Pride of WV???

As a fellow Mountaineer, I truly have blue and gold running through my veins. I grew up with a sister in the marching band at WVU. For those of you not from WV, the WVU marching band is "the pride of WV." People go to the football games just to see the band. So as a small child, I recall rooting for the Mountaineers in football and occassionally going up on weekends to watch my sister to march. My brother did not attend WVU (he's a George Washington University graduate), but he and his friends used to frequent WVU football games quite often. At this point, I should also alert you readers that you have not been to a college football game until you have walked into Mountaineer Stadium. We take our football pretty damn serious here in WV - especially when we're playing Virginia Tech. I swore that when I grew up, I was going to be a Mountaineer as well. A hard lesson in life to learn is that things don't always go as planned. My senior year, I applied to WVU and was accepted into their pre-pharmacy program. I was going to live in Towers dormitory with my best friend of 17 years. Everything was going to be awesome... Then reality hit. My grandmother entered the late stages of Alzheimer's Disease. It was a horrid time. To watch her and my mother grieving was almost more than I could bear. In the meantime, the guy I had dated exclusively all through high school informed me that my "depression" was more than he could handle, and apparently he coped with this by sleeping with a good friend of mine. Three weeks before my first day at WVU, I withdrew from college. By a stroke of luck, I had applied to Shenandoah University in February. I contacted SU and was immediately enrolled in classes. $9000 later, I was a SU student - much to my sister's disappointment. It's funny how fate pushes you in a certain direction. I had some GREAT times at SU. I loved undergrad there. Pharmacy school as been awesome. I have met my best friends at pharmacy school. So I guess at this point, you are wondering what exactly the point of this post is...

Well, I'm sitting here in my room listening to my sister's marching band tape from 1987 and wondering - did I make the right decision? At times I don't doubt myself at all. I would've got lost in the shuffle at a large university. I don't do the bar scene. I'm more of a "let's sit around, shoot the shit, and drink" person rather than a "let's go bar hopping" person. My preceptor informed me today that I'm the best Shenandoah student she has ever had. Several of the techs at the pharmacy commented on how "slow" the other students were. Christ, I hope I made the right decision! My personal experience with some SU graduates is that they are nasty pharmacists. Why enter retail if you don't like people? Oh yea...there's that $95,000 thing. (I hate people in the profession for money.) So every once in a while, I get a pain in my gut that tells me that I should've sucked it up 5 years ago and went to WVU. And other days I'm glad I'm not in Morgantown. However, if I would've went to WVU I definitely wouldn't owe the federal government $60,000!

PS - You haven't lived until you have heard the WVU marching band play "Simple Gifts"

PSS - Proof that WVU's marching band is The Pride of WV: Rational Drug Therapy's music for customers on hold is none other than the WVU marching band playing "Simple Gifts." :)