MTEC Graduation--Becoming a Pharmacy Technician

This last week Camille graduated from MTEC! What is MTEC you ask? MTEC stands for Mountainland Technical College. It is a trade and vocational school with an emphasis on getting industry certifications in a variety of fields. It is for both high school students as well as older adults. Some of the programs are longer than a year but some are just a semester like the one Camille did--Pharmacy Technician. She went to class Monday-Thursday from 11:30-2:30pm. She went to high school for the first two periods of each day and then took the bus to the MTEC campus in Lehi. Getting her there was challenging since we weren't comfortable with her driving there and the bus schedules did not align with the school periods. So I generally had to pick her up and take her to the bus wherever it was on it's route so she would get there on time.

Pharmacy Technician was not an easy program. She had to learn more than 240 drug names with their generic name as well as their category, along with other information. She had to pass all her tests with at least an 80% and was allowed one retake per test. It was a lot of work for her (and us helping her study)!

Now she has to complete an externship of 180 hours and pass the nationwide certification test (taken after the externship) to become a certified pharmacy technician. She's just getting started on the externship at the local Walgreen's and it will take her at least a few more months to finish that up. However, despite not being done with everything, she was allowed to walk at the MTEC graduation. It was nice to be able to go and support her. Congratulations, Camille!

Camille is actually our second child to graduate from MTEC. Talmage graduated several years ago in the Web Programming program. In his case, he was able to get his internship and classwork done before he graduated. It's been a good move for him and he's currently working in that field.

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