Mar 18, 2018
Welcome to the pharmacy leaders podcast with your host Tony Guerra the pharmacy leaders podcast is a member of the pharmacy podcast network with interviews and advice on building your professional network brand and a purposeful second income from students residents and innovative professionals all right welcome to APHA 2018 live we're going to interview Laura Sosinski who is from Butler University College of Pharmacy she's a p2 and she's gonna kind of take us through that chapters experience here at APHA in Nashville so welcome to the pharmacy leaders podcast hi thanks for having me okay well everyone's leadership Road is a little bit different tell us a little bit about your leadership road it's sometimes unusual for a p1 p2 to make it to a national meeting tell me a little bit about how you started with leadership and especially as you move through pharmacy school so my first leadership experience was with my sorority Tri Delta I was actually the service chairman from there I did more leadership opportunities in that I then got involved with my pharmacy fraternity and then the way I actually got involved through APHA was through another APHA member she was a member of Phi Delta Chi with me and she came up to me one day while I was studying in Starbucks and she told me I was studying for a test I was like oh come on Maryland let's let's go but I was studying for biochem and she was like hey I'm trying to fill positions for our APHA chapter I know you want to be involved in regulatory and policy when you graduate would you consider being the vice president of policy for our chapter and I was studying for biochem and I was like oh my test was in two hours so like I'll get back to you and I thought about it and I was like yeah I'll run for that well no one else ran for it it's not very a popular position in APhA so I ran for that so I've been to MRM then since I am the vice president policy I'm the delegate here for our chapter and then I did I will be the vice president of policy next year as well for Butler so okay well I guess let's talk a little bit about Butler I have four friends and they'll be upset if I don't mention them so Katie Tracy and and Kira are all watching the Purdue Butler game as we're speaking so we'll we'll see what the score is in a couple minutes but tell me a little bit about Butler University I'm in Iowa so my wife went to Drake and that's about the same size school same mascot Bulldogs and all that stuff but tell me a little bit about what made you pick Butler a bit of a smaller school but that doesn't mean it has a smaller impact yeah so honestly I knew my wanting to go to Butler since I did a volleyball camp back then when I was a sophomore in high school okay so and I was one of those weird people when I knew I wanted to do health care I found out I was born with one kidney so I kind of want you to go into medication because of that so I visited Butler for a volleyball tournament and I loved the campus and I really thought welcomed there when I went on my first tour I think I did that sophomore year of high school after that tournament I really enjoyed it I felt like the people there were very welcoming I knew I wasn't gonna be a number there I was actually gonna be a person and that my professors would care care about me and I think that's one thing that Butler has to offer that I've loved I've been at professor's houses for dinners to help me with different projects or to advance into the MBA program as well at Butler they're really good at like standing up for their students and helping their students to get where they want to go in life okay we've got a lot of pieces to that I went to undergrad I was an SAE and undergrad my big sis was tried out at Florida but tell me a little bit about the separation between undergrad and grad at the same College because that's a little bit uh not unusual but you've got the social fraternity and then you get the pharmacy fraternity so on also PDC and I made that transition from social fraternity to professional fraternity so tell me a little bit about undergrad and then how it fits into grad yeah so it's actually it can be difficult but also rewarding at the same time from me I'm actually still involved in Tri Delta I'm a senior technically with Tri Delta and there's a lot going on with that and there's a lot of meetings we have to go to and sometimes it can be frustrating because well a lot of the other members are undergrad we're in our graduate program however I will say it has helped me grow a lot there tri Delta Butler has I think I would I can confidently say probably the most pharmacy majors in it so it has created an amazing support system for me as well as just having other opportunities to grow such as our national philanthropy is Children's Research cancer and that's through St. Jude so I think having that has helped me see a bigger picture and I've been able to visit St. Jude actually so I think being a pharmacy major although that was undergrad it has helped me in my graduate profession being able to see the St. Jude hospital and trying to make an impact on that type of like national level okay well tell me a little bit about how you make it through in two years that tends to work a little bit better or a lot better if you're at a four-year school that has that it's not a zero to six exactly about two years pre-pharmacy two years four years pharmacy it took me three years plus a couple of classes in high school to make it into pharmacy school tell me how you stay disciplined or how the college helps you stay disciplined enough to finish pre-pharmacy in two years so at Butler it's very nice because we're one of those schools that have that direct admit process so when I applied into Butler pharmacy I was told if I keep up my GPA get a certain score on the PCAT as well as stay off those certain like social type of probations that I would automatically get in and I think that really creates a environment for students to work together it's not a I don't feel like it's a competition at Butler all of us always sit down while we study together and I feel like that really helps a to it and besides that the college just has a lot of opportunities out there such as I'm sure every school has that we have a Rho Chi they do all the tutoring so I feel like they really kind of set up set us up for success to advance on okay so while Butler is a small school you are in Indianapolis which one of the largest areas been down to Broad Ripple a bunch tell me a little bit about what it's like to be in a big city at a smaller school so for me going to Indianapolis was huge I'm from LaPorte Indiana which is a very small town not much to offer so going to Indianapolis was actually overwhelming for me at first I didn't know where to begin but I think that since we are in Indianapolis it has helped me reach like kind of get out of my like middle of nowhere roots there's a bunch there for us is about their students there's a bunch of hospitals there's Eli Lilly so it's really nice to know that there's opportunities right there through your IPPE or APPE it's all right there in Indianapolis while you can go to school okay well let's switch gears to Nashville and tell me a little bit about when you landed and then kind of walk me through what you did at APHA and what your responsibilities are with policy and then what your other classmates are doing as well so I actually drove up from Florida it's our spring break so I drove up from Florida that was a 14 hour drive the rest of my chapter drove down from Indy but so I got we got here Thursday we checked in and then mostly what I've been doing is I've been with a lot of the House of Delegates items so I've gone to the info sessions and then the voting things so I basically sit down and out of the policies we've written for all of our region's and MRM usually the reference committee will pick about three or four so last night we actually voted on our policies and our new business items that APHA ASP plans to support and promote throughout next year so that's what we did yesterday later today after this we'll vote on who we want to be like our national members at large and our speakers of the house so that's kind of what I'm doing my other members we have our patient care vice president here as well as our president-elect so they've been going to a lot of the like breakout sessions to like mingle and network with the other chapters they Cary's and presidents to see what they're doing at their chapters so we can kind of bring those back to our chapter to implement those new ideas so explain networking to me that's kind of an amorphous word what does networking mean to you would you consider yourself introverted extroverted introverted turned into extrovert how would you characterize yourself and how do you guys network so I am definitely a full extrovert I give all of my energy from talking to people a lot of times I feel like my friends sometimes want me to just stop talking but to me it's I thrive off of it so I enjoy just going up to people or like sitting next to someone who's not part of my chapter at a meeting I think that's been probably my easiest way of doing it when I walk into like a session I'll sit by someone who's not from Butler and not from Purdue someone I don't know and just kind of strike up conversation with them talk to them a lot of so that's kind of what I do basically how does your college specifically support you guys as you come to APHA I think your Dean was previously a Drake so there are ties there but tell me a little bit about how the college supports you maybe with either the classes with a pH a chapter or with just helping you get here to the meeting itself yeah so we're actually one of the lucky schools our SGA which is our student government actually we were able to apply for a grant so that helps to cover some of the cost for this trip for us so that's just the university in general and help the College of Pharmacy at Butler everyone is very active in multiple organizations and all the professor's the Dean and all the admin are very they very much advocate to you for us to be involved and I think that shows so recently like I hosted a trivia night where students and professors could form teams together I had quite a few professor dingo professors Nobu's teams max teams of five and you can have up to two professors and I was actually really shocked with the amount of professors we had that actually participated and I think that just kind of shows how much the professor's support APHA and support what we do as students okay well you talked a little bit about MBA is that something that's part of your life now or that's going to be part of your life after so that's part of my life right now Butler has a farm DMV a dual degree program so I'm doing that like I mentioned earlier I have hopes to go into regulatory and policy and I figured having that MBA background would help me with that with understanding those processes so how does it work at Butler I know you're p2 so maybe you haven't taken all of the classes that you need but at some schools like you even graduate MBA in December and then PharmD and in spring but what classes have you had or what classes are you looking forward to in the MBA program yes so I actually was able to get into the MBA program slightly earlier than most because I had a lot of transfer credits come in so I should finish the MBA before I finish pharmacy school is the goal I would like to be able not to be strapped down to Indy for my rotations okay so I've taken probably about I would say maybe a third of my MBA classes and I'm taking I'm doing economics as well as entrepreneurial mindset this coming summer I think my favorite MBA class probably was the leadership class okay we did a lot of readings of different leaders and either how they failed as being a leader or how they've succeeded as a leader and it was mostly a discussion based class but you've learned a lot of skills and you learned it was basically teaching you how to be a leader and it really made you think about things that you maybe wouldn't originally think of do you have a massive fail that was followed by a phenomenal come back I know Michigan last night had a massive fail and then three seconds into the end had a comeback and not necessarily excited about it but but do you have that kind of come back um I mean I struggled an intro to PDA but honestly my final was the saving grace for that class otherwise I would have had to repeat it unfortunately so that was kind of a big bounce back so that was kind of nice I end up getting it it was a B+ on the final and that was enough to push me right over okay no and those are a lot of times our biggest failures precede our biggest successes so it's it's not always a bad thing to fail although sometimes we're a little scared to do it well your seem to know what you want to do in the future where do you see yourself going for those AP PE rotations or what do you see yourself doing after pharmacy school yes so my hope is to pursue a fellowship or a like a community practice industry I've have worked with Walgreens for a couple years now and I really enjoy their company so as I've mentioned earlier I see myself with resin regulatory or policy so I could see myself going that way into the industry so some of the AP PE rotations that I'm hoping to apply for would be with Eli Lilly they're in Indy that I know the FDA has one that I'm really interested in and some of my upperclassman friends have done that one so hopefully they can help me through that process and then I know Walgreens has a corporate one I would like to do because I would like to see that side all right well are there any shoutouts you'd like to make to any of your classmates that are here or classmates back home um honestly I think just the entire p2 class this is kind of the year at Butler that's really hard for us so I think everyone just not even my friends are all there supporting each other so just stay strong we got it okay and then I've asked you a bunch of questions is there anything yet else that you want to say that maybe I didn't touch on that that's either unique about your experience with APhA at Butler or unique about Butler that maybe you have some advice for somebody that's coming up behind you um I don't I wouldn't say anything unique but I think my biggest piece of advice for anyone would be to not be scared and to kind of like think outside of the box like don't I guess what I'm trying to say is don't feel like you can't do something go ahead and take the chance the worst thing that can happen is that you fail but then the best thing is you can get up and try again awesome well thanks so much for being on the pharmacy leaders podcast thank you for having me support for this episode comes from the audio book memorizing pharmacology a relaxed approach with over 9000 sales in the United States United Kingdom and Australia it's the go-to resource to ease the pharmacology challenge available on audible iTunes and amazon.com in print ebook and audiobook thank you for listening to the pharmacy leaders podcast with your host Tony Guerra be sure to share the show with the hash tag hash pharmacy leaders
