And So It Begins

Ah, how to begin a blog? It's a tricky thing, so I suppose I'll start at the beginning. My name is  I (well, that's short for something), and I'm a senior at Big Catholic U. For most of my life, I've wanted to be a physician. I've pretty much planned everything around medical school from the time I was in preschool. Recently, I've had a MAJOR change of heart and am now gung-ho pharmacy. I've worked in a pharmacy for nearly four years, and my parents' best friends E & J are both pharmacists (E works retail, J is in industry). But perhaps one of the biggest driving factors is another life-long dream of mine: to live in London. I don't mean as a study abroad student or a wayward backpacking youth. I'm genuinely looking to queue up with my groceries at Tesco on my way home to my flat to watch Mock the Week. Unfortunately, it's a bit difficult to get a UK work visa without a UK/EU passport. To that end, I've established a plan that would take roughly five years. Step 1, pharmacy school. There's one on the opposite end of my state that has an accelerated 3-year program; failing that, we have two schools in my area that I could apply for next year. Step 2, apply for a 1-year master's program in the UK. There are lots of great schools. I've always had a great interest in public health (it was my minor for a while, but that's another story), so LSHTM would be superb, but I'd take nearly anything. If you have a UK degree, you're eligible for a work visa, so then I could go from there. There are a ton of pharmaceutical companies in the UK with headquarters or branches in my US hometown, so hopefully I could work for one over there for a while and transfer back eventually.Of course you might think, "Hey, I, you could do this as a physician, no?" To be honest, I thought of that. But as my best friend M told me, "pharmacy is [my] passion, for better or worse." Plus, from a pragmatic sense, pharmacy would leave me with a lot less baggage: theoretically fewer years of school to accrue debt, no residency required, and if I needed to, I could easily work for a few years, pay off the loans, and then finish part 2 of the plan.
Unfortunately, I'm facing a bit of an uphill battle getting there. This blog will follow that road, along with my love of politics (American and British), TV shows, attempts to stay fashionable, get in shape, eat healthy, travel the world, and anything else that pops into my head. (I also enjoy using proper grammar, not that you'd know it by that last sentence. Awkward verb sequence, much?)