Kragler,Brian

==  My Dad’s College Experience By: Brian Kragler Period 4 My dad wanted to go to pre-pharmacy school away from home, to show his responsibility, so he checked out Campbell College. The reason he wanted to be a pharmacist, was that he liked helping people and he liked working with numbers. Two of his favorite subjects in school were science and math. When was sick he always went to this one pharmacist to get his prescription filled, so one day he asked him “What pre-pharmacy school did you go to?” He said, “I went to pre-pharmacy school at Campbell College.” When he was a junior at Pocomoke High School, he went down to Buies Creek, North Carolina, which was where Campbell’s main campus was. Once my dad went down to Buies Creek, he loved the campus. It was in the rural part of North Carolina. Buies Creek was in the Central part of North Carolina. So it was not on the coast, near the ocean. So my dad was bummed about that but he said, “Even though I am not near the beach, I will still have a good time.” He also said,” I was away at school to learn, not go to the beach.” He went to Campbell for two years. He had decided before he went to college, that he was going to do two years of pre-pharmacy school and then three years of Pharmacy school. Once he was done his two years at Campbell, he had a huge decision to make. He had to apply to a Pharmacy school. He had applied to four pharmacy schools. They were Temple University, which was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Another one was the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, which was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Another one of the colleges was University of Maryland at Baltimore, (Back then it was at Baltimore not Baltimore County) which was in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Finally the other college he applied to was the Medical College of Virginia, which was the Pharmacy School for Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), which is in Richmond, Virginia. He was accepted at all four schools. My dad chose the Medical College of Virginia. Temple, University of Maryland at Baltimore, and MCV were in the Metropolitan area. University of North Carolina was the only one in a rural area like Campbell was. He had narrowed it down to Medical College of Virginia and University of North Carolina. He chose MCV, and the main reason that he chose Medical College of Virginia was that it was one of the top ranked Pharmacy Schools in America. His College experience was great; he learned how to become confident and independent. He also learned how to balance the rigors of studying and still have time to have fun while he was away at college. My dad said that college is a lot different than high school because it is more demanding. You have so much more independence and decisions to make. You have to choose to go to class and study. You don’t have your parents watching you. You also have to be mature and disciplined enough to balance your time between studies, work and extracurricular activities.  The advise my dad has for high school students preparing for college is that, “Your high school years are the best years of your life”. He said, “Enjoy them!” Do your very best in school and learn good study habits. My dad’s most famous saying is, “Strive to achieve a high grade point average so that you dictate where you want to go, not the schools deciding if they want you.”   