Final Reflection

Wow. This is suppose to be my final reflection of the whole "Exit Project" experience. It has been such a crazy, hectic project and has caused me so much stress! Definitely looking back, I wish I would have tried a lot harder to get my project going sooner than I did. Even though I was planning on starting my project earlier, it was just so hard to come up with what I was actually going to do. The last month before Exit Project Night was the time when I really came together and buckled down to get my work done. It seems like now that its all over and done with, I can feel proud of myself for getting through all the stress- however, it would have been easier if there was no stress to begin with!

To address my actual presentation night, I think it went well. I ended up really liking how my display came out- which I was the most worried about (besides my product). I really liked how my letters were put up above my station, because you could read them across the room-- unlike anyone else's! Also, my product judges seemed impressed by my powerpoint with the sound pieces in it. After all my display and product judges had come to my station, I relaxed a little bit, and just enjoyed talking to people when they came to my project. It was weird- I was so worried about my project not being up to standards with everyone else's, but when it came down to it I was really proud to show off what I had done. Besides people being generally turned off by my subject (haha), they seemed interested in what I had to say.

When it came time to give my speech, I had become really nervous! Especially considering Mrs. Dyer was one of my judges- and she happens to be the head of Forensics! It was relieving though that Mrs. Gandin was keeping my time for me, and no one else was in the room. I had actually settled down quite a bit when I gave my actual speech- my nerves had left and it all flowed pretty well. I think my visuals helped too- the smart board and my handouts with my graphs from my product. Overall, I thought it went well.

Now that exit project is OVER, I feel sooo relieved! I can finally concentrate on my classes, and all that is left before I graduate is finals! It is so exciting. Besides my obvious regrets about not starting early, I think my project turned out pretty good. I wish that seniors didn't have to do exit project in general, but I think it does turn out to be a good learning experience.

Goodbye and Farewell!!!!!

Daily

Today is Tuesday, the 4th. I met with Mrs. Gandin today on helping me with my display- I am going to set it up like a doctors office, and try to find some "walls" to put on the side. I'll have my posters on the "walls" with my different information. Also I have some finishing touches to put on my "fake" drug which she is also going to help me with. I have all the basics of my project right now- I just have to put it together.

Display

Now I am working on my display mostly at home. I still need to get fabric for my backboard, however alot of things are coming together.

Catching up

I have alot of catching up to do. Today I just got back from a 10 day trip to look at colleges, so of course I am very behind. I am trying to get together an acceptable speech- but these next few weeks I am going to have to recruit some extra help.

In order to relate my focus question to my speech, I have to first look back at what my questions is: "I want to analyze the process of drug development, as well as distinguish the skills necessary to become a successful sales person in pharmaceuticals."
Relating this to my speech is not going to be particularly difficult, since most of the stuff I have learned over this process is about the skills necessary to be successfull in this field. I will be taking statistics and other pieces of information I have found and explaining them in my speech. As far as the process of drug development, I will take information from my research paper that I never handed in, which helps to understand more what that process is. As far as using that, I will mostly focus of what the actual process is, and not go into detail- that way I can focus more on what it actually takes to be in the industry through sales skills.

To Do List

To Do:

Find material for backboard of display- see Mr. Graves
Put charts together and ready to be put on display
Figure out what kind of pictures to take to put on display

Display/ Mentor/ Jobshadow

For the display part of my project, we are told to look around the school for objects or anything that might be useful for us to use. For my project, I don't really need many big materials that I will need to ask for permission for. One thing that I was thinking about calling for my own is the big rolling backdrops for plays and such. All I would have to do to make this work for my display would be to cover it up with some material and use it for my backdrop, for whatever I may want to put on it. Also, I will be using the outline of a computer program that my mentor uses (through her company) as a representation of what an actual pharm. representative does.


After meeting with my mentor yesterday and jobshadowing her for the day, it has become more clear to me what needs to be done on my project, and how I am going to accomplish it. A flexible schedule that we have come up with for the next few months is this:

Complete my PRODUCT ("fake drug") by the end of February.
Complete my DISPLAY by the end of March.
Complete my SPEECH by the end of April.

This will all be accomplished by emailing back and forth with my mentor each week, discussing what else needs to be done and what I have gotten done so far.

JOBSHADOWING:
To begin my jobshadow, I met my mentor in St. Johnsbury and dropped off my car and went with her. We visited surrounding doctors offices in nearby towns. For a general idea of what Pharm. Reps do, is they visit doctors offices on a regular basis- some more frequently than others. They try to talk to the doctors themselves to tell more about the drugs that they are representing, but alot of times they only talk to the receptionists, who then tell them which samples they need. Andrea (my aunt/mentor) stressed to me when we kept talking to receptionists, that this area is a really hard one to talk to doctors in. Alot of family doctors that live in more rural areas are not as accepting to reps- not because of their personilitys, but mostly just the idea of them. Before and after each visit, Andrea has to get out her laptop and access this program that gives her information on the doctor she is visiting. It is information that her company buys through a third party- that gives (usually older) facts about how much of each drug they are prescribing, out of how many prescriptions they COULD have given. It is all pretty confusing, but the point of it is to give the representative an idea of what they need to target in order to sell their drug. Anyways, the jobshadow really helped give me more of an idea of what representatives actually DO during a weekday. Because this area is not a fair representation of what she does on a daily basis, however, I will be going to a bigger area (Burlington, surrounding areas) to jobshadow on a different day in the future. Also, my mentor is setting up a lunch meeting with a specialist practioner where I will be able to interview her about her thoughts on representatives.

That is my latest update on what I'm doing now.