We just finished another midterm (two more to go and then more block finals), it's a sunny Friday afternoon, I had a delicious lunch and I'm ready to do nothing productive whatsoever :) Time for a BTOW post!

This week's topic: Your favorite thing about vet school.

I think I have two favorite things about vet school. First (and most importantly), I have an amazing group of classmates and friends. It sounds cheesy, but the helpful, supportive, sharing, caring, funny, commiserating people in the class of 2015 have made this wild ride so much easier than it could have been. We have our moments of drama, of course, but by and large we all get along and we go beyond that to sharing study guides, posting helpful resources, passing around information gained from upper years or professors, etc. I can't imagine having to slog through school with a toxic group of individuals surrounding me every day.

On top of that, my close friends in the class make coming to school every day worth it. They all have a wonderful sense of humor (or maybe I'm just too easily amused...?), they are kind to me, they are there when I need to vent and they stay up until the wee hours of the morning studying with me. I can't imagine finishing school and not getting to see them every day.

My second favorite thing about vet school is that people think you know what you're doing, and allow you to do cool stuff! We have tons of wet lab opportunities through various clubs (feral cat surgeries, sheep hoof trimming), we have live animal labs where we get to do physical exams on client-owned animals, etc! I love actually getting that hands on experience.

This week's topic: 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?

My biggest self-doubt came early in my junior year of college. First semester of freshman year, I was on the Dean's List (just made it, but I wasn't complaining). With that confidence under my belt, I assumed I could continue along as I always had and so I did. After a couple more semesters (with increasingly poorer grades and a couple of Ws thrown in for good measure that I wasn't fully aware of), I started reserach applying to vet school - my ever-present goal. I looked at requirements at many different schools and finally got around to checking my cumulative GPA.

I can't even describe the bottom-dropping-out feeling I got. My GPA was awful. I think it was something like a 2.6 when I checked the first time. Needless to say, I panicked. Every class seemed insurmountable, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life now that vet med seemed a very remote possibility and I felt immense guilt for frittering away my undergraduate education. I had already begun working at the lab animal place and, thoroughly in love with the field, I decided that I would forget the vet school dream and get my technician certifications (ALAT, LAT, LATG).

Everyone I talked to encouraged me not to give up. My co-workers at the lab animal place were the most actively supportive (although my dad gave me a pretty good pep talk too about not being afraid of a subject like chemistry...) and to this day, I do not know what I would've done without their support, encouragement and love. They believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. It gave me just enough boost to care, and I poured myself into studying. When I saw my supervisor over this past winter break, and she told me just how damn proud she is of me and how she had always wanted to be a vet but thought she was too stupid and that she was living her dreams through my accomplishments...wow. I owe those people everything, and it motivates me to do well in school, even when courses are tough and schedules are grueling.

Not to sound like a cheeseball, but don't give up. The road ahead may be long and difficult, but if you want it, you will get it.

Nothing like a snow day to make you feel introspective. Like I haven't been brooding over my life and the future enough lately, right? But I read other people's blogs (especially those non-vet ones) and I can't help but feel this pull of the "real world." There is so, so much that I want to do with my life - not even big, momentous, news-worthy things - and I continue to be stuck in the perpetual grind of school. I'll be 27 when I graduate and will finally get to rejoin the land of normal people. (Nevermind that I feel like I can't really be normal anymore.) All of my conversations won't revolve around school. I won't have to stay up late cramming for exam after exam (it'll only be the one big exam - gulp). My value and sense of self-worth won't depend on the numeric value determined by how many questions I can answer correctly. I won't have to be so damn far away from my husband. I won't have to put my own personal goals aside because there are more important things to focus on.

When I get out, I have promised myself to do three things:

1. Run. I miss the utter peace I find when I'm pushing myself through the woods with no one around, sweating and gasping into the silence. I miss the ache of my muscles and the unbeatable sense of accomplishment when I finally stagger to a stop. I don't necessarily have any distance or speed goals in mind just yet, but I want to run regularly in the woods.

2. Volunteer. I don't even care what I do! I want to be able to know that I've made a difference to someone - human or animal, it doesn't matter. Not even for my own peace of mind, but because I've been so damn fortunate in my life and I owe it to the universe to give back. I feel good putting my donation in the food bank bin at the grocery store every week - think how good it would feel to pick up a park or walk some shelter dogs or hang out with some old lonely people. Even the small things matter.

3. Take up photography. I love to look at pictures, especially of nature, and I would love to be able to capture some of that beauty and do it well. I don't even know what I'd do with all of the pictures, but I would really love to learn.

I have a renal exam tomorrow (provided there is school tomorrow...forecast isn't looking too good on that front) that I should review for again. Happy trails, folks. Keep dreaming.

As promised, a quick update about my "spring break"! I had a busy start to the week with a lab animal club meeting with our club advisor on Monday, an animal care committee tour on Tuesday and a fish health final exam on Wednesday morning. I'm excited about the club because we got some good wet lab ideas hashed out and we're going to start the process of applying for ASLAP student chapter membership! It would be so awesome to have the club be recognized that way. The ACC did a tour of multiple animal use facilities looking for things that didn't align with the Canadian Council on Animal Care standards for animal use; these tours are done by the ACC twice per year and they submit recommendations for improving animal facilities as needed. I can't really share more about it as it's a confidential thing but it was really interesting to get to see the facilities in more depth and ask the university vet a bunch of questions. Then we had our fish health exam Wednesday morning which I felt woefully underprepared for but turned out to be OK.

After that I hit the road for Portland! I was exhausted but made it to the hotel around 4pm. Danny's flight wasn't due until later that evening so I had some Chipotle (always my first stop there), read my book and took a bubble bath. We were worried that Danny wouldn't make it in that night because DC was due for a whopper of a snowstorm but he squeaked out just in time even though his flight was delayed. Whew.

Having been to Portland numerous times already, we'd already visited a lot of the places (still open, that is - like PEI, much is closed up over the off-season) and were content to watch the Olympics and visit nearby stores like Cabellas (where we did some target practice) and the L.L Bean headquarters (where I swooned over flannel sheets). Portland got its own share of heavy snow but fortunately their plow guys are amazing and we didn't have much trouble with it. We had dinner out on Sunday night as a make-up for Valentine's Day (we aren't really big into that kind of stuff) but neither of us was very hungry with thoughts of having to part ways again the next day.

I dropped Danny off at the airport early on Monday morning and headed back. The roads weren't bad until I hit New Brunswick and when I finally made it to PEI around 2pm it was a mess (not helped by the heavy snow coming down!) I made it to my place safely and curled up to read and watch the Olympics. It's kind of bizzare to watch them in another country, though - they interview the Canadian athletes and keep track of the Canadians in the standings! Which makes total sense of course, but after all this time watching summer and winter Olympics are home...it's just strange :) I started to feel crummy last night (really tired, achey, stuffy, etc) and I'm not looking forward to studying for our renal midterm exam tomorrow morning. But there is snow in the forecast so maybe we'll get a bit more time to study. Fingers crossed!

While I have plenty to write about on recent happenings, I wanted to do the Blog Topic of the Week first :)

This week's prompt: what career path/specialty are you pursuing, and how did you become interested in it?

If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you could probably write this post for me. In fact, you're probably scrambling to get away right this second - anything to avoid listening (reading?) to me ramble on about lab animal medicine again. But on the off chance you haven't read this blog, please, come in and listen to me ramble out lab animal medicine ;)

Like most pre-vet and vet students (and probably most veterinarians), I wanted to be a vet from the time I was old enough to recognize animals. When you're five (or three, or eighteen months, or just out of the womb as I'm sure some aspiring vets were when they came to love animals...), you don't really understand what being a vet means, you just understand that you get to touch animals and holy crap, there could be no better job. I started riding when I was about the same age, so for a long time, I wanted to be an equine vet. After spending a summer shadowing an equine ambulatory vet (preg check, lameness, preg check, lameness, lameness, pre-purchase exam!, preg check, etc. ad nauseum) I realized that maybe it wasn't as great as it seemed. But I soldiered on and spent time with a small animal vet which was marginally more exciting. Then I worked with dairy calves and pigs in our school's agriculture program and figured I'd be a food animal vet. When I got a job as an animal care technician at my undergrad's reserach facilities, it was just to get experience for my vet school application. And then I fell in love.

Multiple species to work with (exotics, large animals, companion animals, wildlife), new science going on every day, contributing to improvements in human and animal health, advocating for the health and welfare of the animals...the list of appeals is huge for me. I don't think I've ever looked back, and every time I do something lab animal related (class, ACC meeting, etc) I just fall more in love with it. I think I'm like that clingy girlfriend that never shuts up about her boyfriend and everyone gets tired of her real quick :)

Anyway, that's my answer. I'll be sure to post about my "spring break" but first, I need to study for an exam on Wednesday...

Today was "Match Day" for the fourth year veterinary students (a computer program that matches candidates with internship and residency programs in their specialty of choice) and I couldn't help but think about one year from now when it will be my own Match Day. There is so much between now and then but I'm already exceedingly familiar with just how quickly time passes. I need to just keep reminding myself to take it one day at a time and make myself the best possible candidate.

Life has been better - I started going to the gym to walk/run at the track; probably the only time I'll ever say that feeling as though I've been beaten with a two by four is a good feeling. It's helped me sleep a bit better and feel more positive about myself in general. Still craving those outdoor trails, but there's not much I can do about it now, so I'll just continue on the track and wait longingly for spring. I also had a productive weekend which always makes me feel good about myself. It's the little things in life.

Break starts Wednesday, but I have a lot to get accomplished between now and then: studying, putting away all that laundry, cleaning my house, getting Fergus an auto-feeder for when I'm gone, taking one last exam and an animal care committee tour. One foot in front of the other, just keep swimming, light at the end of the tunnel, etc, etc....

Over at SDN, we're doing a blog topic of the week thing. This week's topic is "If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go? What would you do while there (activities, attractions, food, etc)?"

Seeing as we just got a couple of inches of snow dumped on us last night, the wind is swirling and the temperature is a miserable 9F, I know without a doubt I'd choose somewhere warm. However, I've never really been much of a beach person; I don't mind spending a couple of hours at the beach walking the shoreline, but I don't like to go to the beach just to go. I'm pale and burn easily and I don't really want skin cancer, so that leaves out sun-tanning. All kinds of scary creatures live in water that you can't see the bottom of, so I'm not a big ocean swimmer. And, frankly, I get hot and bored and cranky after a little while.

When I choose a vacation place normally, I tend to stick to places in the US - it's easy to fly or drive to, I don't have to worry about a different language and currency and I don't have to sit for long hours on a plane. But because this is (presumably) an all-expenses paid trip, I think I'd have to branch out a bit and make the ocean leap. So I'm going to pick Spain as my destination of choice.

Now: what to do?

One of my favoritest things ever is hiking, so I did a quick Google search of "hiking in Spain" and got back some amazing images! I would absolutely make the time to do a ton of hiking.

Next, I would want to find an Andalusian Horse breeding farm and go check out some stunning horses. Since this is fantasy world and all, I'd probably be allowed to ride the fanciest ones and then be offered a breeding to their prized stallion worth majillions of dollars.

After that, I would hit the historic sites. Cathedrals, abandonded ghost towns, cities, you name it.

With all of this touristy stuff behind me, I imagine I'd be feeling quite famished. So I'd go out and eat some delicious Spanish cuisine.

Exhausted from running all around the country, I'd retire back to my hotel/villa/mansion and probably write a blog post about it all. And then, just maybe, I will go to the beach. They don't seem all that bad...

I'm not good about talking about feelings and stuff, so suffice to say I've been feeling as though I'm on a rollercoaster of emotion/feeling lately (I'm also clearly not very inventive with the metaphors). Certain parts of the day I feel borderline depressed: I don't want to do anything, I don't want to talk to anyone and my mental energy seems glued to my imperfections. I want to crawl into bed and read and sleep and let the time pass. Other times I feel positive and am able to focus on the good changes I've made recently. Throw in the whole rotations deal (with two of mine falling through recently) and missing my husband and my family and wanting the companionship of another dog but unable to reconcile that desire with the need to still remember Ella and it's just gobbledegook.

I look at the year ahead of me (a month already gone) and it's exciting: I will be done forever (fingers crossed!) with sitting in a lecture hall all day watching Powerpoint presentations and listening to people talk at me. I'll start in on rotations - get to go home and see family, get to do hands-on stuff (which helps me learn more than any lecture-test and cram-regurgitate-forget cycle can ever hope to do). I'll take my North American Veterinary Licensing Exam (NAVLE) and hopefully pass. And I'll be applying to residencies. Everything seems to close at hand, causing me to stress and fret about it all coming together properly, and then it all seems so far away, so that I feel like I'm going to scream if I have to get up and sit in a classroom again and again and again.

I look at the people who are in first year and the people who are interviewing for vet school and I think about how they must be feeling and how I felt at that time. With such a poor cumulative GPA (2.98), I was begging for an interview - somewhere, anywhere! And when my only one was in Canada I didn't care because someone was giving me a chance. And when I got it, I was terrified of going to another country so far from home and all that it entailed but I took it because this was what I wanted. Most of first year was spent adjusting, feeling miserable but forcing myself out there so that I wouldn't be quite so miserable. And it paid off, because I have some amazing friends.

But now, closing in on the end of third year, I'm so ready to be done. I'm ready to emerge from the chrysallis that is my veterinary training and become the beautiful butterfly/veterinarian. I want to come home to my husband every night instead of having to see him over a shitty Facetime connection. I want to go to my parents' house for dinner or play with my sister's dog. I don't want holidays to be such a big ordeal because of all the travel and because I know it's only a matter of time before I have to "go back". If I never see that stretch of 95 ever again in my life, I won't miss it.

I don't think it's really burn-out, either. I don't feel like studying, of course, but I never feel like studying. After first year I became an expert crammer and it's worked swimmingly for me. I'll probably retain 1% of everything they've thrown at us, but that's what rotations are for, right? Remembering and cementing the important stuff. So even though I'm excited for the break next week, I don't know how much it will really help because I know I'll have to come back.

All of this sounds so pathetic and sad reading it back over. I try to stick to the positives as much as possible - I went for a run with a friend at the gym last night, and it was pure magic despite being awfully out of shape. I started reading Water for Elephants, which I sense is going to be a good one. And of course, break is in a week. So I just keep putting one foot in front of the other; there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

The internal rotations lottery is behind me at last. Our class had a potluck dinner at the school yesterday afternoon and began selecting fourth year rotations at 5pm. It was stressful but worked out relatively well for me. There are still a couple of things I'd like to change around, but I think I'm set for the most part. Now I just need to finalize these externals, ugh. So really, I don't feel "done" with the process but at least I'm another step ahead of where I was, right?

I continue to lack motivation completely for paying attention in class. I go to class and I sit there and listen for 15 minutes...and then check the weather, check Facebook, anything to not have to listen anymore to what's being said. I've actually considered not even going to class anymore but I'm too afraid to try that. So I'm hanging on for another 10 days until our semester break comes along and I can relax with Danny in Portland for a couple days.