From personal podcasting to professional development
Natalia Loomis is a final-year PharmD candidate at the St. John’s University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
It’s no secret that since the pandemic began, people have new hobbies, examined new perspectives, and formed different connections—me included. As lockdown led to more time with myself, I started to reflect on what I was feeling personally and how I could form a connection with people experiencing similar feelings. This led to the inception of “Talks with Talia,” a podcast centered around someone in their 20s navigating the transition from student to full-time adult through topics such as wellness, philosophy, life updates, and everything in between.
Little did I know that this personal endeavor would also lead to an endeavor of professional growth!
Out of my comfort zone
Several years of education in pharmacy school led to little knowledge of what being a podcaster entailed, so I hit the ground running and started researching. Self-directed research required me to figure out which questions to ask, how to isolate applicable answers, and exercise my critical thinking. This experience proved helpful when I transitioned these skills into my final-year APPEs. For example, I am now better able to ask pertinent questions on rounds, during topic discussions, and during journal clubs while isolating questions I would like to investigate on my own later.
Once I understood the foundations of creating a podcast, I needed to create content. Scripting the idea for the first episode was easy but recording it … that was a whole different form of difficult. Sitting in an empty room and talking to yourself is something that feels unnatural. It was in that moment of feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable that I remembered this quote: “growth happens outside of your comfort zone.” Going out of your comfort zone leads to many positive opportunities for increasing professional development. Personally, getting out of my comfort zone with the podcast led to improved public speaking skills such as presentation preparation and delivery, which assisted in forming professional relationships and expanding my network.
After recording and editing my first episode, the last step was to get creative with how to market the content; that is, where to post, which cover art to use, and how to brand the podcast. Not only did this teach me a little bit about market research and how to track trends, but it also taught me how to develop my personal brand. In the professional world, how to convey and market your skills is equally as important as the skills themselves. In other words, how do you sell yourself?
Using my new skills on rotation
Knowledge I gained from branding my podcast allowed me to brand myself, my curriculum vitae, and my interview skills. This led to an APPE rotation at the Board of Pharmacy Specialties (BPS), where I worked with the Professional Affairs, Communication, and Engagement team. I used and shared the tactical knowledge podcasting taught me as well as helping BPS staff learn about new platforms and methods to improve the BPS podcast.
In a post-lockdown world, many of the new hobbies I picked up seem to stay—especially when it comes to personal and professional growth. As work-life balance becomes more fluid, we should leverage our hobbies to lead to transferrable workplace skills, similar to the way my personal podcast led to my professional growth!