The Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences is surely a good fit for people with a wide range of interests and those who can't decide what they want to study.

Since I was a child, I've had many interests,

and when it came time for university entrance exams, I couldn't narrow down what I wanted to specialize in.

For someone like me, I think the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Keio Faculty of Pharmacy is a great fit.

The reason is that it's a department where you can study a wide range of multiple fields, including not only chemistry and biology but also physics and mathematics.

I'm sure I'll be able to discover new possibilities for myself and gain many options for the future.

(As of February 2023) *Some information has been supplemented with details from her second year as of August 2023.

One of the reasons I chose the path of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Faculty of Pharmacy was my encounter with Kumagusu Minakata, a naturalist, biologist, and ethnologist known as an "intellectual giant." He was featured in a historical manga I loved in elementary school, and since I already liked plants like flowers, I became interested in natural history, biology, and even environmental issues.

Until junior high, I planned to pursue humanities because I loved history. However, with high school entrance exams approaching, I decided, "I'll keep history as a hobby," and "In the future, I want to be involved in biological research or solving environmental problems to contribute to society," so I chose to pursue science.

When I was struggling and worried about exams, my teachers at Juku and school, my family, and my friends helped me. I was touched by the warmth of people who helped without expecting anything in return. I am who I am today thanks to the kindness of many people, and I want to become someone who can do something for others. Perhaps it's more accurate to say it's about giving back to the people around me rather than just contributing to society.

Another catalyst was a recommendation from my mother. When preparing for university entrance exams, I was looking for private universities I could apply to with biology and chemistry. At that time, my mother gave me a brochure from which I learned that I could apply to the Keio Faculty of Pharmacy with chemistry and discovered the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Initially, I wasn't very interested in medicine or drug discovery and thought the Faculty of Pharmacy was "a faculty for aspiring pharmacists," so it wasn't on my radar.

However, the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences is a department for mastering pharmaceutical sciences. Pharmaceutical science is not limited to chemistry and biology; it spans multiple fields like physics and mathematics and has integrative elements. For me, who had many interests and couldn't narrow them down, the fact that I could study a wide range of subjects was appealing. I also think a unique feature of pharmaceutical science is that you can learn the knowledge and attitude of a healthcare professional and give back to society, even in a small way, through that learning.

I ultimately chose Keio because it is a high-level university with outstanding faculty and students, a well-designed curriculum, and excellent facilities. The deciding factors were also its active international exchange and its focus on foreign language education. Furthermore, as a comprehensive university, the opportunity to receive various stimuli from interacting with students from other faculties and to gain a diverse and rich liberal arts education was also attractive.

In my first year, I joined a club for enjoying tea. We would visit famous tea shops or go for afternoon tea and chat. The events were held irregularly, and it was a very flexible club where you could participate when you were able to. I've liked tea since junior high, and I also like British culture and English, so I decided to join.

From my second year, I wanted to learn management skills, so I joined a medical student organization (inochi Gakusei Innovators' Program). I also wanted to gain knowledge about resources and energy, so I joined an inter-university club at the University of Tokyo (IRESA: International Resource and Energy Student Assembly). I feel that at Keio, in addition to the many university-specific clubs, there are also abundant opportunities to interact with students from other universities.

People often say the Faculty of Pharmacy is busy, but while there are no full days off, there are free periods (time without classes), and my impression was that the required courses in the first year were not as busy as I had initially imagined. That said, it was tough before the regular exams...

I was able to get through it smoothly thanks to making friends with a strong desire to learn, which was a great source of motivation.

In the second year, most of the classes became required courses, and with lab work in the afternoons, the time spent at the university increased significantly. Preparing for and reviewing classes and studying for regular exams became more demanding than in the first year. There were also days when experiments didn't yield good results and took a long time to finish...

However, here too, I was able to overcome these challenges by collaborating with friends and members of my lab group. In the labs, I think my critical thinking skills improved by thinking for myself about the meaning of procedures and equipment and by sharing my thoughts with friends.

I believe the busyness of an individual university student varies greatly depending on the combination of extracurricular activities they add to their academic work, but I feel that I am currently able to live a life that broadens my horizons in many directions without narrowing my perspective.

When I was in high school, my dream for the future was to become a researcher in the biological field or to contribute to solving environmental problems as a UN official. For me now, a research position or a job at the UN are just some of the options, and many more career paths are now candidates. However, I am thinking of going on to graduate school. Since I like English, I might go to a graduate school abroad.

I have always been interested in environmental issues, so it's possible I'll work in that field. Working in R&D at a biotech venture company or at a lab overseas might also be nice. I'll be assigned to a laboratory in the fall semester of my third year, and I've heard that some laboratories have many senior students who have studied abroad, so I'm looking forward to it.

I don't think the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences is only for people interested in drug discovery. Since it's a department where you can study a wide range of fields, I would also recommend it to people like me who have interests in many different areas and haven't yet been able to narrow down what they want to study.

In fact, rather than narrowing your perspective by specializing too much, it's important to learn with a broad outlook. Then, you can find your future options from among what you've learned. At the Keio Faculty of Pharmacy, I believe you can meet a new version of yourself, receiving a lot of inspiration without being confined to a box you've set for yourself.