I know I've gone back and forth over what the heck to do with this blog after vet school and I think my final conclusion is to let it go. Vet school was a huge part of my life but it was also a very separate part of my life. I'm not sure I can easily dovetail "real life" with a blog about vet school. That sounds so silly and over-thought but it's true.

I can't say I won't ever come back - who knows? - but for now, this is good-bye. Thanks for reading :)

At long last, I can call myself a veterinarian.

I wonder if the title was worth the investment, both emotionally and financially, but there's no use crying over spilled milk/water under the bridge/etc. I can say that I am currently happier than I have been in a long time - not because I have those coveted letters after my name, but because I'm with my husband, near to my family and friends (well, those I had before school, at least), our first house is so close to being ours and I have a job that I hope will be fulfilling. While vet school - both getting there and getting through - have been a huge part of my life thus far, I don't want it to define me. I want it to be a part of me, a building block, but not who I am all on it's own.

When we came back from Canada, my parents were still out of town, so Danny and I had a day to ourselves on Monday. I can't even describe how blissful it was - we got to sleep in because no one was clunking around upstairs, we didn't have to talk to other people about the trip, the day, etc. and when we came home, we did a few house chores and were able to watch TV! (This never happens because the TV is in the family room, which is essentially open to the kitchen/dining area in the house and my parents are always there talking until they go to bed, or asking about what we're watching or whatever, so we can never really watch TV.) I never thought watching an episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive would be so wonderful! I love my parents dearly, and I am so, so grateful that they are allowing us to stay with them until we get the house sorted out, but...

I suppose that's what this all really comes down to: I'm ready to begin my life in earnest. During undergrad, I lived away from my parents, but Danny and I didn't live together. During vet school, I was either in another country entirely or we were living together under someone else's roof. We've never had our own place to do our own thing and when we get little glimpses of it, like this past Monday, it's tantalizing. Knowing that we have a place and just have to get through these next five or six weeks is an agonizing wait, but I am so excited.

Saturday is The Day: the White Coat Ceremony.

Veterinary schools all handle white coats differently, although all "coating" is done ceremoniously, as the image of the white coat signifies entry into the profession. Some schools have white coat for new students, others before clinical rotations begin. However, my school gives out light blue coats for all four years (I tell people it's done that way so everyone knows who knows what they're doing and who doesn't) and then has a ceremony at the end of it all to finally get your white coat. While symbolic, I'm mostly just excited to get to see my friends after six months apart and have one last amazing party with them. Bring out the dresses and the heels and the make up!

The weekend after white coat, Danny and I are flying to Colorado to attend his grandmother's funeral. It will be wonderful to go out there (it is my favorite place in the world!) and see his family, who we haven't seen since our wedding, but I will really miss his grandmother. She was so kind and welcoming to me - had us over to dinner nearly every Sunday while they were living in this area, sent the most HILARIOUS Christmas cards ever (like, tears-streaming-down-your-face-with-laughter-level hilarious) and was the first to send me a congratulatory card for passing my NAVLE. Truly a wonderful lady that will be dearly missed. (Unfortunately, the funeral service is on our wedding anniversary, which is a bummer, but I'm hoping we can go for a hike nearby sometime while we're there, or do a little something together.)

And last but not least, the house is moving along really well. We had a small issue crop up but the owners have been great with responding to us and making the improvements we request. I cannot WAIT until we have a place of our own!

I'm currently in a weird in-between time, a no man's land of vet school: there aren't any more lectures to attend, rotations are all finished and graded (I passed them all, woo!) but graduation isn't until May 9th. So we have three weeks of built in vacation - great in principle, but tough in application.

Many of my classmates are going on an actual vacation, somewhere warm, fun or both. Since we're buying this house, we don't want to go shell out anything for a trip just now, even for a long weekend. I'm sure our hands will be more than full with the house when it comes time, but until then it's work for him and keeping busy at home for me. And there are plenty of little things to do: submit paperwork for my state license, go through things to prepare for an upcoming yard sale, communicating with our relator and attending inspections/etc. and of course various household chores. I do allow myself to loaf - I got three books at the library yesterday! - and I know I need to let myself rest up before work begins (June 1!) but I'm starting to feel antsy already and I still have five weeks until I start work! Ack.

Today is my last day of veterinary school. Three years in the classroom, under the fluorescent lights, cramming pages upon pages into my brain for the multitude of tests. I'm a little sad that I'm not at the school with my classmates to feel that undercurrent of excitement all day long, and that I didn't get to participate in our class's "prank" where the fourth years decorate the school elaborately on the last day of classes every year. In a way, though, I'm glad that I've been apart from my classmates these last six months because (hopefully) it makes our final goodbyes less abrupt. Really though, I know I'll be crying on graduation day because these 62 people have been a family to me this whole time. Away from my parents, sister and husband, they were the people to make me laugh and hear me vent, the only people who could truly empathize. I will miss them all dearly.


A long time ago, I wrote three things that I wanted to do when I got out of vet school: volunteer, run and learn photography. And I think now is the time! With three weeks until graduation and another month until work starts, I'm considering starting out by finding a place to volunteer. Hopefully by building them into my schedule, I can keep it up even when I start to work.

And last but not least, Danny and I have put an offer in on a house! I'm hopeful that it all works out smoothly and we can be in by the middle of June :)

I've been writing and re-writing this post for a while because I can't decide what route to take to convey my thoughts. In a nutshell: I accepted a job offer this weekend.

I am excited, nervous, happy and relieved. For the first time since applying to residency programs, I'm not wondering where we might end up, how we might get ourselves there, how we will set up our new life. We know where I will work and already knowing where Danny will work as he's kept his job, we now know where we can plan to live. So we've climbed back into the house-hunting saddle. For the first time in our relationship, we can find a place together. After living with my parents these last five months, and after three and a half years apart before that, we are so ready!

Here's to the upcoming next chapter of life :)

Almost a month since I've stuck my head in here and not too much has changed. An update, in bullet format:

• The job hunt continues. I have three interviews lined up (all small animal practice) and hope that proves enough to land me something.
• My current rotation is...a little rough. I dread going in the mornings. I'm learning a lot, no doubt, but it isn't how I had hoped or envisioned spending my last six weeks of vet school. 
• Danny and I are now house hunting for our first place. Exciting, yes, but stressful even moreso. 

Unfortunately not much else to say. Here's to hoping I can have a more positive update soon!

I've come back to this blog a few times since last posting but find myself with little to say in the way of an update. I suppose my writer's block is mostly hesitance at sharing too much of my plans - I was pretty sharing with my residency plans (not just here, but with my friends and family) and that was a bust. I guess I just want my next step to be nailed down before I start blabbering about it. On the other hand, I don't want the blog to idle and maybe there's someone out there in the interwebz that can glean something helpful from my ramblings.

So after no match, I applied to two of the three programs that were still open. One program told me they had found someone (I expect an applicant they had interviewed but not ranked) and the second program invited me for a phone interview (happening today).

I also interviewed with a lab at my (lab animal) external rotation. Without going into too much detail, they do some very intense work and are a demanding lab. I think it would be a fantastic experience to participate in but they want someone for a few years at least and the hours are unforgiving, especially when we start to think about children. So my finger is still in that pie, but likely not for much longer.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I applied to small animal practice jobs. I would love to do exotics only but I would settle for a dog and cat shop that also sees exotics and work my way up from there. The realization that I could be happy doing something that I had decided strongly against for so long was kind of weird to say the least, but I need to be honest with myself. Maybe lab animal isn't the path I was meant to take. I've been regarding my lack of match as wake up call - stop and look around, rethink things and such. Which sounds very hippie-esque, I know (I think my mother wants to shake me) but I'm going with my gut on this one.

Cut to the chase: today was match day and I didn't match anywhere. I'm bummed out of course, but I'm looking ahead to what I need to do next. So many considerations have entered my mind, some discarded and some retained. I'm trying hard not to think that I've disappointed anyone and all of my awesome friends and family have been, well....awesome :)

Danny and I are going out to dinner tonight to discuss. We shall see.

I passed my NAVLE! I have also officially changed my last name to my husband's (almost two years after getting married, whoops). I now have two case reports to work on (one for my clinical conference, one for an award I'd like to be considered for) and twelve weeks left of vet school, all of which will be at external sites (mostly lab animal but also an exotics only practice).

Feeling pretty good :)

So I've since finished Dances With Wolves and The Dressmaker, discarded Lincoln after a valiant effort and begun A Separate Country.

Dances With Wolves was a good book. It had a Pocohontas feel to it: military white man (in this case, Lieutenant John Dunbar) learns the ways of the Native Americans (in this case, Comanche), falls in love with Native American girl (Christine/Stands with a Fist, who is actually white herself but adopted by the Comanche) and observes the destructive powers of white people from his new vantage point as an adopted Native American.

Nothing novel in itself, but the story flowed well, the main character was dynamic and while the expected things happened, it was still a powerful message from the past about acceptance of other people and cultures and just how destructive people can be. We look at that part as something of our past: we would never slaughter all those buffalo now! We would never hack down all those trees without reason! But really, we are doing that all over the world, just in different media - species are made extinct by hunters, development of rural land is unashamed, etc. It makes you sad to think that we really haven't learned anything after all that time. Sobering.

Anyway, I'll see how I feel about writing more book reviews. I'll obviously exceed my goal of two for the month - easily done with nothing else to do right now. Life will kick in soon with my external rotations beginning January 26th. I interviewed with a third residency program last Friday and ranked the three that interviewed me yesterday morning. My list is finalized and while I have one program that I like particularly well, I'll be happy to be paired with any of them. Results February 9th!

As promised, my first book review: Postcards, by Annie Proulx.

I should begin by saying I hate Annie Proulx. I first read The Shipping News as a young teenager; it was one of the very few books I ever didn't finish. The most I remember of it was how achingly depressing it was. Not that everything had to be rainbows and unicorns, but there's something about an incessantly down-hearted book that I just couldn't wrestle with anymore.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. My mother is talking about Proulx. My mother loves Proulx's writing, her stories. She had finished Postcards and I, being hungry for a book after finishing a pile of library books, decided I would revisit this author. Give her another chance so to speak.

Postcards was just as relentlessly sad as I remember The Shipping News to be. It follows the life of one Loyal Blood, a farm boy who ditches home after murdering his girlfriend in the woods while having sex (?!). The stories of his mother, brother and sister (and, indirectly, his father) are all interspersed. Loyal, perhaps suffering PTSD from his crime, cannot get close to women without having some strange, asthmatic-like response slash panic attack and instead, he forms relationships with various people in his travels - essentially all men he finds work with along the way - but they never last as his life continues to unravel at the cruel hand of fate.

That one person is so continually shat upon by the universe is depressing. That he continues to write postcards to his family, ever assuming they're all still happily together and living life on the farm, is heartbreaking. The book ends with Loyal dying - alone, homeless and broken. Sheesh.

So needless to say, my dislike of Proulx was only confirmed. I didn't much care for her literary style; though I tolerate even the vaguest of ramblings by some authors, she was consistently hazy, leading you almost blindly through the story. Just not my cup of tea. I also never actually liked any of the characters, never really connected with any of them. To me, with characters being a drawing point of a particular book or author, that's tough to overcome.

Unfortunately, would not recommend.

Next on the list (I'm nearly done, whoops): Dances With Wolves.

I've been reading so much about New Year's resolutions, and it always brings out the angst in me. On the one hand, I love setting goals for myself. I like to plan, to organize, to break things down to the nitty gritty. On the other hand, I've learned that you really cannot plan for life. It does what it will and the best you can do it be adaptable enough to roll with the punches and make your own successes. (Even that sentence was so angsty-teen-vibe, ugh.) Anyway, I remembered that in 2013, I made a new resolution each month and had some good success with that until I ran out of ideas for resolutions. I considered doing that again because it was the most successful I've been with NYR in my memory, ever. So here we are.

For January, I've decided to read at least two books and write a little review of them on the blog. (Not because anyone cares what I have to say about them, but because it will help me be more accountable to have written that review.) I started the first book on New Year's Day: Postcards by Annie Proulx. Thoughts to come.

In other life news, I got some good news from one of my two residency interviewers. I'm waiting to hear back from the second place, which I expect sometime this week. Our rank lists are due January 16th! As soon as I know where I'll end up, I can enter crazy planning mode.

I am also (finally) embarking on changing my last name after getting married in May 2013. To be honest, I feel a little twinge of sadness at the thought of adding a new last name that I hadn't expected. But I'll be going ahead with it anyway, and I know my husband will certainly be excited :)

Anyway, that's all for me for now. Stay tuned for the book review!