Katarina Tibensky

It might sound contradictory, but now that Katarina Tibensky is a student in the Doctor of Pharmacy program at Binghamton University’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, her life as a student-athlete has become easier.

As a member of the women’s swimming and diving team at Binghamton, Tibensky swims the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke and has practices beginning at 5:30 a.m. twice a week, at 3:30 p.m. five times a week and on Saturdays when she doesn’t have to compete.

In the past, as an undergraduate at Binghamton, where she’s majoring in biology, it was harder for her to schedule her classes. “But this semester, all of my classes are in the morning and practice is either earlier or later, so I have a clear-cut schedule.” Tibensky is following the 3+4 route and will finish up her bachelor’s degree in May 2019, followed by her PharmD three years later.

The swim team’s travel schedule fits in with her academic program as well. “As of right now, I don’t miss a lot of class because we only travel on the weekends,” she said. “I just need to get my work done early, so I have to put in a little more time to prepare when I have a competition.”

Her path to pharmacy started at Vestal Senior High School, where she was also a member of the swim team. “My dad is a chemistry teacher at Union-Endicott, and taking chemistry sparked my interest in sciences,” she said. “I started to shadow pharmacists at Lourdes on Shippers Road and loved it.”

Tibensky is currently working part-time as a pharmacy technician at the CVS in Union Center, filling prescriptions and helping with picking up and dropping off prescriptions.

With swim practice taking up about 20 hours a week and work on Sundays, Tibensky spends what extra time she can in the new School of Pharmacy building. “I love studying here because of the facilities and I can collaborate with other students, but I also use the Student-Athlete Success Center on campus before practice to get a little extra studying time in,” she said.

As for most first-year pharmacy students, Tibensky hasn’t yet chosen a career path. “The only experience I have is in retail and there are so many other routes, it’s insane to think about,” she said. “And already, some of the things we’ve done here have broadened my horizons.”

As a first-year PharmD student, Tibensky is learning a range of foundational skills. For instance, she says, she’s learning about over-the-counter drugs in her self-care course. “We’re learning about over-the-counter drugs that we can counsel patients on and how to diagnose general drug therapies like what’s the cause or what drug is best for someone with nausea or seasonal allergies that is treatable with OTC drugs,” she said.

She’s also staying on top of the frequent quizzes in her professionalism class, where she’s learning about the top 300 drugs that are prescribed, including their name, generic name, why they’re used and their dosage form (pill, capsule, solution).

She sees her classes as very demanding, but with a little bit of overlap across courses that makes it easier to connect everything she’s learning.

And, even with swimming, working as a pharmacist technician and studying, she’s become involved in the school’s chapter of the American Pharmacists Association (APHA). “It’s the biggest pharmacist organization in the country,” she said. “We’ve already had two meetings this year and there are different events you can go attend to further your education while networking with other pharmacists from all over the world.”