Until three years ago, every Thanksgiving dinner I'd ever had was in the same house (ours). My parents are both big cooks, but my dad is the true chef of the family. My parents would start preparing things a week in advance and would wake up really early on Thanksgiving day to get the turkey in the oven. My sister and I would be woken up not long after to help: chopping vegetables, cleaning the house, putting together a fun centerpiece from whatever we could find in the yard...you name it, we did it. My aunt, uncle and grandparents would come over in the early afternoon and we would have an early dinner before settling on the couch to watch football.

When I came up to vet school, I wasn't able to see my family for thanksgiving...I wasn't even given the day off of school. Every thanksgiving up here has been depressing for me as I imagine my family doing all the things they do every year. I'm planning to be home by thanksgiving next year by planning my rotations appropriately.

Speaking of rotations, I've got one scheduled, one likely and am getting my application together for two more. We got our core rotation blocks today, but I'm going to need to reschedule like, all of them, haha. I can't believe that in a year, I'll be taking the NAVLE and already be half-way through fourth year. Crazy how time flies!

This weekend is the last one before finals begin. Part of my brain knows that I should be studying neurology, because holy terrifying, Batman!, but the other part demands that I remain in my fuzzy socks and bathrobe, eat candy, read other blogs, read free stuff from iTunes...anything but study! As it's snowing outside and I feel cozy and warm inside, the second half of my brain is winning out currently.

As a compromise, I decided to do a bit of cleaning (it's amazing how quickly the house returns to chaos...entropy wins again!) and to write another letter of intent for another external rotation. Fortunately, this only required a letter and my resume, so after polishing up the latter and whipping up the former, I sent them off. I had received a positive email from another potential rotation site earlier this week, so I feel as though my ducks are starting to stumble toward something of a row formation. It's pretty scary but also exciting; I can't wait to be done with school and start living a real life. The idea of actually starting to work as a vet and having my own place with my husband and not having to put everything on hold is fantastic, but almost seems too good to be true. It's like an oasis in the desert - I want it to be there, I need it to be there, but when I see it, it seems impossible to reach.

I imagine time will just continue to slip by and before I know it, I'll be there. One foot in front of the other.

I realized today that I have about 18 months left of vet school. This simultaneously feels like forever and the blink of an eye. How long did four years seem when I had first moved up here, had no friends and was missing my loved ones and everything wonderful about the good ol' USA? It seemed like a desert stretching out before me - a desert devoid of Chipotle and cheap milk and gas pumps that lock into place. I think I've adapted pretty well to Canadian living overall, but there is nothing like going home. Heading home for a break feels like a weight is lifted off of my chest. I get to the point where I feel as though I literally cannot wait another second to hit the road. Now that finals are fast approaching, my mind is turned toward home like a racehorse peeling around that last turn: no pulling it up, no slowing it down, just go go go. It's all I can do to stay on the horse these last few weeks; it's certainly an exercise in mental fortitude!

Anyway, of the remaining 18 months, 12 of those are fourth year rotations. I'm fortunate in that I know what I want to do with myself when I graduate (while I have come to understand that life will do as it pleases, I'm still a big planner) so choosing which rotations isn't very difficult. It seems the hardest parts are a) deciding when to schedule what and b) preparing my application for my externals.

I began working toward vet school in earnest my sophomore year in high school. I had heard from a family friend that experience was an important thing for applications, so I rode around with an equine ambulatory vet for the summer. From that point on, I was focused on making myself a good applicant. I screwed up in the grades category, but I busted my butt to get experience, do well on the GRE, get letters of recommendation and be involved in the community. It paid off in the end - here I sit, a third year vet student. Beginning of first year, professors and administration kept telling us, "Grades don't matter anymore! Relax, you're in!" And I let myself believe that in first year. But that first summer, I was rejected from a research program at NIH - experience I wanted because I wanted to do lab animal - and it hit me like a ton of bricks: it's still a competition. You will always have to fight someone else for what you want in this world, and the better you can make yourself, the better chance you have of being the winner of that fight. External rotations (at least the ones that I want) require an application - a resume, a cover letter, transcripts, letters of recommendation. It's almost like vet school all over again, and I let myself feel discouraged. I'm tired of having to structure my life around impressing other people. Yeah, I want to be good at what I do, but I want to do it for myself and for my family, not some panel of people who will decide whether I'm good enough to work at their facility for a few weeks. (As an aside: I get it, I really do. But it still frustrates me.)

So I put off writing those cover letters. Saturday, I sat down and I made myself write my first one, for the Baltimore Aquarium back home. And you know what? It felt good to get it done, because I knew I was one step closer to my goal and to my freedom from school. In the end, all of this work that seems like it's for other people is really for me. Those people will come and go - some may reject my application for an externship or a residency or whatever - but my career will always be mine. And I'm going to make it good from the start.

I woke up this morning and almost instantly, I was overwhelmed with the need to think about Christmas. Gift brainstorming, craft ideas, menu planning, the smells of my family's house and the cozy feeling of being warm inside wrapping or cooking while the world outside smells like snow. The holiday bug snuck up and bit me badly (probably from doing some crafting with friends for a fundraiser).

Christmas is my favorite holiday, but not because I get stuff. It's because I get to give people stuff that I think they'd like, I get to wrap that stuff in pretty wrapping paper, I get to decorate the house and cook delicious food with my dad and hang out with my family. I love the decorations and the music and the feeling that descends just after (American) Thanksgiving. Now that I'm married, I've told Danny that we will have to think up some good holiday traditions for our family (he rolled his eyes but he's secretly excited, I'm sure of it ;) This year I was thinking of making our own Christmas cards, or maybe making a couple of ornaments to pass out to friends and family. So of course I went to Pinterest, where so many astoundingly craft people post their glorious creations and insinuate that you, too, can make this exquisite decoration or ornament or pie or whatever. (There should be a website dedicated to all of the Pinterest fails that must be born every day.) I'm not the most creative crafter, but I've found that most of the time I can follow a simple, step-by-step (hello, INTJ personality shining through) tutorial. So this year I'm going to attempt a Christmas ornament wreath that I found here. Looks simple enough, right? We'll see...

Edit: http://www.pinterestfail.com/ Bahahaha.

Just when midterms end and a wonderful break comes up, I fall off the face of the blogosphere (I've always wanted to use that word.) Oops.

Since last updating:

Midterm grades were given back. I'm doing better than ever before, despite my even further condensed study time. I have mixed feelings about this (mostly feeling guilty that so little work nets such positive results while some classmates struggle) but overall, I'm not going to complain. Hopefully I can make the Dean's List again next year! Finals are in just two weeks, though, and I know the time between then and now is going to absolutely fly by. But that's good in a way - I''ll be that much closer to heading home for three weeks of break.

Veteran's Day/Remembrance Day came and I met up with my husband in Portland, Maine. We've met up there many times before (mostly because it's the half-way point between us) and always have a nice time. This visit was just as nice but we did a lot less - probably because I was ready to just watch football and vegetate after weeks of midterms. I did manage to do a bit of Christmas shopping while there, which should ease the rush when I get home.

Surgery continues to be my least favorite class, although I think we've all pretty much hit our stride. Last week we spayed a pregnant dog (six puppies) and this week spayed a 70lb Shepherd mix that wanted nothing to do with being handled. I'm so thankful we're essentially done with her - whew. I cannot wait until the class is over next week, even if it is our first final exam on (American) Thanksgiving. I can't decide if I want to do traditional dinner, but the majority of people I spend time with most frequently are Canadian and I don't know if they'd want to come. I don't even know that I'll have the energy to cook, anyway!

I've been relaxing as much as possible this week, but I really, really need to start getting materials together for my external rotations. I can't believe the NAVLE (North American Veterinary Licensing Exam) is only a year away! I can't believe that applying for residencies is less than a year away! I'm excited but nervous - I think if I can nail down these externships, I'll feel a lot better.

This morning was the last (big) hurdle of the semester for me aside from finals - discharging my second and final surgery patient. No more alarms going off in the dark, no more driving in to school with no one else on the road, no more wrangling dogs to get temperatures and heart rates when all I really want to do is sleep. It also means no more gorgeous PEI sunrises or wildlife sightings (Saturday morning I peeked out the window to see if it was raining and saw a skunk about a foot off the porch in my front yard! So thankful I didn't whip the door open and head on my merry way!) but I think I'll manage.

Both of my surgeries were successful and both dogs healed well. My suturing skills sky-rocketed almost immediately - probably because really live tissues are a lot easier to handle/suture than dead or fake stuff - and I felt a lot more confident in my own abilities the second time around. I got pretty nice reviews from the supervising surgeons (although I'm pretty sure they were relatively generic comments that probably most people got). There are still three more live labs left in the semester (one of which I'm anesthetist for, requiring another early morning and responsibility for a patient life) so I can't relax just yet, but I feel like the hardest part of the class is now over. Whew.

Our last midterm (#13, I believe - food animal) is tomorrow and then two glorious weeks of no exams and relatively little committment. I'm headed to Portland for the long weekend (Veteran's/Remebrance Day) to meet up with Danny, which should put me in a perfect mindset to finish out the semester strong. We have four weeks of classes left and two weeks of finals and then I can head home for three weeks of what can only be a wonderfully relieving Christmas break. Six weeks seems like a decent chunk of time, but with the way seems to get away from me up here, it won't seem like much.

So I survived one of the worst weeks of the semester on my schedule, which calls for a celebratory post.

I decided to think of this week like a drawn-out hurdles race. There were four major hurdles to overcome: radiology final exam on Monday, drawing blood on our surgery patient on Tuesday, equine exam Wednesday and surgery on Thursday. Identifying the big obstacles instead of focusing on every little detail that might have been stressful was a helpful strategy.

The exams both went really well. The surgery dog was/is a challenge.

There are probably confidentiality rules in place that say I shouldn't give out too much detail, but suffice to say he's a young, large, hyperactive, anxious and fearful beast. He has been next to impossible to restrain without him freaking out (four people holding him and still no rectal temperature possible!), a combination of fear and just not used to it (he came in as a stray). He has this cagey look about him that immediate set off my distrusting antennae. Anyway, I successfully castrated him yesterday with minimal issues and he has been (knock on wood) recovering well.

As a side note, I think the reason I never wanted to write much about my spay (or post on Facebook like my fellow surgeon classmates have) is that I'm afraid to jinx their recovery. Yeah, they're through the hard part (surgery and anesthesia), but there are still complications that can arise - their incision site can bleed or get infected or be chewed on, they can chew their cone into pieces, etc. Until I discharge that dog, I'm going to worry about him in some form or another.

I came in to check on him this morning and he has been a lot more friendly with me than before - he still has his slightly sketchy moments but overall he is improved. It's going to be a long weekend going in to SOAP him every morning by 8:30am but discharging him and one last midterm exam are the last two things in the way of two weeks of glorious, blissful, unimaginable freedom before finals start. Another bit of happy news is that he is already spoken for by one of the shelter volunteers, so I know he'll be going to a good home when he's done with his ordeal here :)