What one thing would you have wanted to know about your job before you started?

I would want to know what is the Culture Code of the company. By having a clearly defined culture code it enables Leadership to define the company's vision, Go-to-Market strategy, definition of roles and responsibilities, career growth and planning, work-life balance, involvement and commitment to the community..

Working in the medical field, specifically hospital pharmacy, does not leave much flexibility for being a mom to young children. If you get lucky you might find a schedule with really good hours which is helpful but for the most part shifts are 7 on 7 off 10-12 hour shifts. It might not be something that pertains to you but it's something that I found to be important later on in my career.

I agree with John - ask about the culture of the company. Culture can encompass things unseen, such as attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, as well as visible resources, such as goals and feedback, incentives, role models, rules/policies, and communication means. The trick is to tap someone in the interview process who will be honest with you about culture, especially the unseen things, where unfairness, hypocrisy, lack of accountability, resistance, lack of trust, helplessness, etc. may be hiding but would be critical to your decision making.

What amount of debit will it take to complete school? Are there opportunities to make money(on the side) while in school that doesn't interfere with my classes?

Unwritten Rules. In many organizations, especially long established ones, there probably are some widely understood, but unwritten rules. Many times these will be characterized as part of the “Culture”. People don’t get fired for not knowing these “rules” and sometimes people give others a lot of slack and time to become familiar with them. BUT, they will rarely promote you if you don’t learn and follow them. These rules may be as simple as, addressing senior staff members as Miss Mrs. or Mr. ……even though you get addressed by your first name. I once had occasion to discover our company was being triple billed for a particular service. I stumbled on this and was pleased to tell our department head about it during a casual conversation. Later that Day, I got to have a rather unpleasant conversation with the VP of audit who was upset that I didn’t tell him first. He got blindsided at a staff meeting when he was confronted by the information. I wasn’t wrong, but I could have had a very influential backer. I didn’t know that it was standard procedure to at least inform the department in charge before passing adverse information up your organizational silo. Lesson learned. Good Luck, Don Knapik