I started my new summer job yesterday. As I've probably mentioned, I'm back at the lab animal facility that I worked at for three years as an undergraduate. It's a small core group of people and they've always been like family to me, which makes it all the more awesome to be working with them again. I am so lucky they have stuff for me to do and that they're paying me!

My role there is a lot different than it was before, though. As an undergrad, my main responsibilities was animal husbandry - everything from cleaning cages to providing veterinary care. I got my assistant laboratory animal technician certification (ALAT) with those hours and at one point considered ditching the whole vet school dream and just working as a lab animal tech. Everyone around me encouraged me to keep going and supported me and here I am today.

Now, my duties revolve around putting together a gigantic packet of information for the AAALAC (association for assessment and accreditation of lab care) accreditation site visit occurring next year. Yesterday was spent familiarizing myself with the application and compiling a list of questions to ask  investigators that run their own labs. Today I got access to the huge database containing all of the university's protocols and have started to read through the ones pertaining to the investigators who run their own labs and have aquatics. Eventually I'll move on to other protocols.

It's a lot of staring at a computer screen all day and a lot of dense reading but I'm enjoying it. I really feel like this experience is letting me see the other side of lab animal vet work - the administrative side - and I think it's going to be a great learning experience.