Letting Go of Your Goals: Embracing the Unexpected in Your Pharmacy Journey
Neonatal Clinical Pharmacist Specialist. This is the job title I wanted and placed on the vision board that appeared in my (very bad) first YouTube video nearly 6 years ago. It was right next to the name I wanted to write one day: Sierra Richard, PharmD, BCPPS. If you’ve been here before, you may know that the second one is a reality and the first one is not, which is why today’s blog post is all about letting go of goals.
When I was a student, I had the amazing opportunity to work in a women’s and children’s hospital. I quickly realized that pediatric patients were where my passion and that the tiniest of humans, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) babies, were my favorites. By the end of my first year of pharmacy school I had my mind and goals laser focused in on getting into the residency that was going to get me a job in the NICU. I did all the leadership activities. I volunteered at as many events as I could. I asked the NICU clinical specialist where I worked if I could do a research project with her and I did! I even presented it at ASHP Midyear.
When it came time to choose a residency program I had spots on my spreadsheet for the number of NICU beds the hospital had, and what level NICU they had. I made sure to know as much as possible about the NICU pharmacists at every place I interviewed. In fact, part of the reason I ranked the program I matched at so high was because they not only had a huge NICU, but also had opportunities for me to care of babies on the CICU and nutrition rotations and staff the NICU on the weekends. It seemed like I was headed on the path to the job that had been taking up space in the center of vision board, until life had other plans.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the NICU. Those babies will always hold a special place in my heart, but everything else critical care? Not my favorite. In fact, my favorite rotations aside from the NICU were my not my patient care rotations. I loved medication safety and the investigational drug service. I loved doing projects and resolving big issues so when it came time to think about doing a PGY2 in pediatrics I slowly let go of that dream, but started panicking as I considered doing what I felt like was unthinkable: not doing a PGY2.
Since the early days in pharmacy school, I had planned to do two years of residency. What would people think if I changed my mind now? What if it was a huge mistake to only do one year? So, I went to ASHP Midyear as a PGY1 interviewing during the personnel placement service for PGY2 programs in medication safety. I did interview after interview and no matter how wonderful the program sounded, it didn’t feel right, but I pushed the feeling down. This was what I was supposed to do. This is what I needed to do…right?
After flying back from ASHP Midyear, I drug my feet and slowly filled out my PhORCAS application (in case you don’t know this is the centralized residency application software) and when it came to decide if I was going to hit submit and go through the interviews, I didn’t know what to do which landed me in the office of the medication safety officer who happened to be one of my best mentors. As a weighed the decisions and the options she looked at me and said: “You don’t really want to do this, do you?”
I let her words sink in and after a moment I said, “No” and out came the tears as I let go of another piece of my carefully thought out career plan.
In the interest of keeping this short and sweet, I’m not going to tell you the very lengthy and convoluted story of how I ended up working as an investigational drug service clinical pharmacist specialist. That’s a tale for another time, but I do what to tell you this: Sometimes you have to let go of a goal to achieve a better one.
Would I have been happy as a neonatal clinical pharmacist specialist? Maybe.
Was it the right path for me at the time? Absolutely not.
There was another path for me that was filed with a pandemic, and night shifts, and building a brand. A path that was so far beyond my wildest dreams I couldn’t even imagine it. I mean, who would have ever thought that spending time creating videos on YouTube as a pharmacist would land me in a room with the NASA Administrator!? (And yes that did happen. If you missed, it here’s the proof) But was the path for me and it the one I keep walking today knowing that if I need to let go of a goal, another more beautiful goal will be there to take its place when I’m ready for it.
