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Schooling advice - Pharmacy, Neurology, Chemistry

Lightning-Nl

Lightning-Nl

Bluelighter
Joined
Nov 11, 2012
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So I have to sign up for classes in the next week or so before new entries for classes are closed.

I have hesitated on signing up for college courses for a long time because I'm not sure what angle to pursue my schooling career. So I thought I'd ask everyone on here how they initiated their path for schooling.

I want to eventually become a Psychiatrist. But I don't want to see patients (necessarily). I want to create hypotheses, conduct experiments, and record what I found and publish it. The studies I want to conduct specifically are studies about how drugs (but all substances apply) affect the human body (however, my main focus will be about drugs that affect the central nervous system and brain) and how the changes in biological function that is caused by these substances affects human behavior. Specifically, how drugs affect human social behavior, survival behavior, and unconscious behavior.

That is what would make me happy. To be able to do the above. I would love every second of my job and wouldn't miss a day of work in my entire life. In fact, I can't wait for that to happen. I'm so fascinated by how drugs affect the human body (and to a lesser but significant extent, how the human body affects the drug). To be able to be in a professional setting, talking to other experts on the subject is my dream. If I only ever accomplish one thing in my life - I want it to be the ladder.

However, that won't happen overnight - I have to spend years at school studying all the subjects required. But I'm not exactly sure what those subjects are...

Based on what I said above, does anyone have any recommendations for an 18 year old kid starting undergraduate school? What classes should I start with? I would pursue the General Pharmacology classes, however, I'm not sure if that's exactly what I should take since I want to become what I said above.

Was anyone else in the same predicament I'm in at one point or another? I'd love to get some input on the situation.

Thanks everyone! It's appreciated as always :)
SwampFox
 
The first two years are largely the same for every science major. My recommendation would be to devote your first two semesters to:

1) General chemistry and the lab (10 credits).
2) Calculus 1 and 2 (10 credits).
3) Freshman English 1 and 2 (6 credits)

After that you'll move onto Organic Chem and Biology and you should get a pretty firm idea of which path you want to take. Want to learn about pharmacology? Just major in it. You'll take classes like Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics, and then go to pharm school and get a Pharm D and I don't really know what happens then because I'm not there yet.
 
Excellent information! That's exactly what I wanted!

One other question though, did you just go to undergraduate school at a community college? Or where do you go?
 
Ask your undergraduate advisor. Every school offers different courses, so it won't be totally clear to us what you should take. Tell them you're interested in molecular biology and that you'd like to eventually do clinical research.

Just be prepared for the reality of the field, which isn't fun and games -- often on bluelight we discuss the results of a study with little eye to the methodology, but in the real world, research is 99% methodology, 1% results. So doing research is not much like participating in Internet arguments. I happily discuss pharmacology, but my research is in quantum computing, which is the subject I truly enjoy working on in day-to-day life. As such, be ready to discover that your interests may lead you away from the things that are fun to read about and towards something you can really work on and be stimulated by, because that is what has to happen to become a scientist.
 
^^^

Every word of the previous post is the gospel truth with respect to this topic.
 
SwampFox56 said:
Excellent information! That's exactly what I wanted!

One other question though, did you just go to undergraduate school at a community college? Or where do you go?
Click to expand...

I got a Bachelors in a non-science field then figured out I wanted more, so I took all the requisite sciences at a community college, then took my PCAT and now I'm applying to pharm schools.

Do your first two years at community college; it's so much cheaper.
 
Roger&Me said:
go to a research university if your goal is to do research
Click to expand...

That was my first thought, but I don't have access to one due to lack of time. But from what I'm hearing here, I just should be doing general classes anyways. That's right isn't it?
 
yes that is fine. i just meant as your eventual goal.

there are advantages to going to university all 4 years though, namely you have 2 more years to gain experience working in the lab, versus doing first 2 years of introductory courses at cc. that would be an asset for graduate school. either route gets the job done.
 
Roger&Me said:
7there are advantages to going to university all 4 years though, namely you have 2 more years to gain experience working in the lab, versus doing first 2 years of introductory courses at cc. that would be an asset for graduate school. either route gets the job done.
Click to expand...

The Community College I go to has great chemistry labs but shitty biology labs. Also what sucks is the anatomy classes have no cadavers :(
 
i meant more like joining a research group and working in a research lab where you can get your name on published papers and stuff. that is the real advantage to going to a research university for all 4 years imho. an extra 2 years worth of papers could easily be the difference between getting into a phd program at harvard or mit vs podunk state. the top programs won't even look at you if you're not extensively published.
 
It's comparatively rare to establish research resistanceship that early in one's eduction. And with 2 years thereof in your belt, you will still have that important feather in your cap. And depending on the PI you work under, coauthorship could be difficult to attain regardless.

ebola
 
atara said:
Just be prepared for the reality of the field, which isn't fun and games -- often on bluelight we discuss the results of a study with little eye to the methodology, but in the real world, research is 99% methodology, 1% results. So doing research is not much like participating in Internet arguments. I happily discuss pharmacology, but my research is in quantum computing, which is the subject I truly enjoy working on in day-to-day life. As such, be ready to discover that your interests may lead you away from the things that are fun to read about and towards something you can really work on and be stimulated by, because that is what has to happen to become a scientist.
Click to expand...


Fully aware of this, and that is why I find the bluelight community so enjoyable. However, I am fully aware that making a thesis that can appropriately assert results take a lot of time. I'm totally okay with that time. I low doing experiments, and I would be just fine doing those. Also, if the experiments are mine, I'd be very enjoyable to write out in a thesis why we got the results we did. Therefore, I believe that this job is exactly what I should doing. I love pharamcy, chemistry, and neurology. Doing studies about them (even though it may take years) would be a great amount of fun.

You never have to work a day in your like if you love your job - that would be me. Also something I would love to do in the future would be make drugs that work better than previous generations based on my results.

Anyways, that was all excellent information everyone! I'm gonna do the above right now :)
 
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