This whole edition has been devoted to you, the new practitioner. But remember, you won’t always be a new practitioner. Depending on what sector you find yourself in, anywhere from your 6th to 15th year will place you outside of the new-practitioner or early-career bracket. (I know, I know.)

It’s never too early to start thinking about making that transition smoothly, and not leaving it to chance and time. As with any process or phenomenon on a bell curve, some will find themselves taking on key leadership positions very early in their career and have to grow into it through a baptism by fire. Others will slowly come into their own, while yet others are content with where they are and have no transition plans in place, due to family or other constraints.

So I’ll ask the following. You may not have any answers to them yet, but they will be here whenever you are ready.

1. What are your work goals (and plans) for the next five years?
2. What strategies are you using to keep track of changes impacting the profession (AI is here to stay)?
3. Do you plan to enter a leadership track in your workplace? If so, have you taken an accurate assessment of the potential for stretch assignments and promotions? If there are none, how do you plan to achieve this goal?
4. What are your financial goals, if any? Have you taken a thorough assessment of your financial status, to know how to plan for the future you want?

Professionals are considered high-income earners based on salary brackets, and many high-income earners who do not take the time to map out a financial plan — and how to get there — might find themselves in what is known as the HENRY population: the High Earners, Not Yet Rich. Taking the time to get financial or money coaching, or to speak with a financial advisor, will pay a lot of dividends in the long run.

On the topic of finances, while none of the professionals in our “Things I Wish I Knew” feature ever directly mentioned wishing they knew about money management, I want to bookend this final piece with that. Pharmacy school may not teach personal finance, but we owe it to ourselves to ensure that we put our hard-earned money to good use. Whatever that good use is will be different for different people, based on their financial goals. Find your goals in this area and work toward them. This is not a financial publication, and as such we cannot offer financial advice — but there are people out there who can do this well, from a fiduciary responsibility point of view.

Remember, any habits we build early in our career can carry through, so we want to ensure that we are building what we would be proud of when we look back ten years from now.

Yours in career success.