Lately, I've been thinking about my future after I graduate. My interest in laboratory animal medicine (LAM) began when I started working at the lab animal care facility at my undergraduate university and pretty much everything I've come to understand and/or experience about the field has solidified that interest. I've also become curious about public health, although my interest in that is less developed and less informed versus LAM.

Anyway, I've begun to do preliminary research about becoming board certified in LAM, since that's likely the best for job prospects (and earning potential - let's be honest.) There is so much that I didn't know or didn't fully understand and I'm so glad that I'm taking the time to learn a bit more about it now instead of in the middle of fourth year. While it still feels like there is so much time before I have to even think about applying for a residency, I remember that I'm nearing the end of second year - holy cow does time fly! At the end of this year we should be picking some elective classes for next year and then half way through next year I'll be finalizing my rotations schedule - eek!

That's the tricky part about it, though: I'm the only person in my class with a direct interest in LAM out of a class of 63 people. It will be a bit harder to find electives that are applicable for me - I think I should probably focus on exotics (since that would include small mammals that are often used in research) and probably aquaculture, since fish are becoming more popular models. I'm less concerned about rotations, since I'm aware of quite a few programs that offer fourth year rotations with a lab animal focus. But even the rotations schedule are heavily geared toward small animal practice or large animal practice (although the skills I will hopefully acquire will still be valuable and important!)

To cap it all off, it's important to me to find a residency program that is a reasonable distance from my husband-to-be. We've been long distance since I came to school (and will be until I graduate) and we would both really like to be able to be a "normal" couple again. Ideally I would be accepted into one of the programs in Maryland where we'd really like to live (being from there with family and friends there); if that didn't work out, I'd want to be as close as possible which includes Pennsylvania and North Carolina, among others. Which would still be long distance but a heck of a lot better than 1200 miles and different countries.

It's exciting, intimidating, nerve-wracking stuff to be thinking about!