It's that time again! BToW!
"Your favorite thing about vet school. Or a specific disease/condition/subject that you found interesting."
Watch it now, I'm about to throw down more cheese than fried mozza sticks.
It's the people.
I have been continually amazed at the people I've met at vet school. From group study, gaming nights, extra-curricular club events, to people who give up their so very rare free time for causes like humane society fundraisers, teaching animal enrichment and spay/neuter days. Is everyone fantastic? No. But I never thought I'd get along as well as I do with such a huge number of diverse people. I have never been one to make friends easily. I was one of the weird kids in high school (go figure when you don't care about celebrities, dress gothic and 50% of the television you watch and music you listen to is in Japanese) and went to university with virtually shattered self confience because of it; so I never put myself out there and consequently, never really bonded to anyone in unversity either. I was terrified coming to vet school that I was leaving behind the few close friends I had.
I had nothing to worry about. My classmates are amazing. I am surrounded by science geeks, so we all have that in common. Hell, at winter break, I have to watch what jokes I make because my old friends just don't get it, as well as reminding myself that not everyone finds medical stuff cool. There's only a small subset of the general population that can relate to the annoyance of having a bloody 4x4 gauze stuck to your surgical glove. I find myself saddened at the idea of leaving all these people next year.
Not to mention the faculty. We are a small school, we get overlooked a lot, and lord knows, we're not perfect. But we really do have some amazing faculty. Award-winning faculty. They love their job, they love to teach and it shows. Sure, we have our handful of profs that we all wonder exactly how they ever got tenure. They stand out because they're not the norm though. I have professors who inspire me on an almost daily basis; they make me want to be better, not for the number on the test paper but for them.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
BToW: Second Guesses
"Tell us about an experience that made you doubt your ability or
desire to go into vet med. How did you end up overcoming that doubt?"
I'm going to put my own spin on this, because honestly, once I started, I never really did. Mostly because I had awesome people in my corner cheering me on insisting that I could do it. I had set backs, sure, a few poor grades (I'm looking at you organic chemistry) and I was rejected one year, only to be waitlisted and subsequently called off the waitlist the next year. But there wasn't a time when I went, "Whoa, can I really do this?"
Instead, I'm going to tell you why I never considered vet med in the first place. It boils down to 1) not realizing that it was an option for me and 2) a horrible high school biology teacher. I'm an anomaly. It seems like everyone I meet has wanted to be a vet since they were little kids. I don't think it ever occurred to me. I wanted to be a singer, an actor, a writer, a paleontologist (c'mon EVERY kid wanted that, right?), and even the Prime Minister. My mother and father frequently insisted that I had to be a "doctor or a lawyer" because my handwriting was (and still is) atrocious.* Sure, I had pets. Wagger, Esmeralda, Max, Bailey, Gabby, Bun-Bun, Topaz, Coquette... But medicine in any form had never jumped out as an option to me. I don't know how much was that I didn't want to, and how much was that I just considered it was out of reach for me. I was smart; but I wasn't A+ and I figured that you needed to be to be a doctor or vet. So I just never even had it on the list.
In high school, I largely considered myself an artsy type. History, politics, literature, art... That was my scene. Math and science were things that I was good at, but couldn't stand, and was mostly just getting through. Math wasn't too bad - I liked trigonometry for it's little problem solving puzzles. I HATED biology. Our teacher was not the most modern of educators. What do I remember from Biology 11? Learning mitosis and meiosis for the 10th time in my life, dissecting a frog, and learning about fruitflies. I don't remember what I learned about fruitflies, just that we talked about them. So thoroughly turned off from science, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Journalism program. And then promptly dropped out after one year ("I'm never getting a job with this, what was I thinking??"). I realized during the next year that what made me the happiest was being at the barn with my horse. That led to applying to an equine science program (which I was rejected from), which led to a vet assistent program. During the assistant program, I realized more than animals, I loved medicine. It was also when my vet said to me, "I don't understand. Why do you want to be an assistant? You have what it takes, why don't you just go be a vet?"
In a way, the assistant program was a bit of a wasted year. But I needed it. I needed someone to show me how fantastic science and medicine could be and I needed someone to show me that I could do it.
*The lawyer part also came from my tendency to find the tiniest loophole in any argument and argue it into the ground. Love you, Mom.
I'm going to put my own spin on this, because honestly, once I started, I never really did. Mostly because I had awesome people in my corner cheering me on insisting that I could do it. I had set backs, sure, a few poor grades (I'm looking at you organic chemistry) and I was rejected one year, only to be waitlisted and subsequently called off the waitlist the next year. But there wasn't a time when I went, "Whoa, can I really do this?"
Instead, I'm going to tell you why I never considered vet med in the first place. It boils down to 1) not realizing that it was an option for me and 2) a horrible high school biology teacher. I'm an anomaly. It seems like everyone I meet has wanted to be a vet since they were little kids. I don't think it ever occurred to me. I wanted to be a singer, an actor, a writer, a paleontologist (c'mon EVERY kid wanted that, right?), and even the Prime Minister. My mother and father frequently insisted that I had to be a "doctor or a lawyer" because my handwriting was (and still is) atrocious.* Sure, I had pets. Wagger, Esmeralda, Max, Bailey, Gabby, Bun-Bun, Topaz, Coquette... But medicine in any form had never jumped out as an option to me. I don't know how much was that I didn't want to, and how much was that I just considered it was out of reach for me. I was smart; but I wasn't A+ and I figured that you needed to be to be a doctor or vet. So I just never even had it on the list.
In high school, I largely considered myself an artsy type. History, politics, literature, art... That was my scene. Math and science were things that I was good at, but couldn't stand, and was mostly just getting through. Math wasn't too bad - I liked trigonometry for it's little problem solving puzzles. I HATED biology. Our teacher was not the most modern of educators. What do I remember from Biology 11? Learning mitosis and meiosis for the 10th time in my life, dissecting a frog, and learning about fruitflies. I don't remember what I learned about fruitflies, just that we talked about them. So thoroughly turned off from science, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Journalism program. And then promptly dropped out after one year ("I'm never getting a job with this, what was I thinking??"). I realized during the next year that what made me the happiest was being at the barn with my horse. That led to applying to an equine science program (which I was rejected from), which led to a vet assistent program. During the assistant program, I realized more than animals, I loved medicine. It was also when my vet said to me, "I don't understand. Why do you want to be an assistant? You have what it takes, why don't you just go be a vet?"
In a way, the assistant program was a bit of a wasted year. But I needed it. I needed someone to show me how fantastic science and medicine could be and I needed someone to show me that I could do it.
*The lawyer part also came from my tendency to find the tiniest loophole in any argument and argue it into the ground. Love you, Mom.
Monday, February 17, 2014
The Tree of Life/Vet Med
SDN Blog Topic of the Week: "What career path/specialty are you pursuing, and how did you become interested in it?"
There's way more to vet med than meets the eye. Most people see vets as one thing - the person who does spays, neuters, vaccines, stops Fluffy from puking (hopefully), maybe retrieves a sock from Mittens' lower digestive tract, and at the end of it all, provides a kind ear and a painless death. (Okay, I know there's also lots of people who view vets as cold hearted money grubbers, but humour me, kay?)
A DVM degree is a tree. You start with the degree, and like a DVM, or a law degree, you branch out. Some people see those branches - maybe Wagger has a heart condition and they get referred to a vet cardiologist. Maybe nothing else is helping their Golden Retriever's horrible skin and they wind up at a dermatologist. Few people understand that vet med has just as many specialties as human med. And we have some of our own too.
Since about the end of second year, I've been on the lab animal vet path. It's a small field with big ramifications. It's not the most cuddly of specialties - yes, this is animal testing for medical purposes. And yes, I have to be careful who I tell what I'm pursuing. For some people, I just opt to say that I'm specializing in exotics and pocket pets. Sometimes, I tell them I'm going into lab medicine, but I immediately launch into an explanation.
Before I got into vet school, I had sort of settled on public health or some sort of infectious disease research (bacteria are my kind of culture). First year, we had a lecture on lab animal medicine from our lab animal vet at school (who I really can't recommend highly enough as a faculty member and as a vet) and I got to know the lab animal enthusiast in our class - the lovely Red from The Road Less Traveled. I had never heard of it before. It seemed interesting. It called to my desire to work with lots of species, to aid animal welfare, and I liked the tie-in with human medicine. So I sort of stuck it away in the back of my head.
Second year, I applied for an internship with the Canada Food Inspection Agency, which I was hoping to use as a stepping stone into public health. They said "Thanks, but no thanks." I sort of took that as a hint that maybe I should start looking elsewhere. I pulled lab animal med out of my head again and really mulled it over. The more I thought about it, the more appealing it was. Animal testing is not going away any time soon. But as vets, we have the power to make sure it's done right. We can see that their suffering is minimal, and not meaningless. I know the ethics of this field won't necessarily always match with my own, and that's okay. But I don't think there's a field of vet med that doesn't involve some ethical quandaries. Even general practitioners will have pregnant spays, clients that can't pay, convenience euthanasia... The fact that I can't do everything and that some times, there is suffering in lab animal medicine, isn't an excuse to not do anything. I can do something.
There's way more to vet med than meets the eye. Most people see vets as one thing - the person who does spays, neuters, vaccines, stops Fluffy from puking (hopefully), maybe retrieves a sock from Mittens' lower digestive tract, and at the end of it all, provides a kind ear and a painless death. (Okay, I know there's also lots of people who view vets as cold hearted money grubbers, but humour me, kay?)
A DVM degree is a tree. You start with the degree, and like a DVM, or a law degree, you branch out. Some people see those branches - maybe Wagger has a heart condition and they get referred to a vet cardiologist. Maybe nothing else is helping their Golden Retriever's horrible skin and they wind up at a dermatologist. Few people understand that vet med has just as many specialties as human med. And we have some of our own too.
Since about the end of second year, I've been on the lab animal vet path. It's a small field with big ramifications. It's not the most cuddly of specialties - yes, this is animal testing for medical purposes. And yes, I have to be careful who I tell what I'm pursuing. For some people, I just opt to say that I'm specializing in exotics and pocket pets. Sometimes, I tell them I'm going into lab medicine, but I immediately launch into an explanation.
Before I got into vet school, I had sort of settled on public health or some sort of infectious disease research (bacteria are my kind of culture). First year, we had a lecture on lab animal medicine from our lab animal vet at school (who I really can't recommend highly enough as a faculty member and as a vet) and I got to know the lab animal enthusiast in our class - the lovely Red from The Road Less Traveled. I had never heard of it before. It seemed interesting. It called to my desire to work with lots of species, to aid animal welfare, and I liked the tie-in with human medicine. So I sort of stuck it away in the back of my head.
Second year, I applied for an internship with the Canada Food Inspection Agency, which I was hoping to use as a stepping stone into public health. They said "Thanks, but no thanks." I sort of took that as a hint that maybe I should start looking elsewhere. I pulled lab animal med out of my head again and really mulled it over. The more I thought about it, the more appealing it was. Animal testing is not going away any time soon. But as vets, we have the power to make sure it's done right. We can see that their suffering is minimal, and not meaningless. I know the ethics of this field won't necessarily always match with my own, and that's okay. But I don't think there's a field of vet med that doesn't involve some ethical quandaries. Even general practitioners will have pregnant spays, clients that can't pay, convenience euthanasia... The fact that I can't do everything and that some times, there is suffering in lab animal medicine, isn't an excuse to not do anything. I can do something.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
A departure
Yeah, I've been on hiatus. For a while. Sue me. (Or don't. I have no money. I'd have to suddenly have a lot of money just to make up to the level of "broke.")
I'm a member of SDN - the Student Doctor Network. And we're sort of having a blog challenge right now. Someone picks a topic, and we all blog about it. Today's topic: "If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go? What would you do while there (activities, attractions, food, etc)?"
For me, I don't even have to think about this. It's a reflex at this point. Japan. Sure, there's lots of other places I want to see - the UK, Boston, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia... But at the top of the list, it's always been Japan. Some background: around the age of 11, I fell head over heels in love with anime and manga. Which led me to learn more about the culture, and the subcultures. The karyukai, lolita fashion, the history, the food, the art... I collect kimono and I wear them (if you've ever heard that kimono are so complicated that you need someone to dress you, they're either lying and have never tried or they're talking about the really elaborate versions worn by geisha and maiko or worn by nobels in the past).
If there was no time limit, and an unlimited bank account, I'd probably need a month to cover everything. I'd go north to Hokkaido and soak in onsen (hot springs).
I'd climb Mount Fuji. I'd travel to Tokyo and hang out in little hole in the wall sushi bars, and stuff myself on sashimi and miso. I'd go to Akiharbara and comb through manga shops and feed my inner otaku. I'd spend way too much money in Baby the Stars Shine Bright. I'd visit Ueno Park, maybe in spring as the sakura are blooming.
After that it would be further south to Kyoto. I'd browse the old streets, hoping for a glimpse of my favourite geiko, Fukunao. Then I'd try to walk in her footsteps with a henshin make over; again, if time and money were no object, I'd be dressed as a maiko, then a geiko and finally, in the gigantic hair and kimono of a tayuu.
My final stop would be south to Okinawa to hang out on some beaches and hear some music, with a quick trip to the aquarium there. I've always wanted to see a whale shark up close.
I'm a member of SDN - the Student Doctor Network. And we're sort of having a blog challenge right now. Someone picks a topic, and we all blog about it. Today's topic: "If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go? What would you do while there (activities, attractions, food, etc)?"
For me, I don't even have to think about this. It's a reflex at this point. Japan. Sure, there's lots of other places I want to see - the UK, Boston, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia... But at the top of the list, it's always been Japan. Some background: around the age of 11, I fell head over heels in love with anime and manga. Which led me to learn more about the culture, and the subcultures. The karyukai, lolita fashion, the history, the food, the art... I collect kimono and I wear them (if you've ever heard that kimono are so complicated that you need someone to dress you, they're either lying and have never tried or they're talking about the really elaborate versions worn by geisha and maiko or worn by nobels in the past).
If there was no time limit, and an unlimited bank account, I'd probably need a month to cover everything. I'd go north to Hokkaido and soak in onsen (hot springs).
I'd climb Mount Fuji. I'd travel to Tokyo and hang out in little hole in the wall sushi bars, and stuff myself on sashimi and miso. I'd go to Akiharbara and comb through manga shops and feed my inner otaku. I'd spend way too much money in Baby the Stars Shine Bright. I'd visit Ueno Park, maybe in spring as the sakura are blooming.
After that it would be further south to Kyoto. I'd browse the old streets, hoping for a glimpse of my favourite geiko, Fukunao. Then I'd try to walk in her footsteps with a henshin make over; again, if time and money were no object, I'd be dressed as a maiko, then a geiko and finally, in the gigantic hair and kimono of a tayuu.
My final stop would be south to Okinawa to hang out on some beaches and hear some music, with a quick trip to the aquarium there. I've always wanted to see a whale shark up close.
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