Shannon Francois

Current role

I am a part time community pharmacist in Invercargill as well as juggling this with my netball career with both the Southern Steel and the Silver Ferns.

Your Otago experience

I played for both the Silver Ferns and the Southern Steel in my last year of university, and was only able to do this due to the brilliant support from the staff at the School of Pharmacy especially June Tordoff. I managed to get through my internship only working part time which definitely had its challenges but I was very pleased when I became fully qualified.

I absolutely loved my time at Otago University, I definitely did my time on Castle Street and lived in your typical student flat. I have made some lifelong friends through the Pharmacy School and have very fond memories of lectures and workshops. By the end of 4 years you had formed a tight bond with both your class mates and your lecturers.

I chose pharmacy because I really enjoyed chemistry in my first year at university and found the medical side of it fascinating. I loved learning about all the different diseases and how to treat them but without having to do all the gory things that doctors do. I had no idea about pharmacy before attending university and can't say I had set foot in one very often prior to this. I wanted to avoid the cliché of a sports person doing physiotherapy and I liked the idea that when I am away from netball it was something completely different and unrelated and really tests me mentally, and for me, pharmacy has really provided this. It is a job where you have the ability to work part time which was important due to my duel careers. I am still very new in my role as a pharmacist and feel like I have so much more to learn and face new challenges every day when I go to work which makes it both exciting and extremely interesting.