I read it when I was a kid, and the one thing that really stood out for me was the inanity of the administration, with its penchant for rules (one of which is the inspiration for the book’s title).

As I start this semester, I can’t help but be reminded of that book. And that is not a good thing.

First, there was the memo from the dean that listed the twelve or so Webster’s definitions of the word “mandatory.” He was reminding us that some of our labs have mandatory attendance policies, and, lest we’d forgotten the meaning of the word mandatory, he had provided some definitions for us. I’m not sure whether he’d intended for that to be an amusing way to get his point across, but it came across as “Up-the-Down-Staircasey” for most of us. As in, a collective rolling of the eyes.

Next there is the professor who is very fond of minutiae and rules. Here is where to put your name. Here is the two-page explanation for an exam that is all of ten questions. Please do not adjust the thermostat. Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their full upright and locked position. We think this person sneaks in and turns off our lava lamp every time we go to class.

Then there is the professor who, when asked a simple logistical question, responds with a lengthy explanation as to why they are the inappropriate person to ask, and how, in the future, all questions of a logistical nature should be directed toward the course coordinator. It would have been simpler and faster just to answer the initial question.

There is also the professor who, when it is brought up that many in the class are confused or befuddled, responds with, “I have been teaching this class for XX years,” or “They should know that by now.” Oh, so helpful.

Now, all this is not to say that I don’t generally really like my professors, or my classes. I do. But one of the things that worried me about returning to school (reference this post) was being treated like an underling.

During my two years of prerequisites, most of my professors were fantastic. They treated me as a peer, but also as a student. It wasn’t a difficult balance; it was just professional courtesy.

Oddly, I can’t say the same for vet school thus far. I’ve run across a lot of “I am the teacher and this is how we do things” mentality, rather than an atmosphere of “Hey, we’re in this together; how can we do things better?”

On good days, it just makes me laugh to see behavior that would never fly in a corporate environment. On bad days, it makes me grumpy.

Last week was mostly bad days. *sigh*

Perhaps I need to write this on the blackboard 100 times: I will not go up the down staircase. I will not go up the down staircase…

The pre-veterinary forum at studentdoctor.net is free to join and has a ton of information about applying to vet school. It’s a great place to meet other people who are in the same boat, and to have your questions answered.

I’m happy to try and answer any questions you have, too, but I’m just one perspective.

Instead, I am in freak out mode. I’m not freaking out about starting vet school, though–I’m freaking out about how much crap I have to do between now and then. Vet school is the furthest thing from my mind.

Here’s a sampling of the list:

• get the house re-roofed
• paint a bedroom, a bathroom, and three pieces of furniture
• attempt to finish off four continuing ed classes (not gonna happen, but I can dream)
• schedule 6 different social outings with people I won’t be seeing much the next four years
• design two websites
• design a headstone for my grandmother’s grave
• buy a baby shower gift
• mend three pairs of the other half’s pants that have been languishing for months
• clean the house, before it gathers four years’ worth of dust
• buy cat food
• and so on and so on…

Even if I weren’t working full time, I don’t think I’d be able to finish it all. As it is, well… *sigh*

Where did my summer go? Can’t we postpone this vet school thing another month?

Here are some of the excuses that stood in between me and vet school, and here are the ways I got past these excuses.

1) I’m too old.

I’ll be done with vet school when I’m forty.  My handsome other half will be well into his fifties.  It seems a little silly to be making a career change at this point, plus incurring a lot of debt.  The thing that I found most helpful in getting around the age thing was advice from a woman who’d become a vet in her early forties (and who is now a well-known holistic vet).  She said, “You can be forty and a vet, or you can be plain old forty.”

2) It costs too much, and I have a mortgage to pay.

This was, and is, the most daunting thing about this process.  I still freak out about it sometimes.  So far, after two years of prerequisites/grad school, I still have my house and still manage to feed myself and my cats.  The student loans are enough to cover my basic expenses.  I will graduate with a boatload of debt, but I calculated my life expectancy and amortized the debt over the years I supposedly have left.  It’s definitely worth $3500 a year to me to be a vet.

3) I hated undergrad…why should this be any better?

I hated undergrad because I was clinically depressed most the time, so this really isn’t a fair comparison.  But I also hated it because I had no direction, no goal.  Becoming a vet is a pretty clear goal.  I’ve since found that for me, being a non-trad student is AWESOME.  I am so much more engaged than I ever was during my undergrad years, and now I’m really glad that I’m older than my peers.  I know I will get much more out of vet school than I would have at 25.  My professors are going to hate me, because I’m going to be that student that’s always saying, “But what about…?” 

4) I don’t want to do all those prerequisites…that will take another two years at least!  The clock is ticking!  And I am too old for undergraduate classes!

If you’ve been out of school for any appreciable length of time, easing back in by taking undergrad courses is a good, good thing.  I gained a lot of confidence by working hard and excelling in classes that were challenging, but not overwhelming.  That, and I have learned a ton of things that will be relevant background for my veterinary studies.  Prerequisites are there for a reason, and even though I was annoyed to have to take them, in retrospect I’m glad I did.

5) What if being a vet limits my possibilities too much?  What if I decide I don’t want to be a vet?

Going to vet school does not mean you have to be a veterinarian.  It opens the door for you to work in public health, in pet products, in pet food, in zoos, in research, in management, in education…  Plus, going to vet school puts the word “doctor” in front of your name, which is never, ever going to limit your possibilities.  Unless you want to be a fry cook.

6) But how will I know it’s right for me?  What if I make the wrong choice?  I need a sign!

It would sure be a heck of a lot easier if God came down, knocked on the door, and told you to go back to school so that you could save the lives of thousands of animals and have a meaningful and purposeful life.  We all want to wake up one morning and know, with certainty, what to do with our lives.

In reality, deciding to quit one’s steady job to go back to school, incur a boatload of debt, and become a vet is not the kind of decision one makes overnight.  It is a long, long process of examining yourself, your priorities, and your life.

For me, it took about five years to get from having a nagging feeling that I ought to be doing something different with my life to the point where I actually applied to go back to school.  When I finally applied to school, I wasn’t 100% sure that’s what I wanted.  But I was 92.3% sure.

If you are considering veterinary medicine as a career, the #1 piece of advice I have for you is to get as much veterinary experience as you possibly can.  Volunteer at a vet clinic, a shelter, a farm, anything.  Get your hands dirty.  Work with animals as much as possible, and work with practicing vets as much as possible.  Once I actually started working for a vet, my mental career anguish went away pretty quickly.  Once I had a clear vision of myself as a vet, a little organic chemistry wasn’t going to stand in my way. 

Also, ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”  Chances are, you are considering vet school because you don’t like where you are now.  Say you quit your current job, go back to school for a year, and decide you don’t like it.  What’s the worst that could happen?  You end up with a year’s worth of school debt and get another job, right?  At least you got out of that job you hated!  And who knows what you’ll discover along the way.

We all want the path to be clear before we are willing to set out on the path.  We want to know we are headed in the right direction.  But you will never be headed in the right direction if you aren’t moving at all…

In summary, it’s hard, yes.  But it is easier than you think.  I leave you with bumper sticker wisdom: No excuses, just choices.

The fictional Zeke

This post is for all you potential non-traditional vet students out there, those of you who are NOT able to say, “I’ve known since I was a little tyke that I wanted to be a veterinarian. The first time I laid eyes on my puppy Zeke, who was to be my friend and companion for the next 14 years, I just knew.” Or something like that. That definitely isn’t me!

Truth be told, by the time I graduated high school I hadn’t given much thought to what I wanted to be when I grew up, since all that time I’d been assuming I would grow up to be a housewife with 1.6 children. What can I say? It was the Bible Belt in the 80s.

I suddenly found myself zipping through potential career ideas – music therapist! no, wait – doctor! no, um – geologist! how ’bout teacher? um…

I graduated with a geology degree, and ended up teaching high school for a bit while I worked for the National Park Service as a park ranger during the summer. I gave nature walks and talks, campfire programs, and the like. The park ranger gig was a good one for me, and when the chance to work year-round as a park ranger came, I took it.

Bummer is that working full time for the government is a lot less fun than working as a “seasonal.” There’s way more paperwork and way less interaction with the public. The more I started dealing with bureaucratic nonsense, the more I started to think, “How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house…”

About that time a computer job opened up in the park where I was working. It paid almost twice as much money, and, since I was desperate for a change, I signed up. (I have a programming background, and one of the courses I taught in high school was computer science, so it wasn’t a total leap.)

Computers were pretty good to me. I liked the problem solving aspect a lot. After 9/11, though, computers in the government got to be way less fun, and I was dealing with even more bureaucratic nonsense.  I had to make my escape.

Now, I realize that in almost every job out there, people have to deal with bureaucratic nonsense. So it wasn’t the bureaucratic nonsense alone that made me look for a different path, it was that coupled with the fact that I had a nagging feeling I wasn’t doing what I was meant to do. But I didn’t know what I was meant to do, so I just kept doing what I was doing.

Somewhere in there I turned 30, and that was a bit of a freak-out point. The age didn’t bother me, but the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and the clock was ticking, DID bother me. I spent my 30th birthday at a hot springs/spa writing down all the things I enjoyed and all the careers I could possibly see myself doing.  I’m not sure veterinarian was even on the list.  It was a good exercise, though, in that it really got me thinking about what makes me tick, and what makes me happy.  I definitely had an idea that working with animals in some capacity would be really fabulous.

I quit the Park Service gig and spent a year being miserable at the local paper, a year of misery which had a wonderful upside: I was so miserable that I jumped at the chance to work for my local vet, even though the salary was minuscule compared to what I’d made working for the Park Service.  I don’t think I could ever have made the jump straight from one to the other, but the year of misery in between helped bridge the gap.

Working at the vet was, and is, fantastic.  Still, it took me about a year there before I was convinced that I wanted to take the plunge.  There’s just so much mental chatter that convinces one NOT to go and do something silly like go back to school, particularly when one has a mortgage and all, but over the course of that year, I had mostly come to terms with all my excuses.

Now that I’m back in school and loving it, I wonder why I didn’t do it sooner!

In our next episode, we examine those excuses…

Meanwhile, your homework assignment is to peruse any of the following fab books that helped me focus my intentions:

What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson–It probably won’t guide you much in answering this question for yourself, but it does contain a lot of inspiring stories of people who’ve changed it up successfully.

I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher–Full of helpful exercises to aid you in defining what makes you tick.  She has several titles in this vein.

Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson–how to tell that negative voice in your head what’s what.

Go to the library and start reading career and self-help books.  You don’t need to read them cover to cover, just take what you need and go…

The veterinarian looked up from examining my cat. “This is the worst case of EGC I have ever seen,” she said. The look of worry that crossed her face next clearly said, “and I have no idea how to treat it.”

I would never have suspected that those words would change my life.

Little cat Mandu’s health had always been fine—I fed her a premium diet, took her in for regular checkups—until one day about six years ago when she started showing signs of allergies. Although I sought treatment throughout, her condition had gradually deteriorated into this, the worst case of EGC my vet had ever seen.

“She may need steroid injections for the rest of her life,” the vet said. “Maybe as often as once a month.”

I remember thinking that my vet was out of her mind. I don’t object to steroids, but…once a month? Surely, I thought, there had to be a better way.

It was the first time I had ever considered the idea of alternative therapies for pets, which is surprising, considering my background. My mother is Chinese, and Oriental medicine is as familiar to me as Tylenol. Complementary medicine had always been a part of my life, so why not my pet’s?

I began reading up on my cat’s condition and the conventional methods for treating it. Meanwhile, I explored other options, such as acupuncture and herbs.

My casual investigation soon began to frustrate me, because the more I learned about EGC, the less, I realized, anyone really knew about the etiology of the condition. I also found that, despite the large numbers of people looking for alternative therapies for their pets, there was little documentation about such things. While I’m an advocate for supplementing conventional medicine with alternative remedies, I prefer these remedies to be evidence based, rather than anecdotal.

Desperate to help my kitty, I began reading any and everything I could find about EGC, pet allergies, and complementary medicine for pets. My causal interest in the subject soon grew into fascination, and the more I read, the more I began to wonder about other animal diseases and treatments.

At the time, I was working as a computer administrator at Fabulous National Park, doing my part to save the planet by keeping the Park Service’s computers humming along. While I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of working with computers, and the methodical problem solving that entailed, computers left a little to be desired in the way of personal satisfaction—they don’t often purr, or plant slobbery kisses on your forehead, for example. The idea of working with animals had real appeal.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to learn acupuncture for pets?” I asked my mom on the phone one day. I looked into classes, and soon realized they were all restricted to veterinarians. Well, I wasn’t a vet, and couldn’t imagine becoming one at this age. Oh well.

And then a funny thing happened. My local vet posted a job opening, and I jumped at the chance. Part of me thought I was insane to give up my comfortable job, but part of me had a hunch….

It didn’t take long before I was hooked, and I became enchanted with the idea of veterinary medicine as a career. I loved the problem-solving aspect of it. I loved the idea of working with animals and their owners. I loved the variety—cats, lizards, horses, dentistry, and surgery—all in one day!

Despite my growing fascination, I tried everything to convince myself that I should NOT go to vet school. “You’re too old,” I would tell myself. “You have a mortgage. You hated your undergrad years. How will you pay for it?”

And Mandu? By then, four vets on two continents had told me she had the worst case of EGC they had ever seen. The fourth vet, though, was well versed in both traditional and alternative therapies. Under his care, and through the use of well-studied alternative remedies, Mandu’s health gradually improved.

I wanted to learn everything the fourth vet knew, and more. I wanted to help people like me, and I wanted to research new methods for treating stubborn illnesses. Veterinary medicine was no longer a casual interest. It was a purpose, a path, a mission. More than a mere job, veterinary medicine was something to which I could devote my life.

My excuses gradually melted away, and I soon found myself enrolled in prerequisite coursework, relishing the experience and the challenge. I have thoroughly enjoyed life as an adult student, and I look forward to adding a unique perspective to the incoming PVM class.

Even more importantly, though, someday I will look at a client and tell them that their cat has the worst case of EGC I have ever seen. But instead of fear, the look that crosses my face will be one of hope.

Below is the personal statement from my first application.  It’s good, but not great.  I didn’t get admitted with this application, but it was the lack of coursework that did me in more than anything.  I got the idea for this essay when I heard an admissions committee member say that the most memorable essay she’d ever read compared being a veterinarian to climbing a mountain.  See this post for the essay from my second application.

What do a park ranger, computer nerd, veterinarian, and actress have in common?

While it sounds like the start of a joke, it is a question I had to answer for myself before I decided to become a veterinarian. I have been all of those things (save the veterinarian) and more: a teacher, business owner, writer… I have not always wanted to be a vet.

During my late twenties, as thirty began to loom large on the horizon, I thought I should decide what I wanted to do with my life. Because I have many diverse interests, I listed the possibilities one by one, and systematically began to explore and eliminate them.

The process I used is not unlike the process a veterinarian would use when diagnosing an illness: evaluate the signs and symptoms, generate a list of possible causes, and then, through careful testing and observation, eliminate possibilities that do not fit the symptoms. This critical thinking ability is one I honed during my five years as a network administrator at Fabulous National Park. Sick computers can be diagnosed in much the same way one would diagnose a sick pet.

While I enjoyed the analytical thinking it involved, computer work is not something I am passionate about. I crossed one off my list and kept exploring.

Because “actress” was also on the list, I began participating in numerous theater and film productions, and even started a small theater company.

Good actors are able to experience life from another person’s (or animal’s) point of view. In order to translate a character to the stage, actors must be able to empathize fully with the character. Good vets, too, must be able to empathize, not only with their human clients, but also with their voiceless patients, and to consider these feelings during the course of treatment.

Although I loved being onstage, seeing the world through the eyes of my characters, I also learned that acting was not my calling, so I returned to my list.

I had, at this point, already crossed “park ranger” off the list. By the time I was 25, I was a full-time park ranger at Fabulous National Park, a dream job that often takes decades to come by. I have a deep love for nature, and, as a park ranger, I shared that love with others through a variety of interpretive programs.

Love of nature alone is not enough to succeed as a ranger. One must have an intense curiosity and drive to learn all that one can, so that when one is asked, “How do beavers get tularemia?” one has a ready answer. The public views a park ranger as an expert in all things, and that is what a ranger must become to succeed.

But a ranger must also be able to communicate scientific ideas in language that is easy to understand. A ranger is a teacher who can distill a complex subject in ten seconds flat, who can cheerfully answer the same question 100 times in a row, yet seamlessly field the oddball question as well.

Likewise, veterinarians must be excellent communicators; they must be able to explain complex ideas in straightforward language. Good vets must also have a love of nature, one that inspires them to constantly learn more about their field.

I loved being a park ranger, but it is true that they are “paid in sunsets.” I worked my way down my list until I arrived at veterinary medicine, and, when the opportunity to work for a vet arose, I jumped at the chance. It was a big jump–I had a comfortable job and a mortgage to pay–but I landed exactly where I am supposed to be.

As I learned about the profession firsthand, I saw how veterinary medicine incorporated the analytical thinking that I love. I saw how it required a love of learning, a love of nature, and a talent for communication. I saw how it required empathy, and a desire to connect with other people and other beings.

In returning to school to complete my veterinary prerequisites, I have discovered what a joy it is to be an adult student with a strong work ethic. I am finding myself completely engaged in my studies, performing at a level far beyond that of my first college experience.

I am also finding not that I have another career to cross off my list, but that my interest in veterinary medicine continues to grow. I intend to pursue either of two aspects of the field: holistic medicine, because a scientific understanding of alternative treatments is necessary for the growth of the profession, or working with exotics in a preserve environment, using my veterinary knowledge and education skills to promote conservation.

I have come to realize that my past experiences, rather than being diversions which kept me from finding my true path, have instead led me here. They have given me the skills I will need to succeed as a veterinarian. I have finally found the thing that makes my heart say, “YES.”

I know now what a park ranger, computer nerd, veterinarian, and actress have in common, and they are all me.

So, how many veterinarians does it take to change a light bulb?

The sensible thing to do would be to sell my house and move to an apartment near school. But… maybe that’s not so sensible considering:

1) my house, in a tourist town, is a REALLY good investment
2) I love my peaceful little cabin in the woods because
3) I think I would go insane if I lived in a city. Plus
4) my other half lives in the tourist town, and I would like to see him more than once a week.

So, with all those factors in mind, I’ve been looking at living halfway in between. In an ideal world, I would rent my current house and buy a house at the bottom of the canyon I drive each day. I’d be half an hour from school and half an hour from my other half, plus I’d still be in a rural, wooded area.

Last week I found a lovely little house for sale in the canyon–on the sunny side, and near the river–so I went to see the mortgage guy. He didn’t outright laugh at me, because, being a professional, he’s not allowed to. But the cartoon balloon over his head said, “Are you kidding me? *snort snort snort*”

In the days before the recession, it would have been possible to create the ideal housing scenario based on my credit score and assets (though they be small) alone. Nowadays, they want a little thing called income, which is hard to come by if one wants to maintain sanity while being a full-time student.

“How do you pay your mortgage now?” Mortgage Guy asked incredulously.

*sigh* “Never mind…”

Anyone want to invest in a lovely little canyon house and rent it to a poor, but reliable vet student?

Finals are over, grades are in, and now I can relax. Well, I can start working my patooti off to save money for next school year, anyway.

The last month of school was incredibly stressful. I don’t think I’ve ever studied so hard, but it paid off with straight A pluses in upper division science classes. Sorry, CSU vet school, but I just can’t do any better than that… I hope it’s good enough!

I’ll be working a little at the vet clinic this summer, and to fill in the rest of the time, I went and got myself the perfect summer job for a college student–working at a movie theater. It makes me laugh to think about it, because I am twice as old as almost everyone who works there. But I will save a fortune in movie tickets!

I’m very excited about my fall schedule, too. I got all the upper division stuff out of the way this year so that it would be part of my vet school application, even though I had to get prerequisite overrides into every single class to do it. Well, now all I have left to complete my 2nd bachelor’s are freshman and sophomore level biology classes.

I debated a long time whether to keep taking upper division classes or to finish the degree (seeing as the upper division classes will look much better on the application), but I figured any ‘regular’ vet school applicant is going to have the same number of upper division credits as I have now, and what a waste it would be not to finish when I’m so close.

So that means I’m taking the equivalent of Biology 101 next semester. After biochemistry, cell bio, and genetics, I think I’ll be fine. Actually, I think it’ll be a blast.

1) the “old age” aspect of returning to school, and
2) the money aspect of returning to school, and
3) (I lied) the intersection of the two.

For anybody that’s thinking of taking the plunge and who just can’t get over the age thing (it took me about three years to get over it… three years that I could’ve been in school!), I offer you this:

The best piece of advice I got was from someone who was doing exactly what I wanted to do. She went back to school in her late thirties, and she is now a well-known holistic vet. Here’s what she said:

“You can either be forty and a vet, or you can be plain old forty.”

I didn’t have much of a reply to that. I mean, here I was pretending to myself that I was “too old” to go back to school, but the truth is, what else was I going to do with that time? Work in a job I didn’t like and then turn forty and be full of angst wondering what if? Nuh uh.

Then there’s the money thing. By the time it’s all over, I expect to have about $200K in school loans. That’s like buying another house. It’s a big chunk of change in and of itself, but when you’re older, it seems more daunting because you’ll have a lot less time to pay it off, as compared to your twenty-something classmates. Not to mention I won’t have increased my earning potential over my pre-vet status. And, unlike many other graduate degrees, you mostly have to pay for it yourself. Stipends and fellowships? Only if you’re reeeeeeally lucky/brilliant/the dean’s niece/etc.

That’s where the title of this post comes in. Sometimes, when I think about the debt thing, I try to shut it out by (figuratively) putting my fingers in my ears and chanting to myself, “La La La La… I can’t hear you!” Because, ultimately, this whole thing is a leap of faith, and I don’t need the devil on my shoulder nagging me and telling me I am being ridiculous.

The little angel will tell you this: none of us is “too old,” and none of us is “too poor” (I mean, who actually has the $200K to plop down for vet school at any point in their life, young or old?) The reality is, we’re too comfortable, and therefore we’re scared. But rather than admitting that, we tell ourselves nice little euphemisms like, “I’m just too old.”

It’s far better to listen to the little angel on your shoulder, who will have you focus on the positive, and think about how badly you want to be a vet. The little angel will have you recall that in 2007, Nola Ochs became the oldest college graduate at 95 years old. That’s a lot more than forty. The little angel will have you calculate your life expectancy and divide your expected debt by your expected number of years left. Is it worth $3500 per year to me to be a vet? You betcha.

The little angel will tell you:

“As you grow older, you’ll find the only things you regret are the things you didn’t do.” – Zachary Scott

What are you waiting for? It’s not like you’re the only “old” person who wants to go to vet school. You can do it.