Okay, I realize that's a weird intro for any blog about vet school, but hear me out.
In sixth grade (Or was it seventh? Maybe eighth? I forget. Sometime around there) we had a course called home economics. I think most schools had it. It was supposed to be life skills. What it was in actuality was baking and sewing. I loved the baking part of it. I'd been baking and cooking with my parents since I was old enough to hold a spoon. I was decidedly not good at sewing. (You're starting to see where this is going, huh?) We had to sew a stuffed animal by hand and make a pair of boxer shorts on a sewing machine. I could stitch by hand, but it wasn't all that neat, mostly I think because I didn't care. Sewing machines were a weapon of mass destruction in my hands. I can vividly remember this conversation between the teacher and me when she saw how far behind I was.
Her: "You have to know how to sew."
Me: "No I don't."
Her: "Well what about when your husband needs his pants hemmed?"
Me: "Why can't he do it himself? Or use a tailor? Or buy pants that fit in the first place? And who says I'm getting married?"
I don't remember how it went from there. I think she decided I was a lost cause on the path to Stepford Wife-dom and walked away in disgust. I passed the class, mostly on my efforts in the kitchen. Neither the stuffed animal or the boxer shorts ever got finished. Luckily, my geek-tastic love of cosplay forced me to learn to stitch acceptably by hand, because little did I know, I'd end up stitching skin one day. On Tuesday during a lab, I had my first attempt at sutures. It wasn't particularly neat, or fast, but the end product wasn't horrible. Of course, all those years ago, when my teacher had told me I'd need to sew, she probably should have left my hypothetical idiot husband's pants out of it and used something more relevant like stopping the post-surgery evisceration of a patient. And then she should have ditched the sewing machine and given me forceps and needle drivers.
