I’m back!

After some pretty intense months, I finally have some time to sit down and take some words out of me. I’m ready to open up my heart to you, guys. Let’s do this!

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you might have noticed that yes, I got a job! Is it my dream job? Well, not exactly. I never hide, not even from my current boss, that my initial goal was actually to find an opportunity in the Industry field. After several attempts in the field, I didn’t get the yes I was hoping for. Months have passed, I couldn’t just wait for something that could not even happen. So, I moved on to other fields and guess what, Community Pharmacy got me a yes right away.

My first experience in Community Pharmacy was during the mandatory Curricular Internship. This first impact wasn’t exactly great, so unavoidably it ended up shaping my view of the field. After that Internship, I never thought I would ever return to it. I was kind of trying to avoid it, in fact. However, life doesn’t always go the way we planned. So, here I am again, working as a pharmacist. Who would’ve thought? I sure didn’t.

I guess that after so many no’s, getting a yes is always a huge achievement. Even if the yes didn’t come exactly from where I was expecting, I was happy to have this opportunity. The yes came from another city, which meant I needed to move to a different place. Actually, discover a new city was probably the part I was more excited about. I still don’t know much of the city yet due to Covid, but so far it seems a pretty nice place.

I was lucky enough to find a well-located place but most importantly, I was blessed with amazing flatmates. It was my first experience living with complete strangers in an apartment, so you may imagine it was a little scary for me. Even though the experience has been far from perfect, I was really lucky for the first flatmates I’ve got. And you know what’s more interesting about it? The fact that I was actually the only Portuguese! I had an Iranian, an Azerbaijani and a Brazilian flatmate. It was quite an international place, which was amazing. Also, perfect to keep improving my English skills. Unfortunately, they are all gone now, but I’m happy about the amazing moments we shared together. I hope our paths will come across again in the future.

After a few days of enjoying the new place and new flatmates, it was finally the day to start working. Since my first experience wasn’t the best, my expectations were low. Even though my doubts, I was decided to keep my mind opened and try to make the best out of this experience. And so, I did. The beginning was difficult, I can tell. Especially when I started at the customer service, where I barely had experience before. I did struggle a lot to improve my personal capacities. I’m working for almost two months, and the struggle is still on. I can clearly see the improvements slowly coming. However, I still have a long road to cross until I can confidently say that I conquered this battle.

Looking back, I can say that even with all the struggle attached, the experience has been better than I could’ve expected. I guess that the cliché saying: keep your expectations low and you will never get disappointed, clearly applies here. I thought it would be harder to keep up, although even with all the exhaustion I’ve been feeling, I can see the time easily flying away, which is a good sign.

Since I started at customer service, I’ve been noticing that especially old and lonely people come to the pharmacy not just for the medicines that they need, but for the attention. Sometimes I feel like a psychologist, hearing the troubles that the customers have been struggling with. In a matter of minutes, I know their entire life without even asking. The answers we give are not really that important. In fact, most of the time I kind of don’t know what to say. However, I don’t rush them. I just keep listening to whichever complaints they need to take out of their chests. They really just need to feel that someone hears them. To be honest, that is the part I’ve been enjoying the most. Even if sometimes might be hard to take, feeling the gratefulness is worth it. It’s all about the little gestures. In the end, we all feel a little better.