The Job I Look Forward to Doing

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." — Confucius. 

I entered the workforce when I turned 21 in 2012. It was a hard decision since it meant that I would need to abandon my studies back then. Looking for a job never became a big deal for me to be honest. Upon officially leaving National University on the same year, I got hired in the BPO industry just within 2 weeks of job hunting and sending out my resume to various companies online! 

After a series of interviews and exams, I got hired in SPi Global CRM as an Inbound Sales Representative for DISH NETWORK and then I saw myself saying (and even typing) "Thank you for calling DISH! My name is Kevin! How can I help you?" which is usually followed by the most awkward response from customers asking "I'm sorry what's your name again?" and "are you a girl or boy?" because of my perky and pitchy voice! It was funny though at first but in the long run, it made things difficult for me since it ate a few seconds of our "sacred" AHT (average handling time)! People say working in a call center is easy and whatsoever but they never knew that you have to fulfil various metrics like AHT, and call quality assurance where even your bad enunciation of a few words would cost you some points making you fail an evaluation, and of course being in sales we had quota to reach. 

It was an overall good experience though! I met a lot of people, learned many things and developed some hard and soft skills that became really useful to me up to this day! This, however, is not what I look forward to doing though. I want to do something where I can practice what I have been studying throughout the years. 

There are two jobs, I would love to do in the future - to be a Clinical Pharmacist or to be a researcher in a Center of Tropical Medicine Research! 

A clinical pharmacist, while regular pharmacists normally work in a pharmacy, a clinical pharmacist works directly with medical professionals and patients, usually in a medical center, hospital or health care unit. The job of the clinical pharmacist is to determine the best medications for a given symptom for a patient at a given time. On the other hand, working on the field of research also captures my attention especially on the area of Tropical and Infectious Diseases. 

As  clinical pharmacist, I can imagine myself ensuring the optimal and proper use of medication on every patient, working hand in hand with other medical professionals, however, being a researcher would probably would make me help a lot more people! Imagine being a part of team or even being a head of a research that would find way of curing morbid disease like HIV/AIDS, Ebola, etc. and then winning a Nobel! 

These jobs though, would also mean that I would make me work more indoors, in a healthcare facility or even taking some of my time to travel. A clinical pharmacy job though offers a better compensation over working as a researcher. A Clinical Pharmacist earns an average of $114,873 in the US over the average salary of a researcher which is around $99,000. 

I am currently studying Pharmacy in University of Chile, same degree that I wasn't able to finish in the Philippines back then. Working as a Clinical Pharmacist, would at least ast just require additional training in clinical pharmacy while being a researcher would mean that I would need to study further to have at least a Master's degree or even became a medical doctor first with specialization in Epidemiology or Infectious Diseases. 

It's a long way to go!