This week I am attending two different schools to talk about a career in Pharmacy or Pharmaceutical Sciences. This makes me think about what information is important to think about when you are in year 8, 9, 10, 11 , 12 or 13.

Many young people don’t really know what career they want and often don’t know what careers are available to them. Certainly when I was young I knew (or thought I knew) what a teacher did, what a GP did and perhaps what my parents did as jobs. I also had an idea of the roles you saw in everyday life including shop worker, postman, milkman, hairdresser etc.

However, even today I don’t really know what many of my friends do as jobs! Some are project managers, sales representatives; IT specialists and many others. When I ask about their jobs they will say – mostly office work and involves a lot of computer work. This doesn’t really tell me much about what they actually do whilst at work. So I have decided to talk about a couple of typical days at work to give a flavour of what I do, the parts I enjoy and some of the less enjoyable parts to give a rounded view. I am also going to encourage the pupils to ask similar questions to others so that they can build up a picture of what they want from their job and careers beyond the academic skills.

I am lucky in that I have worked in academia, the NHS and pharmaceutical industry so I can compare my own roles as examples of the parts I liked! However, this does come with the caveat that just because I like it – you may not! I liken this to going out for food and you all order something different from the menu – you don’t all have to like the same things.

Hopefully I can inspire at least some of the pupils to consider pharmacy or pharmaceutical science in their own future career plans!