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As we sit here a few months shy of graduation, I find myself in a curious place: It is a place where I am not quite a pharmacist and yet don’t feel like a student any more.  I felt this quite keenly when returning to my campus this past week to have some documents notarized for the boards in June.  I felt like an outsider—I have been out of the classroom formally for almost a year, and yet life rolls on for the other students in the program without interruption.  Faculty are signing their emails with their first names, asking me my opinion about college matters, and telling me not to call them “Dr.” anymore, and it all feels nice but also a little bit odd.

“The not quite a student, not yet a pharmacist” feeling in the fourth year of pharmacy school is a strange one, as it is a kind of limbo-land where you constantly feel like something is about to happen without it actually happening.  I have been waiting for the magical “POOF” to transform me from a student to practitioner, but I am starting to think I am not going to experience the Cinderella-like transformation I initially envisioned for myself.  I believed that the metamorphosis from student to pharmacist would be more dramatic and perhaps feel more profound.  I want to make the leap, but the problem is—deep down I don’t feel any different than I felt last year as third year student.  Or perhaps even (horrors!) the year before.  And I wonder, am I ready? And I also wonder when will this magical metamorphosis happen?  I only have one rotation left before graduation, so I am running out of time.  I have worked hard the past three years, seizing every opportunity to learn and grow.  But through all the learning, studying, volunteering, and working have I missed something crucial?  Have I missed my big POOF?

I talked to some of my mentors and preceptors about this, and they have advised me that the POOF does not happen overnight, but gradually over time.  They assure me that I will see (feel) the change over the next 3-5 years as a new practitioner.  I think that is one of the reasons doing a residency is so important in clinical practice:  it allows you to climb the learning curve as a new practitioner a little bit faster, thereby accelerating your personal metamorphosis a little bit more.   And all of this news was a relief to my ears as a fourth year student in “limbo-land,” which is why I am sharing it with you.  It means that even post-graduation we still have time to grow into those glass slippers and refine our clinical skillset before all of these great expectations are realized.

So, to my fellow students and future colleagues, do not despair of being transformed in time for graduation and be patient with yourselves as you take each step forward.  You will make the leap, as those before you have done, with persistence, experience, and help from preceptors and practitioners (your fairy godmothers) who have also traveled the same path before you.  Enjoy the path as much as you can, and the POOF will invariably follow.