The North American Pharmacy Licensure Exam is designed by the National Association of the Boards of Pharmacy to gauge the subject’s comprehension of the underlying principles of pharmacy, assess professional competence, and to utterly destroy their souls.
It all takes place in a non-descript office building, in a suite on the fifth floor with no plants or artwork on the walls. You go in. They scan your palm and take your picture. Then they walk you into a room where no one can hear you scream.
Not because you can’t, but you really, really shouldn’t. I paid upwards of $500 to rent a chair for four hours. Too much to get kicked out of for excessive profanity. Which you could have seen me express liberally. Of course, you wouldn’t have heard anything because I struggled to remain completely silent while doing so, like a New Jersey mime who was served cold cannoli. Hopefully the proctor in the booth couldn’t read lips because I said some pretty horrible things about him, his family and the car he drives.
I guess what really threw me was the subject material: Children? Oncology? Old people?
I was kind of banking on the test covering the more general topics that I studied: major disease states, common retail meds, math. So when I was hit with several dozen of the obscure questions right off the start naturally I wanted to curl up on the carpet clutching my chair leg and kicking the cubicle walls. But I summoned all the professionalism skill I had leveled up over the past three years and simply mouthed curse words for four hours.
There was the option at the 100-question mark to take a fifteen minute break.
I knew better than to take them up on that. It was a trap.
What would I do with a fifteen minute break? The adrenaline and cortisol flooding my system were ensuring sufficient blood glucose and mental alertness while simultaneously inhibiting parasympathetic processes. So I was fine (“fine”). And I knew what my brain would misinterpret the break as: hope. Just like in The Dark Knight Rises, the respite from the darkness only makes for a plunge back into a deep that is darker and so bleak that I will yearn again for the light. To gaze upon the light of hope would not lead to reinvigoration of the spirit, but would lead me astray when I am dashed back into the storm. No, there will be no rest for me. Back into it I flew. To finish up the last 80 questions before my spirit was well and truly broken.
I got out of the exam room and screamed at my dashboard a while. Before calmly contemplating the dates on which I could retake the exam.