The Daily Journal from Flat River, Missouri • 11

The DAILY JOURNAL, Flat WveK Ma-Wednesday, August 7, 1974-Page il Three 9 7 view ummer Jobs Students LB V. Although the fads of college life come and go, two facts of college life remain; it takes money to go to school, and that money is expected to pay dividends in the form of paychecks when the student completes four, six, eight or more years of higher education and enters the work force. Although many college students work during the summer to help earn their way for another year of school, some take or are forced to take or simply choose to take jobs that don't tap their training. For example, college students are working in St. Francois County this summer as hospital orderlies, encyclopedia salesmen and construction workers.

Others have found a different kind of summer job a job in which the student works in the field in which he plans his career so he can utililize his college training, gain practical experience in the field and better anticipate his future career. For example, Grady Yount, 20, a student at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, is working this summer, as he has the past two, at Foulon's Drug Store in Flat River. Yount says he started working at the drug store while still a student at Mineral Area College (MAC) so "I could relate to the curriculum when I went up to St. Louis to school.

I didn't want to go up there completely in the dark about pharmacy." A native of Leadwood, he entered MAC in 1971 after graduating from Leadwood High School and followed a prepharmacy curriculum emphasized science courses -botany, zoology, general chemistry and organic chemistry. The summer after the first year at MAC, Yount found the job at Foulon's and went to work. He worked there last summer and will complete this summer's work later this month. In addition, he drives back from St. Louis to work weekends and school holidays.

Besides being practical experience in a drug store, Yount's work will satisfy the state-required, internship a pharmacy graduate must complete before taking the examination to become a licensed pharmacist, he says. When Yount enrolls this month for the second of his three years at the pharmacy school, he will have completed 1,200 hours toward his internship, he estimates. The first summer's work didn't count because he wasn't a registered pharmacy student then, he points out. Yount says his pharmacy school courses are difficult. In contrast, he now works eight hours and then I don't have to worry about homework," he says.

Thomas J. Foulon, a licensed pharmacist and the owner of the drug store which bears his name, supervises Yount, who is not authorized to fill prescriptions. In addition to his license as a phar as he thought it might be. Deciding to study for a career in agriculture after his discharge, he enrolled as an animal husbandry major at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he will be a senior this fall. Since June he has worked at the Nemec Ranch about 10 miles east of Farmington.

The ranch is owned by Dr. and Mrs. Stanley S. Nemec. He is a St.

Louis physician. Both the doctor and his wife have a special interest in applying their knowledge of genetics to breeding Aberdeen Angus to improve the animals' meat characteristics. The doctor's scientific approach, job instructions written in memo form and thoroughness in recordkeeping make the ranch's operation seem more like a highly organized laboratory than a farm, as Neff describes it. In contrast to his family's farming operation, Neff says the Nemecs experiment and innovate in the management of the ranch and the breeding program. And they explain why they do what they do, he adds.

"When I was working with my grandfather and uncle, they never discussed management. Their work was more or less by rote," Neff says, pointing out most farmers are reluctant to change their farming methods because of the expense and risk involved. Neff learned that the doctor was looking for someone to work at the ranch this summer through one of the Nemecs daughters who attends the university. He says he does "a part of everything," from fixing fences to putting up hay to working with the cattle, his real interest. "I've learned a lot but it hasn't been what I expected to learn," Neff says.

He describes what he has leaned as "a blend of common sense and theory." One thing he says he has learned to take along a notepad to record his employer's plans and ideas when he and the doctor go out walking in the pasture on long summer evenings. The walks are a moveable classroom, Neff relates. Neff took a break from ranch life to attend a one-week course for cattlemen at the Graham School in Garnett, last month. The course dealt with such items of cattle care as vaccinations, artificial insemination and pregnancy testing. Although Neff receives room, board and a small salary, he says he would have worked for nothing this summer.

"Pay was not really a consideration," as he puts it, explaining the experience of working in such a breeding operation has been valuable for him. Neff works a farmer's long day and has one day off each week, but says life on the ranch is a vacation because it's a marked change from the hectic pace of Columbia. macist, Foulon also is licensed to have pharmacy students serve their internship in his store. In the past 20 years, he says, four men who have become licensed pharmacists have gotten their start in his store. Yount is the fifth man in pharmacy training who has worked for him.

Yount, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Donald Yount, Leadwood, says his salary is excellent despite the fact he is serving a required internship. He would not have to work to attend school, he says. Yount says he wants to be something other than a "count-and-pour pill roller" when he finishes school.

He's interested in being a clinical pharmacist, one who works in a hospital directly with doctors planning and monitoring patients' drug therapy, as he describes it. Realizing a patient's well-being is at stake each time a pharmacist fills a prescription, Yount says that to be a pharmacist you have to have confidence in yourself and your knowledge of drugs and drug therapy. "Mistakes will happen," he admits, "but they must be held to the bare minimum, almost nil." "If you lose the trust and confidence of your patients, you've lost everything," he continues. And, despite what patients may think, pharmacists can easily read the doctor's handwriting on prescription forms, according to Yount. It's simply a matter of experience, he says, pointing out that drug names are recognizable to the pharmacists, if not the patients, and dosage directions are written in Latin.

"If the pharmacist has any question at all about the drug, dosage, form of dosage or directions, the rule is to call the doctor," he explains. As for summer recreation and relaxation, Yount says he and his parents try to take one week off at the beginning and another at the end of the season to get away to lakes in Arkansas and Texas to fish. Fishing, but at a lake on the ranch near Farmington where he is working this summer, provides recreation for Bob Neff a second student who is working this summer in his career field. Although 25-year-old Neff grew up in Kansas City, he got a taste of country life by spending schoolboy summers on his grandfather's and uncle's adjoining farms in Linn County. However, when he graduated from high school in 1966, Neff enrolled in a junior college in Kansas City to study electronics.

After completing the two-year junior college program, Neff enlisted in the Navy and served four years as a sonar technician. In addition to seeing the world during two trips around it, he saw that electronics was not as appealing as a field I 1 ri TAKING INVENTORY Grady Yount, 20, Drug Store, Flat River, where he is working Daily )i in i a pharmacy student, checks the stock at Foulon's this summer as he has the past two. Journal r.fTJf"JibS'1Ud'l 9 He manages a fourplex apartment building he and a friend own while he attends school. On his day off, Neff regularly commutes to mow the yard and check the building. He and the same friend, who still Is in the Navy, are interested in eventually buying a farm.

But Neff explains that going into agriculture on the scale that interests him is at least a quarter-million-dollar proposition. So he says he's staying flexible about the future, perhaps planning to study for a master's degree after completing his bachelor's. "One thing I like about the job is that I'm anxious to get back to school," he says. "I had almost lost interest but now I have a stock of questions about agriculture theory based on what I've seen this summer." Neff says he has always been interested in the idea of raising cattle. But because of his work at the Nemec Ranch this summer, his interests now are more specific a genetic approach to breeding, the process of selection for breeding and the organization and management of a farm.

"I'm fortunate to have had the experience," he says. Like the other two students, Ed Mell is working this summer in the field in which he plans a career. Mell, 19, who will be a junior accounting major at the University of Missouri at Columbia this fall, Is working in the business office at Farmington Community Hospital. A 1972 graduate of Farmington Senior High School, Mell says he decided during the first year of college he wanted to find a summer job that pertained to his major. He asked Bill Blair, the hospital administrator, for a job for the summer of 1973 and was accepted.

He also worked at the hospital during the break between semesters in the past school year and has been on the job there since school was out this spring. He views the job as both an opportunity to earn money for school expenses and a time to learn. And, it's something of a bridge over the sometimes troubled waters from the academic to business world, he says. "I'm attempting to ease that transition," he explains, noting that it is a painful process for some students. And, the job gives him actual experience in dealing with situations he reads' about in textbooks, he says, adding that the actual experience makes the classwork more meaningful.

He says he's anxious to return to the university later this month. Noting, that "You have to be purposeful to succeed," Mell sets his. goals at first earning a bachelor's degree in accounting and then attending graduate school where a number of different areas of specialization would be open to him, he says. He now maintains a Dean's List average at the university, he says. Whether his experience at the hospital will give, him an advantage later on in finding a job is a difficult question for him.

"I will have gained a broader scope of experience," he says of himself, but also notes that experience and capability are not necessarily the same thing. And indication of Mell's interest in his job is his decision not to accompany his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Don Mell, Farmington, on a two-week vacation in Hawaii this summer. He says he felt the summer work experience would be more beneficial than the vacation.

Besides, working in the hospital is something of a vacation for him. "I feel I have a vacation because I'm in a different environment," he explains. "I enjoy the job and feel it's beneficial enough not to sacrifice the time for a randomly selected vacation," as he puts it. "Some people are surprised at my decision and feel I made an error in judgment, but they don't look at the job as I do," he continues. The job, as outlined by Bill Baker, the hospital accountant who is Mell's supervisor, is simply exposure to day-to-day financial transactions.

Baker says he doesn't create artificial situations for Mell to work on. Analyzing the problems in cash flow that arise each day is the best way to learn, according to Baker, who also has Mell work on financial statements and quarterly reports. Current business transactions are fascinating, Mell says. It's a challenge to make the decisions and learn to accept the sense of resonsibility and sometimes achievement that goes with making decisions, he explains. Although secretarial students from MAC have worked part-time in the hopital business office, Baker says Mell is the first student to take over detailed accounting responsibilities.

"The hospital is interested in working with students, especially those who have set their career goal and are working toward it," Blair said. Baker says he and Mell now learn from each other. In fact, Mell has learned so well that this summer, for the first time since he started working at the hospital, Baker is taking two weeks' vacation. "Three more like him and I'd take a month's vacation," Baker adds. Photos By Joe Garner tilt IT "7 i' i A i i ft ADDING THE FIGURES Ed Mell, 19, an accounting major.

working for a second summer at Farmington Community Hospital, operates the adding machine while Bill Baker, the hospital accountant, supervises. ADMIRING THE ANIMAL Bob Neff, an agriculture student, bulls bred at the ranch. The bull is from Homeplace Eileenmere foreground and Dr. Stanley S. Nemac, owner of the ranch near 807, the ranch's 19-year-old main herd sire.

Farmington where Neff is working this summer, rub one of the Daily Journal Staff Photo.