i value it very much, it helps me to get a roughly clear idea on these two professions.
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I guess I can give you some advice here. My ex-Gf is a pharmacist and my current Gf and elder brother is a Biochemist. 1. Now, pharmacy has had tremendous interests from students in recent years. Its a sprouting profession and if the ministry of health plan to change the dispensing right regulation, the Malaysia still needs plenty of retail pharmacist. The course roughly takes 4 years to complete and upon completion you need to undergo 3 years of compulsory government service before practicing in private sector as a pharmacist. Most people have the idea of a pharmacist being a retail or hospital pharmacist where they dispense medication to patients. There is a lot interpersonnal contact here, one might find satisfaction working with people. However, from what I heard from my pharmacists friends its pretty boring working as a retail pharmacist. The other carier pathway you might be interested working as a pharmacist is industrial pharmacist working with drug companies. But again, you need to complete the compulsory government service. Basically its more of the drug itself rather than person. What my ex is doing at the moment is studying her PhD in pharmacology. Research for a paper about protein signalling. More intellectual challenging but you basically work like a hermit in the lab talking to your cell culture. Even without doing a PhD, you can go into research once you finish your degree that another career pathway. Generally doing research gets you the least pay most challenge and satisfaction depends on whether your experiment works. 2. Biochemistry is also has quite wide career pathways as well as study scope. Its less soughted here in Malaysia as there is less emphasis into research. Most people gets into research after they finish their degree and at the meantime study for honours/masters. What they study is mainly everything in relation to organic chemistry - Proteins, DNA, phospholipids, enzymes, protein channel, glycoprotein these are just some examples of them. Most gets to be expert in things they do during their lab years and stick with the field they familiar and research in the particular field. Its good challenge and again, satisfaction depends a lot on whether your experiment works (lots of frustration when something they do failed for after several experiments and one would take a week) However at the end of the day when you able to publish a paper on the things you do you get lots of satisfaction. Interpersonal interaction is limited. You work with a small group of lab people and from time to time you go for conferences. ]My brother is one of the pioneer group that goes to antartica for research under UM which started I think with the endorsement of Dr. Mahathir. Pretty interesting if you ask me. However its not everyone's cup to tea. He is planning to finish his PhD and go into teaching. To get a decent pay most people does not work in Malaysia. Singapore pays roughly 3.5k for fresh graduate with more job opportunities. Plenty of job available here too in Australia and I do not know about other country. So if you planning to get into any one of these course and you just finished SPM, obviously you would need to take Chemistry and Biology.
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