Wet Cleanup on Aisle 5

And so it begins.

Not vet school–that isn’t for another two weeks. Nope, I’m talking about the vet school nightmares, those of the naked-in-class-forgot-to-study variety.

Last night I had my first, and hopefully last, of these lovely dreams.

Mine went something like this:

My anatomy lab partner and I went into the lab late one night to work on our dog dissection. For some reason, our dog had been cryogenically frozen while still alive, so when we took her out to dissect her, she started to wake up as she thawed!

Thinking quickly, my lab partner decided to cut her jugular vein, which proceeded to flop around, cartoon-style, like a garden hose on full blast when no one’s holding it. We were both covered in blood. Lovely. But we had a lot to do, so we ignored the blood and worked late into the night.

Lo and behold, our first anatomy exam was the next day. Because I’d been in the lab so late, I didn’t manage to look at the study guide until right before the test. The study guide included an entire year’s worth of material, and I recognized about three words on it. Great.

When I went in to take the test, there were various stations set up, each of which had a note card with a question on it. Instead of writing my answers on my answer sheet, I managed to write all my answers on the cards, for everyone else to see. Really, this dream was not going well.

Fortunately, I was spared further humiliation because I woke up at that point.

Egads. Let’s hope there are no more of these…

Should oughta be, but ain’t

A mere three weeks stand between me and my first day of vet school. I imagine, perhaps incorrectly, that the majority of my classmates are in “I’m so excited for vet school!” mode. That is, thinking about classes, buying new shoes, and generally having vet school on the brain. I should be too, but I’m not.

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.
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New Time Waster!

Just discovered this blog, written by six new grad vets somewhere Down Under.

Just managed to burn through an hour reading old posts.

I laughed, cried, and thought deep thoughts.

Good stuff.

Eulogy

Mr. Bones was a wire-haired Vizsla, with a tuft of golden hair atop his head, expressive green eyes, and a whiskery beard that gave him the look of a wise old man.  He was a bit timid, but it didn’t take him long to warm up to you and when he did, he would dole out tentative little dog kisses with his warm, wet tongue.

He spent his last two days on death row.

Mr. Bones’ only crime was having had one too many staph infections.  When his owner also came down with a life-threatening staph infection, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to jump to the conclusion that Mr. Bones might be the carrier of an horrific strain of bacteria. Read the rest of this entry »

Excuses, excuses

It seems really, really hard to make a massive career change in one’s mid-thirties.  That’s because it is really, really easy to come up with 101 excuses not to change, not because it’s actually hard!  I mean, it’s not like I had to scale Everest or anything, I just had to apply to go back to school.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

So what made you decide to go back to school?

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…
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