Volume 12, Issue 1 The (VERY DELAYED) 2015 Semester 1 (part 1) of SUPA's newsletter, The Mortar. Compiled and edited by Aimy Nguyen (communications/IT) with contributions from the SUPA committee.
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Semester 1 2015 On behalf of SUPA I would like to welcome everyone back to another exciting year of uni! I’d first like to take this chance to congrat- ulate the graduating class of 2014. You’ve achieved a milestone in your lives and I find myself confident and proud that pharmacy will be safe in your hands! To all the new pharmacy students’ SUPA extends a warm congratulations on begin- ning your journey in one of the most trusted health professions in the country. The times ahead will be challenging but fear not as you are very much capable of achieving all that you want! Remember that if you ever do need help you can come find us! As we always do, SUPA started the year strong at the recent NAPSA congress host- ed by Griffith University. Our members were lucky enough to attend inspiring talks and workshops about the future of pharmacy. I am certain we all came back motivated to #startamovement and take control of what we want the future to hold for us and our profession. The coming year brings many changes (keep updated with the news) in the indus- try but also here within SUPA! We’ll still be having all our fun, traditional gatherings and activities but loads of new events are on the horizon too! Keep and eye out and hope to see you all getting involved. William Shen President
Transcript
Semester 1 2015
On behalf of SUPA I would like to welcome everyone back to another exciting year of uni!
I’d first like to take this chance to congrat-ulate the graduating class of 2014. You’ve achieved a milestone in your lives and I find myself confident and proud that pharmacy will be safe in your hands!
To all the new pharmacy students’ SUPA extends a warm congratulations on begin-ning your journey in one of the most trusted health professions in the country. The times ahead will be challenging but fear not as you are very much capable of achieving all that you want! Remember that if you ever do need help you can come find us!
As we always do, SUPA started the year strong at the recent NAPSA congress host-
ed by Griffith University. Our members were lucky enough to attend inspiring talks and workshops about the future of pharmacy.
I am certain we all came back motivated to #startamovement and take control of what we want the future to hold for us and our profession.
The coming year brings many changes (keep updated with the news) in the indus-try but also here within SUPA! We’ll still be having all our fun, traditional gatherings and activities but loads of new events are on the horizon too! Keep and eye out and hope to see you all getting involved.
William Shen President
Amongst all the social and educational events which fill up the SUPA calendar, the Annual Gala Ball is, with-out a doubt, the most anticipated and exciting event of the year. Last year, we celebrated the end of yet another successful year for SUPA with the Midnight in Paris Pharmacy Ball, held at the prestigious ivy Ball-room.
Preparations started early in the year, with multiple venue inspections before we locked in ivy Ballroom (they had us at the chandeliers, maybe not so much the carpet) and continued over the next couple of months as we argued and disagreed on practically every theme under the sun. Whilst themes like Ca-sino Royale and Venetian Masquerade were popular contenders, we couldn’t go past the romantic vibes of the ivy Ballroom, with its high ceilings and grand staircase. And so it was decided – we were taking our guests to Paris for a little French Affair!
Being incredibly amateur event planners, we spent a good part of the semester budgeting and re-budget-ing, looking through tumblr and pinterest (or as Jeffery Wang says – Pin-interest) for inspiration, coming up with outrageous ideas such as bringing in huge water fountains, and Mimes to help complete the look. For-tunately most of these ideas were veto-ed right off the bat to avoid next-day regrets at the bank.
And so after a frenzied period of ticket sales (we sold out in a record time of 1.5 weeks!), long waiting lists, numerous trips to ikea and Officeworks, as well as the standard exam-stress, everything was finally coming together. Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, MediAdvice Pharmacy and the Phar-macy Guild of Australia, we were also able to secure a Photobooth for the inner #selfiequeen in all of us, as well as the decorations for the night.
To kick start the night, we heard from the Dean of Phar-macy, Professor Iqbal Ramzan, as well as a little wel-come speech from our President William Shen, and In between the formalities, we enjoyed some French tunes from our accordion player Sam, as well as em-barrassed our graduating class of students with some people’s choice awards, with titles including: most likely to go to Prison (Ethan), Class Clown (Andy), and Biggest Loud Mouth (Sam), and several others.
And to end the formaties of the evening, we started with a dance from our Mr and Mrs Pharmacy Giorgio Adattini and Josephine Touma, which then degraded too quickly into a show of Jeffery Wang’s DF moves (you may have been able to see Thomas Balle bust-ing out a few moves too).
Of course, all this would not have been possible if we didn’t have some amazing people on board – I’d like to take this opportunity to give a huge shout out to Aimy Nguyen (our Communications/IT officer) who created all our banners, posters, place cards, and ba-sically everything and anything which needed writing or something visual – we would have had stick figure drawings if not for her! And to Subha, our Events Of-ficer, who organised the after party at Pacha, got ta-ble decorations and flowers (even though she’s mildly allergic), Henry for helping me out with organising ta-bles, and the rest of the Committee and year repre-sentatives for their ideas, enthusiasm and everything in between.
On behalf of the SUPA 2014-15 committee, I hope all our guests had a wonderful evening as we certainly did (it was still a rollercoaster of emotions though), and we’re looking forward to the next one!
Angela WuSecretary
Angela Wu throws back to one night last November: Sydney University’s Pharmacy Ball and the year long road that led up to it.
Once again pharmacy students across Australia came together at the biggest pharmacy student event of the year, NAPSA Congress 2015! Over three hundred students converged upon Griffith Uni-versity in the Gold Coast for what was an exciting and unforgettable week!
Being the first congress that I had attended, I had ini-tially looked at the timetable with some dismay. The days were filled with talks, seminars and workshops – studying on a holiday is a notion that no student enjoys entertaining. However the educational side of the congress was anything but dull and I’m sure I can speak on behalf of all the students when I say that the guest speakers left us with inspiration, ambition and optimism for the future.
For myself, a few speakers of note were Daniel Rifkin with his motivational outlook on the future of phar-macy, Brooke Myers showing us the broad scope of life outside of community pharmacy, Rhonda White providing us with an insight into the successes com-munity pharmacy and Alannah Priddle leaving us in stitches as her well placed puns taught us that there need not be any embarrassment when it comes to healthcare even with something as awkward as sexual health. I must say that the educational events broadened and deepened my perspective of phar-macy and the potential that the future holds for phar-macy.
At the end of each day there was always something fun to look forward too. The opening night really set the scene for how fun the week was going to be with everyone unleashing their super powers as a hero or villain for a night at dream world.
The nights provided us with amazing opportunities to network with other pharmacy students from around the country – an opportunity that was only possi-ble because of this congress. Of course for all the bonding that occurred nothing could dull the rivalry between the different branches on battle night – but then what is life without a little competition. Need-less to say the rivalry did not last beyond the battle events and by the night of the ball it wasn’t a matter of which branch was better but rather what can we do to see each other more often.
I’d like to thank the organising committee from GUAPS for putting together a great congress and a shout out to the sponsors for helping cover the cost of the event. To any pharmacy students reading this, I highly recommend that you try to go to at least one congress. I promise that you’ll have a one of the best weeks of your uni life and that you’ll make some life-long friends.
Constantine Kotrolos NAPSA Councillor
Constantine recalls the week that was: Gold Coast NAPSA 2015
Above: Pharmacy student associations from across the nation come together at Griffith University. Photographer: Christian Nimri
On Thursday the 5th of March, SUPA had their annual First year welcome BBQ!
Blessed with a warm summers day, the new fresh, first year contingent graced the sunken lawns where the SUPA committee had set up a free (yes free) barbecue to help them settle in. With a line so long you’d mistake it for a nightclub, the first years cleaned up the food in the blink of an eye while trying to make friends with their mouths full of food - all in all it was a successful afternoon.
Thank you to all you attended, no doubt uni will be a little daunting at first but judging by the conver-sation and vibes coming from you guys, the future of SUPA and pharmacy is in safe hands!
Henry Chan incoming President
Above: first year students having a good time at the welcome BBQ.
Greetings, first year students
SUPA’s bi-annual pubcrawl got cozy this year with our students switching their labcoats for bathrobes. The crawl began at the SUPA office then headed down to Newtown as our Pharmers aimed to outdo the indie vibes of Kuleto’s, New-town Hotel and Cooper’s. It was a huge success as we got 1st years getting cozy with our 4th years, a surprise detour along the way and a lot of bedtime stories were shared.
Thanks to everybody who came or helped out. Sweet dreams until next time xoxo.
Subha Khan Events Co-ordinator
PS SUPA’s trivia night and semester 1 cruise will be coming up in the next few weeks so keep your ears peeled for updates as they come!
Introducing: Simi Kaur, 2015 Sports Officer
As sports/interfaculty representative, I am responsible for the promotion of interfaculty sport as well as the or-ganisation of competitions and teams. Although this se-mester has only started, the Faculty of Pharmacy has already celebrated their position in the semi- finals for Touch Football. I am extremely proud of our Pharmacy spirit, teamwork and the number of supporters at every sporting event.
Also a huge congratulations to our girls and boys soccer teams for their amazing effort during interfac and quad fac soccer competitions!
Unfortunately for the girls, they were eliminated after a round against veterinary science (but not before some damage was done). The boys have progressed to the next round after knocking out medical science. They will be playing against vet science this Friday 15th of May.
Follow the SUPA FB page to keep up to date on each week’s sport event!
Many thanks to Professional Pharmacists Australia (PPA) for sponsor-ing our new team jerseys.
