where i can take this passion to a tertiary level? would be greatly appreciated. Peace

 

[psytaco]

plenty of options.

If your interested in the policy and sociology side of things then you could do criminology as part of a B.A. You'd be looking at crime more generally, but there is plenty on drug use, policing of drugs, the criminal justice system etc.

If your good at biology and chemistry there is pharmacy. Medicine too if your really brainy.

A degree in social work would probably mean working on the coal face with alot of people suffering addiction and other problems. As would a degree and post grad degree in psychology.

hope this helps

 

[Divine Moments]

There are quite a few pathways, depending on exactly what it is you want to do. Pharmacy, medicine (especially clinical pharmacology, psychiatry, anaesthesia), vet science, dentistry, etc. all have a fair amount of pharmacology involved. Some science streams also will. A friend of mine did a Bachelor of Science (Molecular and Drug Design). Probably depends a bit on what sort of career you want afterwards and how you would like to apply the knowledge (or if you're doing it purely for interest with other career plans).

 

[tentram]

this could maybe moved to education and careers, fwiw. there's some decent regulars in there who'd more than likely be able to throw a few suggestions into the mix

 

[Sonny Jim]

in terms of studying pharmacology and drug design, these tend to fit under the medicinal chemistry courses but it's really all chem and you don't do much pharmacology at all until 2-3rd year. because first and second year in any chem science degree are always the (really fucking hard) subjects like intro chem, organic chem, inorganic chem, bio chem, physiology anausually times two semesters for each)....oh and biomedical stats .....

a medical science type of degree will give you a good intro to what the uni considers important physiology (and it is) and you can probably weed out a lot of the chem and maths

i actually became interested in "drugs" through my own internet study as a teenager and that's really what lead me to want to study the human medical sciences as opposed to something like straight chem, or physics. because to understand anatomy and phsyiology and pharmacology is to uderstand chem and phsycal chem..d depending on how far the current body of knowledge lets you take it.

 

[smokedup]

thanks for the help bluelighters, a great list of university pathways to research on. Has anyone been to an open day at uni? if so, what have your experiences been. Worth going?

 

[thestudent14]

Open days can be very helpful from what I've heard, although I never had to attend one as I was already enrolled and had a decent idea for what to expect in both courses I've studied. From what I've heard though they're a great resource for finding out whats involved and the differences between similar courses. This doesn't surprise me as courses often aren't quite as they initially sound.

Also open days are very good for getting a look around the campus and getting a chance to compare facility's and often uni's will make a point of mentioning how good there new facility's are (ultimately it won't make a huge difference, but having up to date equipment definitely has merit, I'd imagine this is amplified by studying pharmacology).

If you can't get directly into your desired course I'd imagine doing a bachelor of science first year will give you the desired pre-requisites to get into pharmacology (most likely chemistry and biology are pre-requisites) Then aim for a distinction average and I don't imagine transferring will be an issue.

 

[smokedup]

thanks, bachelor of science sounds like a good start if im heading in the pharmacology direction. Might actually go to the open day, you have swayed my view on them. Sitting the university entrance tomorrow, hopefully the start of a more productive future. Fucking sick of labouring and part time jobs.. i aint doing that forever.

 

[Polluted_Mind]

^^ Why would you have to sit a university entrance? As far as I know the only way to get into university in Australia is through ENTER/UAI/IB/equivalent or through an alternative pathway like TAFE. I've never heard of entrance exams for uni unless you're talking about the UMAT or whatever?

Also there's not much point going to an open day unless you want to talk with someone at the faculty more in-depth about a particular program. Other than that it's just free pens, stickers, crap and standard info you can get on the internet anyway.

If I was you I would just do a standard BSc (or BSc. (Adv.) if the university offers it = more challenging + can do degree a bit quicker if you want). Reason for this is that doing medicine, pharmacy, vet sci. although you will learn a lot about drugs a HUGE part of the course is also obviously the clinical aspect. So if you just want to know drugs and drugs only, so science, and major in pharmacology :D

Also as someone said you won't study anything specifically to do with this until 2nd year, so you've still got time to move around if you want.

 

[Jakeperson]

You will find a lot of direction in your first year studies too.

 

[footscrazy]

Also there's not much point going to an open day unless you want to talk with someone at the faculty more in-depth about a particular program. Other than that it's just free pens, stickers, crap and standard info you can get on the internet anyway.

I agree. I've never found open days much use. I think you'd be lucky to get a chance to talk to someone knowledgeable more in depth on the day as well, as at least in my experience open days aren't focused on spending any time with you as an individual. There might be seminars and general info sessions, but I've never met professors or lecturers one on one on an open day. The most you're likely to get is a meeting with a 'career counseller' type person who IME know fuck all about specific programs or pathways, as they're trying to give advice to every person going through every course, so lack specialised knowledge.

Rather than an open day, I think you'd get the most help from researching carefully on the internet your varied choices. Check out course requirements, time commitments, core subjects, prerequisites and so on. Importantly, read thoroughly through the descriptions of specific subjects you might take, and consider whether they sound appealing and practical for you to achieve. Doing this will probably provide you with some focused questions, and this is when I think it'd be useful for you contact by email the university, or a professor/director of the faculty, and speak to them about your questions. I think this will be far more beneficial than going to an open day hoping to find answers to broad questions like what course you should be doing.

I don't think going to an open day will hurt, but IMO what you'll get out of one is whether you like the campus and the general atmosphere of the place, rather than any clarification on your potential studies.

 

[Polluted_Mind]

^ Oh sorry you're right, my memory got partially confused with 'enrolment day', which I'm not sure if other unis do... but that's where you can have the time to actually talk to the individual unit co-ordinators and former students on an individual basis, and select the best program for your experience and future plans (ie: whether to take fundamentals, standard, hardcore or super-hardcore/Asian stream maths). You can probably adequately this on-line, but you inevitably end up finding at least a handful of important questions to ask. Then again I don't think many unis do this (Melb didn't but Sydney does), but if there is the option to go it's highly recommended!

As for Open Day, it's really just a marketing thing, with tours around the campus and as Footscrazy said, large useless non-specific seminar type things.

Save your time and hit the pub u... errr... I mean go to the library and start researching the next pharmacological revolution. :D