Selena`s Life@NUSpharm by Selena Teng 2009

To start off the rumination of the year,
I shall re-live the moments that I’d so often taken for granted – my life as a student.
Test. A word that seems to pre-occupy us in a typical semester, so much so that we’ve often been
dubbed muggers. Before learning of the mortar and pestle, it often got me wondering as a 1st year,
if the mug-like icon on our crest were a true personification of the life of a pharmacy student –
mugger, much like a taboo in varsity life.
But before you write us off, let me show you how diminutive this image is of us, how my school life has been far from
being nondescript.
Glimpses of life in my 2nd home were brought to me even before I was born into the pharmily. Seniors painted colourful
pictures of their school lives, and these were embodied in words like those a mother would say to her unborn child. I’d
never looked forward to school with so much exhilaration and anxiety before. Fortunately, adjusting to this vicissitude
was made easy with amiable coursemates who bear uncannily similar traits to that of cousins and even siblings – my
initial apprehension was unfounded.
Filling capsules, mixing powders and concocting mixtures gave me a familiar feeling of being taught cooking
by mother dearest. Not only did I get up-close and personal with my ubiquitous little friends from the
microbial kingdom, the school provided me with opportunities of planting pharmily trees all over the world;
from looking through a microscope at microbiology lessons to
attending an insightful overseas symposium, my eyes were opened
to how diverse the realm of pharmacy can be.
The pharmily’s common room is where
some of the finest snippets of my
school life were developed. This is
where I snug pillows, gather juicy
updates, laugh at side-splitting parodies
made by friends of lecturers, satisfy
cravings for snacks and not forgetting
being highly-strung while attempting to
clear the seemingly insurmountable
workload.
School life thus far has indeed been challenging
with everyone trying to push boundaries, making
the best of the school’s endeavour to bring out the
versatility in us. But being able to go through it
with my irreplaceable lecturers and friends, my
pharmily, makes every bit of it more rewarding,
that despite the exciting multifarious career
opportunities that allure me, the very thought of
completing the final lap of my life as a student,
always leaves me wistful…