This podcast highlights experiences of pharmacy practice providers who did not get their “dream job.” Panelist share how they overcame perceived setbacks, and how they used their resilience to carve an authentic path forward.
The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the ASHP official podcast, your guide to issues related to medication use, public health, and the profession of pharmacy. - Thanks for joining us in this episode of Educator Essentials, the podcast where we talk with our members about success stories, best practices, and strategies for faculty, preceptors, and those involved in the education of the pharmacy workforce. If you're an ASHP member, please stay tuned after the episode so you can learn how to obtain CE for listening to the episode. My name is Kristina Manazzaganian. I'm faculty and an associate dean for experiential education at the University of California, San Diego, Skag School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. My co-host today, Arvista Postraviani, an associate clinical professor at University of Pacific, Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy, and Dan Degnan, associate director of professional skills laboratories at Purdue University College of Pharmacy. We are all currently serving on the ASHP Educator Section Advisory Group. In this episode, we will be discussing how we've all overcome not getting our dream jobs and had to use resiliency to overcome those setbacks. Welcome everyone. So specific questions I'm going to ask everyone to kind of share with us today is tell us about your current role and your career path to get there. Discuss a time that you did not get a job or opportunity that you desperately wanted, how you felt, and what you did to move forward. What strategies do you use to deal with these types of situations? We'll start first with Vista. - Thank you so much, Kristina. So just a little bit about my current role and the career path I took to get there. So as Kristina mentioned, I am an associate clinical professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at University of the Pacific, Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy in California. So I continued with my pharmacy degree at the University of Charleston and West Virginia. After my four years there, I took the path of doing a one-year residency that was focused in ambulatory care and academia. And then after residency, I moved back to California and I started my first job as an academician, as an assistant professor at our university. I was there for about five years before I then moved to my current role as an associate clinical professor at University of the Pacific. So pharmacy school, some residency, and then getting started in academia and teaching, which has been my true passion, as well as I've done some clinical work in East Oakland in ambulatory care. So the next question is talking a little bit about a job opportunity that I was devastated that I didn't get and how it made me feel and what I do to do better next time. So at my current workplace, there was a 10-year track position opening a few months ago. And so I applied since residency and since just having mentors around in academia, 10-year track has always been a position that's been a goal of mine to be in. So I applied for the position. However, this time around, it didn't work out for me. It was really tough to kind of take that setback and accept it. Usually in times like this, the way I deal with setbacks is I take the time to process my feelings. And then I begin talking to my mentors and supporters on ways I can improve and how to do better myself. I always think there's always room for improvement in order to then become successful and reapply next time when the opportunity does present itself for a 10-year track position. And then just to wrap things up with strategies on how I deal with setbacks or career opportunities that may not work out for me. So first, as I mentioned previously, I give myself time to kind of process the setback, take a moment, step back and think about it because whether it works out or not, you do put in hard work. You do get your hopes up. So you need that time to process those feelings. Second, I try to re-center myself with my career goals. Just recheck to make sure that the career opportunity that I starved for, that I applied for still aligns with my overall career goals. Third, I go ahead and then I start to brainstorm how to improve my application, my presentation, my interview skills, possibly my CV up for next time an opportunity presents itself that I want to go for. And then fourth, after I kind of take that time to self-reflect and I think of ways to improve. Fourth, I just reach out to my mentors who've helped me either prepare for that interview or just along the way in my career. And I talk to them about just areas I can improve on more, make myself and my application stronger again for the next opportunity that presents itself. Thank you, Christina. I'll turn it back to you. - Thank you so much for sharing those experiences Vista. It's great to hear about how you've worked through that challenging situation. - Thank you. - Absolutely, Dan, do you want to take over to listen about your experiences? - Sure, thanks, Christina. And Vista, I don't think I realized that we both spent time in Charleston, West Virginia. I will also share some time that I spent in West Virginia going through my career path and then talk about a job that I really wanted but did not get. I completed pharmacy school at Purdue and did an HSPA, they didn't call that at that time but at the University of Wisconsin. And my first job was at Charleston Area Medical Center in Charleston, West Virginia. This I worked at the Memorial Campus. And after that, I came back to Indianapolis and worked at a community health network which is a medical system in Indianapolis, Indiana. And I left there after about 18 years as the medication safety officer for our network and came back to work at Purdue. Initially, I worked as part of a group that was focused on medication safety and eventually I started teaching at the college and currently I am one of three directors or associate directors for our professional skills lab. And then I also work with our industry based fellows and teach a couple of our core classes, one related patient safety and the other related health policy. So I absolutely love my job at Purdue now. But there was a time when I was, and I'm gonna go back further than Vista did, when I was coming out of my residency at the University of Wisconsin, I had dated a girl in college and she had taken a job when we both graduated from Purdue at a community pharmacy in Indianapolis. And when I, we did a long distance for two years when I was at the University of Wisconsin and I desperately wanted my first job out of my residency to be back at an Indianapolis. And I thought it would be great for me. I thought I would have lots of connections with the college. It would be at an academic medical center where I had trained. I would be back with a lot of the professors that I knew. I just was really enamored with doing it. They're actually the people that I went to school with that were working there too. And to top that all off, the director who was interviewing me was a graduate from the University of Wisconsin as well. So I felt like all these things were coming together, that it was the perfect fit for me. I went and interviewed for the job, thought I did really well and came back and found out that I did not get the job. The feedback for me was that I did not have enough experience for the job that they had. And they wanted someone with a little more experience. And immediately I was like, well, I could do this, I could do that, I could do that, I did this in residency. And I think one of the things, so I learned a couple lessons and I've continued to learn these lessons over and over when I maybe apply for something or try and do something that I don't necessarily get what I want. I always had someone that someone's dad that I work with, always used to say that, you know, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. And I got some great experience. The three things that I typically will do is, it's okay for it to be upset. You know, to me it's ignoring the obvious if you're not upset about wanting something and not getting it. And so usually I put a time frame on that. It's usually 24 hours, if I'm really upset, I'll maybe give myself 48 hours, but more than that is probably a little unhealthy. So I'll give myself 24 hours. I have really tried to work hard at thinking of the feedback that I get during these processes is really a gift. And when you get a gift, you don't necessarily get upset about it. You usually say thank you and then try and evaluate what you've received and see how you're going to use it. So I think similar to VISTA taking that feedback, consulting with mentors and peers to try and figure out how to best use that feedback and incorporate it for the future. And I think the last thing is really just about jobs and residencies in general. It's taken me some time to learn this, but this is something that I pulled from my mentors, is that jobs are frequently about fit as much as they are about whatever qualifications you may have. And the people that are there and hiring are there every day and they know what would be a good fit and maybe would not be a good fit for their organization. And it's possible that I have all the great credentials and all the great training and all the great certificates and the pedigree. But it's possible that I may not just have been a good fit for that organization at that time. And that was an important thing for me to remember. Those are my three pieces and that's my story. I will tell you the girl that I was dating when I was trying to get back to Indianapolis, we ended up getting married so it all worked out. We have four beautiful children. So in the end it worked out, but at the time it did not seem like it was gonna be okay. Christine, I'll turn it back to you. Thank you. - Thanks, Dan. It's amazing how things work out the way they're supposed to. - Yes. - I've had my fair share of let downs over the years and I've also come to really appreciate how things have worked out. And honestly, I feel that things worked out the way they were supposed to work back. And I'm gonna take you guys even farther back in pharmacy school and bring you to my current role and share how I navigated through some experiences that were really hard. I was a fourth year pharmacy student. I wanted to leave my hometown and do a residency in another city or state. I wanted to grow in that capacity and I was utterly shocked and devastated when I didn't initially match for residency. And there's still a shortage of residencies available, but when you're in that moment, that feeling is overwhelming and there were some negative feelings around it, which is understandable, but it was very isolating. And so one thing I did, and I'm gonna weave in kind of my strategies and my lessons learned into my story, but I was really proactive in not hiding that I was looking for a residency. I was initially embarrassed, but I also knew that I had to go through what was then called the scramble. You may remember, we can now call this phase two. And I talked to a lot of faculty and alumni about this lost opportunity. And really I learned to slow down and I really started taking one day at a time. And that was really important because the scramble really was people scrambling to find something. It wasn't the structured format that it is now. And so out of this hurt and disappointment came the opportunity to go to Maui and work in a somewhat newly formed community residency program. I had a huge role in shaping that residency and learned a lot about accreditation during my time there. And honestly, it was probably one of my best years. I was on Maui. Maui really served as a launching pad for me. Towards the end of my residency year, I was again kind of feeling lost on my next move. I was applying to jobs back in Arizona. I didn't know where I was gonna land. I wasn't hearing back from employers. I started giving lectures as a resident for the University of Hawaii at Hilo. And then my residency program director who ended up becoming a lifelong mentor suggested I apply to one of the junior faculty positions that the school had open. And I was initially reluctant because it meant moving to a really rural part of Hawaii. And I didn't know if or when I would be back in Arizona again. But again, I relied on my support system. And at that time it was more so, including my family and friends. And I really relied on them to help me with this decision. And then when I interviewed at the school a couple months later, it was really clear to me that academia was something I should at least try. And working in Hawaii was really special as faculty. It's made me the teacher, the pharmacist and the community member I am today. And then there were moments in my four-year journey there where I contemplated leaving Hawaii. And I wasn't sure where my journey would take me, but I knew I was completely in love with academia. It allowed me to work with students and improve outcomes as a pharmacist and strengthen my research and scholarship. But at the end of that four-year period, I felt like it was time or so for personal reasons to come back to the mainland. And I applied for a few strictly clinical pharmacy jobs in the Phoenix area. And I interviewed with one institution and I knew while I was there it wasn't a good fit for us. And that, for either of us, that was a really hard time knowing that I needed to be closer to home, but not really knowing how to get there. And then finally in 2014, there was a job posting at UC San Diego for clinical pharmacy faculty. And I've been here ever since. I've really flourished in the community, at my practice site and I continue to love my role in teaching. And to that end, I've been promoted from assistant to associate to full professor. And this past year was appointed as an associate dean. And only three weeks after I moved here down this reminds me of what you said, I met my now husband after only three weeks of moving here. And we now have a beautiful, almost four-year-old daughter. And so it's all kind of serendipitous, I think. I do wanna talk about a few lessons as we get ready to sign off. The first thing is that I've consistently looked back at events or things that didn't happen and thought about how lucky I am that things didn't turn out that way. Sometimes we're not able to see that. For example, I'm an ambulatory care pharmacist. I was not meant for acute care at all. And I was applying to those in pharmacy school as a residency, like what was I thinking? But it's all 2020 now. And in those moments where things feel really stagnant or defeating, I would suggest that you contemplate that you don't know what the future holds and that sometimes things don't happen as we wish, but other better things fall into place instead. And finally, I wanna share a quote that has stayed with me since I was that fourth-year student feeling so lost and unsure of the path ahead. And maybe this will be helpful to some of the listeners. And I share this with my students to this day. And it's by a Rainer Maria Rilke and it's meaning resonated with me and learning to sit in and embrace the discomfort it reads. Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Well, that's all the time we have today. Thank you to my co-host for a great discussion. If you haven't before, I encourage you all to check out ASHP's Educator Resources. You can find member-exclusive offerings such as the preceptor toolkit, the research resource center and exchange ideas with your peers on the ASHP Education Connect community. For our ASHP members, you can earn continuing education by visiting elearning.ashp.org/podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe to ASHP official through your favorite podcast provider and see you next time. Thank you for listening to ASHP official, the voice of pharmacists advancing healthcare. Be sure to visit ashp.org/podcast to discover more great episodes, access show notes and download the episode transcript. If you loved the episode and wanna hear more, be sure to subscribe, rate or leave a review. Join us next time on ASHP official. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
