I have 4 days of class left before they force me out into the real world like a baby bird unceremoniously tossed from the nest. I spoke with the coordinator for the pharmacy this afternoon, and made arrangements to meet up with her on Wednesday afternoon to fill out some paperwork for my RI state tech license, which I get screwed with because it expires in June and I’ll need to renew it then, and won’t have my my national certification until around August. However, if we move into the apartment complex that I’m looking into, it will be extremely convenient just to stay at that store because it’s literally a 2 minute drive from the place. I was also told that it’s not an extremely busy store, but that it does have a bit of everything that I can train on, which is good.

Eddie needs to go into work for 5am tomorrow, so I think I’m going to kick back here at home for the day and crochet until my hands fall off so that I can get as many of those little critters done as possible before my last day of class Wednesday.

I stopped at the craft store this afternoon to pick up some plastic animal eyes, and was sorely disappointed to only find brown. However, they were having a HUGE sale, and so I snagged a couple of balls of girlish yarn and the most adorable Hello Kitty bag for around $20 total. Nanny called to let me know that Job Lot is selling Fun Fur yarn at 6/$10, so she wanted to know if I wanted any. Pickle stole a quarter out of my pocket. Eddie made us a fantabulous dinner of chicken, gravy, and egg noodles, and in 20 minutes Survivor is on. Woot!

I took my Theraputics I final today. It wasn’t bad, all fill in the blank questions with a couple of extra credits at the end. We also had a long discussion on the fact that one of the students who finished classes and is on her externship is having some serious issues at the store she’s in:

• She’s been going in 30 minutes late because she doesn’t know her schedule
• The store doesn’t want to train her telling her that she should already be trained on the data entry system (we were, she just didn’t show up for those classes 50% of the time and slept the other days)
• Store hired 2 other techs off the street and is taking the time to train them, telling her “we’re paying them to get trained on the job”
• She called out today because she’s worried about the position
• Career services has called her in for an emergency meeting about things.

Mind you, this is also the same girl who cancelled her interview with the store’s pharmacist twice. We’re figuring they’re not going to offer her a position if she makes it through the externship, and their reasoning about why they won’t train her is because they’re not going to take the time to train someone that they don’t foresee working in this field.

In a little while I’ll be packing up some stuff and heading to the post office and then to grab some lunch. I’ve also got to clean off my desk today, andmake a short list of random items we need to grab at the store. It’s supposed to snow today, but I haven’t looked outside to see if it’s started yet.

Tonight is Survivor night. I’m not fond of this season’s cast. The last couple of seasons haven’t had great people on.

I’ve got a final tomorrow. I’m not worried about it. We discovered today that there’s really only 10 more days of class left for me. Holy shit things went by fast, eh? After that I have a couple of days off and then I start my externship, which has me scared shitless.

My teacher’s daughter loved her llamma. One of my classmates has commissioned me to make a small llamma and a lamb for her kids for Easter, so I’ll be doing that this weekend and next week. The good thing? I don’t need to buy much yarn (just something for the lamb’s fleece), so it’s almost all profit this time around.

I got out of class at about 8:30 and was home before 9am. Obviously I didn’t stay for the massage. It was the last day for 5 classmates; they’re starting their externships next week. All of us pharm.tech people are being farmed out to one large retail pharmacy chain (I won’t mention which one it is, but it’s the biggest one in the US), in different stores, and everyone’s doing interviews this week. And according to several of them, the shit is hitting the fan regarding the externships because of several things:

• We were told to expect to be hired by the company/store we do our externships at. Half of those who did their interviews at these stores were told that the positions may not be as permanent as expected.
• When we went through the application process at the beginning of class, we were told to expect to get at least $11-12/hr from anyplace that hired us after we graduated and finished the externship, and more than that once we passed our big test and considered CPhTs. Only 1 out of the 5 students has been quoted that rate, everyone else was quoted roughly the same amount that anyone walking in off the street would receive, around $8.50-9. Not a rate you expect after shelling out $12,000.
• Managers interviewing students and not having any clue what the externship consists of or what school it is. Managers who did have a clue mocking the school and the choice to pay money to go to school for a position that the company will generally train people to do if they want it.
• Students told that should they be hired after the externship, management won’t consider their schooling/experience at all when deciding wages and responsibility, instead they start at the very bottom rung of the ladder and are considered nothing more than counter help for the first 4.5 months (6 weeks of internship + 3 months after that if they’re hired permanently), or saying flat out that they had no need for us and were only doing it because someone higher up is making them do it.
• District managers completely unwilling to try to work to get people into stores close to students’ houses. Mind you, this is a chain that could be considered the pharmacy version of Starbucks in this area.

This is all on top of the fact that the graduating people have had to constantly hound the education and career services offices to even help us out - we’re supposed to know where our externships are 2 weeks before we graduate because of the interview stuff prior to leaving, and our class was given roughly a week and all told to call the same district manager, who was on vacation at the time everyone was told to call her, adding to the delay even more. One of the career service women came in yesterday to discuss things, and we brought up the question of whether or not they would be arranging for us to take the PTCB, since they’re the ones paying for us to take it, and she had no clue that we even had a certification exam and needed to look into it.

I splurged today and bought some new yarn for another project. I picked up a big skein of light tan and a small ball of that “foofy” stuff in a slightly lighter color. I’m debating what to make; I’d like to make my teacher a llamma (and if it turns out good I’ll make one for you too Anna!). The Taru didn’t sell, but I stuck him on a craft auction site and hopefully someone will pick him up from there.

Oooh! Before I forget (again), thanks for the birthday and Christmas cards we got up here at Casa McBride. I gave up posting about them after the first 2 or 3 came in, but we got a bunch this year and it made getting the mail so much more fun.

Tomorrow I’ve got a final for my Pharm. Tech II course, leaving me with just two more classes to take before I head out to my externship. I’ll probably be getting out of class early, and I’m debating about whether or not to sign up for a free full body massage or not (the massage therapy classes are required to do them to the school/public as their externship, but since they’re not certified they have to do them for free). Eddie gets paid tomorrow, so we’ll be going to Petsmart to pick up some cage shavings (if you can call recycled shredded paper shavings) and some treats for Pickle, since she has neither right now. What I’d really like is a new cage for her; she gets bitchy when we don’t let her out immediately after she wakes up and is destroying her cage.