The Peel — Fall Edition

By mid-October, pharmacy school turns into a balancing act between memorization and survival. Your planner looks like a war map: exams, rotations, case studies, and half-finished group projects. The grind can feel endless, but this middle stretch (when you’re still learning to manage chaos without losing curiosity) is when real progress happens! It’s also the point where you start understanding what pharmacists actually do: not just dispense, but interpret, explain, and prevent harm. The challenge isn’t memorizing drug facts; it’s learning to think like a clinician — to ask, what matters for this patient right now? That shift, from rote knowledge to clinical reasoning, is where competence starts to click.

Grapefruit Health: Real Experience, Real Flexibility

At this point in the year, your bandwidth is shrinking while your clinical confidence is growing — a tricky combination. The Patient Champion roles with Grapefruit Health are designed for exactly that moment. You work remotely, on your own schedule, supporting patients who need a check-in, a reminder, or just a calm voice on the other end of the line. It’s the perfect bridge between theory and practice.

NAPLEX Preparation

Question of the Week 📚

MA is a 30 year old female (5’4”, 55 kg) who presents to the emergency department with pain and swelling in her right leg after finishing up a weekend road trip. She also has some increased shortness of breath but otherwise is stable. Duplex ultrasonography shows a distal deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in the patient’s right leg and CT pulmonary angiography shows presence of a pulmonary embolism (PE). The resident physician wishes to initiate enoxaparin therapy as they will be admitted to the medicine ward. 

PMH: T2DM

Medications: Ethinyl Estradiol and Drospirenone 1 tab PO QD, Metformin 500 mg PO BID

Vitals and labs:

Fall Study Advice 📖

You’ve probably realized that “study time” and “learning” are not always the same thing. You can stare at flashcards for three hours and still blank on the difference between enzyme induction and inhibition when it counts. Most of us default to recognition (thinking, “oh yeah, I know that”) instead of recall (actually retrieving it without prompts). The fix is simple, but uncomfortable: close the notes. Write, speak, or teach the concept from memory. Then check what you missed. That act of wrestling your brain for the answer is what burns it in.

Try studying in “loops”: 25 minutes of focused work, 5 minutes away from the screen, and every third loop, switch subjects completely. The contrast helps your brain label information by context. Pharmacokinetics will bleed less into pathophysiology if you change gears instead of grinding one topic flat.

And when you hit the wall — when you’re rereading the same line of notes for the tenth time — do something tactile. Walk while you review, draw the mechanism, write out one process from start to finish. The brain keeps what the body helps create. Caffeine can keep you awake, but movement keeps you attentive. You’ll leave the session remembering more — and feeling like a person again.

Career Tips 🏥

Professional development isn’t just about collecting lines for a résumé; it’s about learning how credibility actually forms. In pharmacy, respect doesn’t come from seniority alone — it comes from consistency. People start trusting you the day your classmates realize you’re the one who double-checks numbers, asks smart follow-up questions, or quietly helps them reason through a case. Those small habits build a reputation long before a diploma ever does.

Right now, you’re surrounded by potential mentors — faculty, residents, pharmacists on rotation — but mentorship works best when it’s a two-way street. Don’t just ask for advice; show that you’ve acted on it. The quickest way to earn professional trust is to demonstrate growth in real time: “I tried that tip you gave me last week — it actually worked.” That kind of follow-through tells people you’re serious, and they’ll start investing in you.

And remember, professionalism doesn’t mean perfection. It means you own your mistakes without flinching, you thank people for feedback, and you stay curious even when you’re exhausted. Those traits matter more than any GPA. The truth is, every pharmacist you admire started right where you are now — not knowing everything, but learning to ask better questions.

Wellness Corner

Around mid-semester, it’s easy to start treating life like a checklist: exams, labs, rotations, repeat. You wake up already behind, your notes open before breakfast, and you start to wonder when you last did something just because it made you feel good. But here’s the quiet truth: your brain doesn’t only need rest — it needs joy. The smallest, most ordinary kind.

Joy hides in moments you can still make room for — walking outside while the air smells like leaves and espresso, finishing a study session and realizing you actually get it, hearing your friends laugh about something that has nothing to do with pharmacology. Those moments aren’t distractions; they’re what make the learning sustainable. This week, try scheduling something that doesn’t look productive but feels alive: baking, music, calling someone who remembers you before pharmacy school. Every time you make space for life outside your notes, you return sharper, calmer, and a little more like the person who decided this career was worth chasing in the first place.

Meal Prep Corner 🧑‍🍳

🍜 Recipe Corner — Upgraded Pillsbury Biscuits (5 Minutes of Effort, Tops)

You don’t need to start from scratch to make something feel homemade. A can of Pillsbury biscuits plus a few fall pantry staples can turn into something that tastes like you tried — even if you’re still in scrubs.

Option 1: Maple Butter Biscuits
Bake the biscuits as usual. While they’re in the oven, melt a tablespoon of butter with a drizzle of maple syrup and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The second the biscuits come out, brush them with the warm maple butter and let them sit for a minute so it soaks in. They’ll taste like the inside of a cozy weekend morning — even if you’re eating them at 10 p.m. over your laptop.

Option 2: Savory Cheddar & Herb Biscuits
Before baking, press a small handful of shredded cheese (cheddar or whatever’s around) and a pinch of dried herbs — rosemary, thyme, or Italian seasoning — into the tops. Bake as directed. When they’re done, brush with a little butter and a dash of garlic salt. They go perfectly with soup, chili, or late-night studying.

You can make either version in under twenty minutes with a single baking sheet. The hardest part is waiting for them to cool enough not to burn your hands.

Freshly Squeezed Jokes 🍊

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One Last Thing 💡

October doesn’t always come with big wins — no graduation, no boards, no perfect calm. But this middle stretch is where most of the real growth hides. You’re finally fluent in the rhythm of the work, learning faster than you can notice, and figuring out how to stay steady when everything speeds up. That’s the part of the story you’ll look back on later and realize was transformation in disguise.

So, celebrate small victories: the study session that finally made sense, the patient on rotation who thanked you, the morning you showed up tired and did it anyway. Those moments count as much as any grade or exam. You’re doing more than getting through this; you’re becoming who you’re meant to be in it.

—
The Grapefruit Health Team