“It just felt like home,” Brar said of CSUB. “It prepared me well. Some of those classes, biology and chemistry classes, they were tough. I think struggling in those and pushing myself to do as well as I could is the reason I excelled so much in pharmacy school.”
Part of a tight-knit family, Brar was drawn to CSUB because it allowed him to stay close to home. Still, like many teens, after living most of his life in Bakersfield, Brar did feel a desire to see what the world outside of Bakersfield holds. In addition to CSUB, he applied to UC Merced, UC Riverside, and UC Irvine.
“I got into all those places and I was actually going to UC Irvine until my mom said, ‘Nope! Not going to happen,’” Brar, 27, recalled. “I was a huge mama’s boy at the time, so I had to listen to her. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made; I saved money by staying at home and got to familiarize myself with the entire school versus a bigger school where I probably wouldn’t have been as well known by my professors.”
Brar was always interested in the sciences, but at CSUB he discovered a passion for biology and chemistry, the latter in which he minored. At a conference he attended at UC Davis while an undergraduate at CSUB, he began to consider pharmacology. Learning about the human body already intrigued him, but so did its interactions with prescription drugs, especially when he considered the medications in his own home at the time.
“My parents take a lot of medications and I was wondering, ‘What are they taking these for?’” he said. “That’s what made me become passionate in pharmacy because I wanted to see, ‘What can I do to help them better understand how to take this, and, more optimally, take it so they can get better and feel better and not take them as much anymore?’”
With an idea for his future, Brar would need letters of recommendation from faculty and staff in order to get into pharmacy school. Thanks to letters from professors Dr. Kathy Szick and Dr. Brandon Pratt and academic advisor Dodie Hyatt, he was accepted into Marshall B. Ketchum and graduated this spring.
“After I found out I passed my boards, that very day, an hour later after I found out, I felt super thankful, so I sent a bunch of thank-you emails to everybody at Marshall B. Ketchum, but I also reached out to the people at CSUB who gave me those letters of recommendations,” Brar said. “I appreciate what they did for me, because their letters ultimately got me an interview. Whatever they said in those letters must have been good enough for me to get those interviews, which gave me the opportunity of going to pharmacy school.”
Dr. Szick taught Brar in her Introductory Biology – Cells and Immunology classes. She recalled the letter she wrote for Brar, which detailed his motivation, interpersonal communication skills and passion. Receiving Brar’s recent email brought tears to her eyes, she said, and reminded her that beyond the daily grind of teaching, her work can have a lasting impact on her students.
“His letter came at the point where I really needed to hear that I was able to (or did) make a slight difference in a student’s career pathway (and life in general!),” Dr. Szick said. “Also, I have to say that I am always touched that students come back and thank me for what I may have contributed. The ‘thank-you’s’ are not why I do what I do, but they sure do help fill my cup!”
While at Marshall B. Ketchum, Brar developed an interest in infectious diseases, sparked by his professor, Dr. Josh Garcia, whose own work was in that field. Brar took a rotation with him at Mission Hospital and quickly decided it was what he wanted to do with his career.
“I loved doing what he would do on a daily basis – taking care of patients with any kind of infectious disease and learning how to manage their antibiotics, finding the best way to effectively treat a patient,” Brar said. “When it came to patients with pneumonia or sepsis, those patients have a higher mortality rate, and if you can do some intervention or better optimize their antibiotics and they leave the hospital feeling better, it’s just a great feeling that you have.”
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