Ask Christine Poon about the possibilities of a pharmacy degree, and she’ll tell you: it can take you places you never imagined.

Now in her fourth year at the USC School of Pharmacy, Poon started out thinking this would be a good degree to have to help her dad run his pharmacy. After all, she had graduated USC as a business major and worked for a few years as a financial analyst. The only reason to go to pharmacy school "was to know everything there was to know about the business of my dad's pharmacy."

Then in the midst of her graduate studies, Poon became enamored of the possibility of teaching. "I had a mentor, Dr. Susie Park, who took a lot of time to explain what teaching and academic research was like. I had a very good role model and lots of personal advice. It's still a possibility."

Then she began her clinical rotations, and fell in love with the idea of working in a hospital setting. She is currently enjoying her critical care rotation, because working in the critical care units is "more intense, challenging and sometimes life-saving."

So now that she is aiming for a residency in a hospital setting, what about her dad’s pharmacy? Poon says, "He never pushed me, never told me what I should do. But going to pharmacy school was the best decision I’ve ever made, because it opened my life to so many amazing possibilities."