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 :)

Two weeks of medicine down, one more to go!

So far, I really like this rotation and I feel kind of silly for dreading it as much as I did. Granted, I expected it to be like surgery with a lot of cases to juggle, late hours and crazy weekends. Fortunately the case load has been steady but not overwhelming and the weekends have been manageable. There have definitely been some late nights but I don't feel nearly so exhausted as I did during surgery. On top of that, I feel as though I've been developing my skills, both technical and diagnostic, and continue to feel as though this profession is absolutely the right place for me. There have been some sad cases but there have also been some very happy endings that make it all worth it. If I had room for it in my schedule, I would totally do a second block of medicine!

Since last posting, I also had two fun events: buddy dinner and awards night.


Buddy dinner is where our buddy groups (one to two students in each academic year plus a faculty adviser) get to sit down to a sponsored dinner, catch up and exchange advice. My buddy mentor is a great guy, always offering valuable advice on life, and my buddies are really sweet. I only got to meet one of my incoming buddies but she was really nice too! I like being able to help other students out (I got to chat with a gaggle of first years in the teaching hospital today which was awesome). Plus, you know, free dinner ;)

Awards night was Wednesday night. I love awards night because you get to see everyone rewarded for their hard work and achievements. I was selected by my class for an award recognizing courtesy, sincerity and integrity. The award was put together by a family in honor of their veterinarian son who passed away and the short speech the guy gave before it was so touching. I felt ridiculously honored to have been selected by my class. Definitely made my night :) But my favorite part of the evening was the presentation of the annual teaching award; the professors are always so happy and touched at being selected and I love being able to recognize them for having such an impact on our education and our future careers. The person I voted for didn't win - and I thought she really deserved it! - but the winner was totally deserving too. All in all a great night.

I've managed to be lazy and not accomplish much of my fall to-do list lately, but hopefully I get some time this weekend even though I am on call...

I started reading about the Ebola outbreak toward the end of third year. I waited for the panic to start up, the news articles to pick up a head of steam. It never really happened until two Americans who had contracted the disease were sent home to be treated at Emory. Now, articles about Ebola abound. My news feed, that wonderful social barometer, shows that now people care.

One thing having to do with the Ebola outbreak that hasn't been discussed in the capacity that it deserves? Animal research.

I know, I know, won't I ever get off this soapbox? But the drug being used to treat these two Americans was developed using animal models. First monoclonal antibodies collected from mice, then preliminary research on non-human primates. Two people are given the chance to survive a highly fatal disease and all anyone can blather about is whether or not Ebola can be transmitted through the air. (Okay, that's important to know. But you can bet the farm that the biosecurity measures in place at Emory are far past letting that little chance take root.)

Let's say those people recover. Let's say the drug that helped them, ZMapp, gets sent to people over in Africa. Let's say that drug quiets the storm, relieves the suffering, stops the outbreak. Will there be articles plastered over the front pages of prominent news sources? Will anyone say, "Gee, I'm really glad animal testing continues, so that we can develop cures for these awful diseases?" I doubt it. And that underlines the sad fact: people take research for granted. People want to protest "animal cruelty" and "animal testing". They want to free these animals from their research cages and give themselves a pat on the back for being so morally pristine. I don't argue that animal use in research can be improved. But look at the good it does! Those two Americans' families will have a chance to see their loved one again because of a drug tested on animals. Why can't people recognize that and embrace the good we can do with laboratory animals?

I had a moment of self-loathing last night.

Danny's name was brought up for a promotion - one that he has been overdue for for a long while. Unfortunately, he won't really be considered, despite all of his higher-ups thinking of him instantly, because there is the possibility that he will be moving away to follow me to residency.

I can't even tell you how heartbroken that made me feel. Danny is quite literally the hardest worker I've ever known. The man has only taken a sick day when he obliterated his ankle and couldn't walk the next day and when he's been seriously ill. He works long hours, he works hard hours and he doesn't complain. His coworkers and boss really like him and he deserves a promotion like, yesterday. To hear that he wouldn't be considered because of me, essentially, made me feel awful. He already sacrifices enough having me not be around for four years and now he can't even get a darn promotion.

I told him that I would drop all of my residency plans, only apply to the one local program and then to nearby jobs and I meant it with all of my heart. He has given up so much for me to be able to do my thing, career-wise, and now it's finally actually negatively impacted his own career, however small a ding that it may have been. I've never felt so selfish in all of my life. But of course he brushed it off, because he is the world's best husband, ever. I just don't know how I will ever repay him.

Bottom line, vet school requires sacrifices of all sorts. These sacrifices come in different shapes and sizes, but they come for just about everyone. I am so lucky that I have such an amazing husband and such a wonderful family back home. Just remember to treat the good ones in your life like the treasures that they are.

Just submitted my paperwork for the last of my student loans. I'm glad I'll be done with it, but I am really not looking forward to having to pay it all off especially if I'm on a resident salary. I'm lucky in that my husband can provide for us otherwise, and that I don't have any undergraduate debt, but it's a scary thing to look ahead to.

In happier news, I've had a nice weekend. Went out for sushi with two good friends on Friday night, did a lot of laughing but also talked a little bit about upcoming match applications, since they're both lab animal people too. Saturday I did some cleaning of the apartment and went to the track in the evening. It was a perfect night to watch the ponies go, and I was in my "secret" (not really, just less well known) area where all the touristy people weren't crowding around. Today I managed to sleep in by putting a pillow over my head (the crows in my neighborhood are awful and wake me up every morning, grr), talked to Danny and then went out and bought myself a big poutine for lunch. I need to look over some radiology notes, as that's my next rotation come Monday morning, as well as clean the rest of the apartment but right now I'm having a nice time relaxing and reading the Stephen King book that my community practice clinician lent me last week (Eyes of the Dragon).

18 days until Danny gets here and four months until I go back for good :) Not like I'm counting or anything...

Last night I drove up to the national park where I used to run all of the time, just past the little cottage I lived in for three years. I hadn't realized just how much I missed it out there until I was driving past the fields and along the coastline on a perfect summer evening. Sure, there are tons of tourists around right now but it was still so nice to drive alongside perfect views with my windows down and my hair misbehaving.

Living in town has had its advantages, no doubt about it. But there's just no comparison between living five minutes away from a breathtaking national park (and going there daily) and living in a little apartment just off one of Charlottetown's two main roads where people are loud and you don't have green fields to look out over.

Nature always makes me feel nostalgic. I think it's because deep down, I'm a wilderness kind of person. A little cabin in the middle of the woods on a mountainside with some horses, sheep, chickens, a couple of dogs, a sprinkle of kids and my one true love sounds like heaven on earth. Yes, I enjoy the convenience of the city, and I enjoy spending time downtown (back home, that is) doing stuff you can only really do in the city. But I feel pretty certain that when I get old and gray, I'm going to find me that little house in the woods and just hike and read and ride all of the time.

It also makes me miss Danny more. Driving home last night, all I could think about was what we would have done if it were just the two of us. We would've gone to the beach, had dinner and then wandered in the woods holding hands and talking about the time after, When I'm Done, that time that seems almost unreal because we've been waiting for it for so long. It seems almost unbearable right now because we're so damn close to our forever (I know that sounds cheesy, but I can't help it). As much of an adventure as vet school has been - as much as I've learned and grown as a person - I'm ready to go home. I'm ready for Thanksgiving with my family, for the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas where you're shopping and decorating and anticipating, not studying for finals before a huge drive home. I'm ready to get a house, have a garden, cook dinner every night and see Danny every day.

Even with all of the missing of home, the anticipation for the future...I'm trying to live in the moment up here. I still have to get through fourth year and all of the learning, ups and downs that comes with it. But I'm getting closer ever day.

Hurricane Arthur swept through last night. This about sums up my feelings on the matter:

Okay okay, it did get quite windy and a lot of people (including myself) lost power. But that was just an excuse for me to read more junk instead of anesthesia notes for Monday and go to bed at a decent hour. The power was back up this morning and I made a good sized breakfast and have been lounging in my PJs ever since. I think I'll go to the track to watch the ponies go this afternoon (was cancelled last night) instead of reading for anesthesia.

Speaking of my next rotation, I'm really going to miss community practice. On Thursday I spayed a cat and it went really well and on Friday we did a feral cat spay/neuter clinic and I got to spay two and neuter one. These two spays were really difficult: one was lactating and had a cystic ovary and the other was pregnant. Everything went well, it was just a little trickier than the simple one I'd done the day before. And although surgery still isn't my cup of tea, I feel a lot more comfortable with it having gotten to do three spays and a neuter by myself. So that's nice :)

In other news, Danny is coming to visit in a little less than six weeks, yay! I'm starting to think about stuff we can do over the long weekend - it'll be nice to finally see each other when the weather is good for a change (it's always winter in Maine when we meet up and invariably snows at least part of the time). Two more blocks to get through, first!

Give me a day off and look what happens...my blog gets a fresh summer make-over and I post two days in a row!

I guess I'm posting again because all this time off gives me plenty of time to brood. First, I started thinking about my personal statement or essay thing for my residency application. There's so much I want to say and so many different paths to take and I feel overwhelmed already, like it will be kind of flat and generic. And I don't want anything I ever right to be flat or generic but I'm afraid to break the mold and be too flippant or personal or story-teller-ish. Too much time off to brood, it seems...

Then I treated myself to a Real Book instead of the free crap that breeds in the dark recesses of iTunes. I bought The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green and I hated myself while I was doing it. Because deep down (okay, not deep at all) I really hate popular books. It makes me so mad that everyone flocks to certain books/series/whatever (that inevitably get made into a movie or are only known about because a movie was made of it) instead of wanting to read enough that they find their own books. I fully admit that I'm a reader. I could lie in bed or sit on the couch or on the patio or wherever quiet and read all day and/or well into the night. And I've done that many times. I consume books like people consume TV/social media. So when everyone crowds around a book/series and fawns over it and dissects it to death (Game of Thrones, Twilight, etc etc) I want nothing to do with that book or that series. Because I love feeling like, when I'm reading a book or have read a book, the story is mine (not like, about me, but my possession). That's why I don't tell people my favorite book (which is part of my favorite series of books), even though it's not some obscure thing; because the story and the characters and the feels are special to me.

Anyway, the funny thing about The Fault in Our Stars was that the main character feels the same way about her favorite book: she guards it and doesn't want to share it with anyone else. And then they included my favorite poem ever (The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams). So of course I felt a connection to this character (who is now embodied by an actress and a real voice and all that jazz) and this book and although I didn't find the book to be this amazing, earth-shattering read, I did like it. Only now I feel as though I need to go read something obscure.

I really shouldn't be allowed to have enough free time for this stuff to percolate...

Okay, so I posted yesterday about considering a new direction for my blog now that patient confidentiality, client privacy, public scrutiny and all that kind of fun thing is a bigger part of my life now. But where to start?

I find so many things out there in the world to be fascinating that I don't think my blog could ever be a one pony show. There are so many wonderful blogs floating around the vast space of the interwebz devoted to a particular topic - cooking, health/fitness, schooling of various ilks, DIYing, parenting, etc - and they're really useful for when you want a step-by-step tutorial on how to bake perfect raw quinoa pies or how to build your very own rain barrel or whatever. The photography is always flawless, the people are always these superstar women (from what I've noticed, anyway; must have to do with our love of babbling) and I always get insanely jealous of their beautifully honed talent, no matter what it is.

If you hadn't guessed from the off-topic rambles I sneak it from time to time, I have an idealist streak. I fall in love with certain ideas and ways of living and I want to be those people from the blogs who have this amazing ability to do whatever it is that they do (the astoundingly photogenic nature of their everyday lives is another perhaps more superficial want of mine, but I digress). I have a handful of broad ideas that I want to incorporate into my life that all very loosely fit into the concept of "modern homesteading." Which means I want to have a compost bin and raise chickens and make my own furniture and learn how to quilt and plant gardens full of herbs and vegetables to make amazingfood from and also be a badass home-maker/wife/mother that is still an independent woman. (See? What part of my brain does this stuff even come from!?)

And really, everything that I want to do with my life (this homesteading business and writing again and volunteering and running and photography and whatever the hell else comes my way that I take a fancy to) just has to...wait. Because vet school isn't over yet. And as much as I'll be glad to graduate and be a vet and stuff, I do worry that I won't ever make the time to do all of this pie-in-the-sky stuff that I so badly want. I don't want to be a suburban mom that drives a mini-van and works all day and comes home and repeats the cycle ad nauseum until I'm 60 and then wake up one morning and say to myself, "Well shit. I never did learn how to make jam out of those weeds that grow in the backyard." or whatever else it is that I could learn how to do.

And so (good gracious I'm rambling), I don't know what will become of this blog. I hope I can write about my life outside of vet med and show people like myself in twenty years that you can be a vet and a real person, too and realize your dreams outside of vet med. Because what the hell good is it to have one dream in life that you accomplish when you're 25 or whatever and then you're done? I'm not going to become complacent and you shouldn't either.

I came here all excited to talk about my day shadowing at a nearby institution. Over the last few weeks, though, I've realized that the further along I get on my career path and the more involved I become in the work, the people, etc...the less I should be writing about these things. I suppose if I had chosen a more traditional veterinary route it wouldn't be such a big deal to talk non-specifically about cases I'd seen. With the nature of lab animal being the way it is though (the public eye especially), it's not really appropriate for me to talk about where I'm going, what I'm doing, with whom...even though it excites me to no end. (A blog topic for another time might be where I go with this blog, as I won't really be able to update it like I have been in school. Maybe more about my "real" life outside vet med? Who knows.)

So suffice to say I had a really cool day at this place and learned a lot. One of the things I learned is that I really do want to do the clinical side of things and less-so the research part. To get board certified for lab animal medicine you need a primary authorship, so it's definitely something I'll have to participate in. And of course I'll be part of it with IACUC and the like as a vet. But my previous mumblings on maybe getting a PhD while I'm there? Not so much on my radar anymore. I think research is vital and awesome and I really admire those who do it on a daily basis for like, their whole careers. But I want be the person applying the findings to the clinical setting, or to the regulatory aspect of lab animals.

My break is winding down and there still seems like so much to do. The biggest thing is to sort through all of my stuff and figure out what I'll bring up with me and what I'll leave behind. For only six months in the apartment I want to be darn sure that every thing I bring up is absolutely necessary; it'll be a spartan lifestyle for me but that's okay.

Definitely looking forward to this weekend as well: Danny and I will be celebrating our first wedding anniversary :)

Vacation continues along much the same.

On the visiting front: On Thursday, I visited my old place of employment and the coworkers who are like family to me. My supervisor has been back full-time since about February (after her crazy hospital stay) and her spirits are so much better! They're awaiting their AAALAC accreditation visit (which I helped with!) later this summer and are looking forward to a new facility (to start construction in about a year's time)! The current building will be demolished, which is sad, but the facilities they'll move into will be AWESOME and as they're expecting about a three year construction period, it's a secret hope of mind that they'll be looking for another veterinarian. That would be my dream job :)

On Friday, I had a girly day with my sister. We got our eyebrows done and pedicures, caught up on each other's lives over Cheesecake Factory lunch and shopped for new clothes for my rotations. I'm not the stereotypical shopping woman, so it took a lot out of me to even get the few things that I did! I also got to visit with my dog-niece (Trudy the Boston Terrier) before heading back home.

This weekend was a busy one, too. Danny and I headed out to where he lives when I'm not around so that he could cut their grass (they're out of town); I read one of the four books I picked up at the library earlier in the week (Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, which is of course wonderful, as it was written by MA). I thought of all the people I know that say they just don't have time to read for pleasure during the school year (to which I always mentally reply, "I make time!" because really, I can't not read for pleasure. Pretty sure I am always reading something.) and hoped they were finding more time to read because it is so very wonderful. I also picked up Dan Brown's Inferno which I started this morning, a new Barbara Kingsolver book (The Poisonwood Bible and a couple others having made a good impression of her to me) and another new thing by someone I don't know (I rarely read for the author, despite having chosen the previous three by their authors alone...hm). I'm not sure I'll be able to finish them all in the two weeks I have left, but I'm certainly trying as the weather is perfect sit-outside-and-read weather.

(Not sure how this got derailed into an "I love books!" post. All we need now is a lab animal segue...)


Saturday night was filled with more friend visiting, as tends to happen on my breaks.

Sunday was a beautiful day for Mother's Day - sunny and warm and spring-like - and we went out to a late lunch at a new place in Frederick (Firestone's) for some excellent food and a beautiful second-storey corner table with a view of the bustling street below. Downtown Frederick is really dog-friendly so we saw tons of beasts out enjoying the nice weather. Danny (with a bit of help from me) had made a new dish for my mom's birdbath (the other had split in half completely unexpectedly earlier in the week) using cement and some plant trays for a mold and damn if it didn't turn out well! I think the feeder locals are still a bit suspicious but a lady sparrow or two have christened it already so hopefully the rest of the neighborhood will soon catch on.

Lots of babbling on my part, per usual. I'm looking forward to starting back at school just so I can get into it and be done, but I'm trying to enjoy the last true time off I'll be having for a good long while.

Amazing how just ten days ago I was super sick, stressed and strung out. Ten days go by and I am home, healthy and happy (and alliterative).

Ten final exams are now behind me, the last of my veterinary school career. I imagine there will be more (hopefully) when I'm a resident in a concurrent Masters program, and there's still that pesky little licensing exam and (hopefully) a board certification exam in my future but I'm happy to be done with the vast majority of classroom sitting for the rest of my days. From all accounts, fourth year is so much better than any of the other years and I look forward to the change of pace.

I also moved out of my darling little house in the countryside and into a bright little apartment in town. I'm really going to miss being out there - it was peaceful, nice views, great landlords and (my favorite) a skylight in my bathroom. But the way my schedule is, it wasn't going to work out to rent for that last year. So I found a new place that should do the trick for the six months I'll be living there. Then, at the end of November, it's home to the US for good. It seems so far away and a little unreal to think that in only six months I can be home for the rest of ever.

The best thing about being home is getting to see my husband. He is such a trooper and I know it isn't easy for either of us having the other so far away for so long. I'm hoping to get to do a lot of fun stuff while I'm home on this little mini-vacation and also some special stuff for our first anniversary (including eating our wedding cake that has inhabited my parents' freezer for a year...heh). After all that, it's back up to Canada for rotations. I still can't quite believe it!

A nasty flu thing has been with me for the last three days and counting and it's really tough to concentrate on studying when I alternately just want to spend all day in bed asleep or staring out the window or I want to go for a walk in the gorgeous sunshine. One week left until vacation; here's the break down:

Tuesday: renal + oncology + miscellaneous (Don't ask me who grouped these things together...); ACC meeting
Wednesday: medical exercises final
Thursday: dermatology + endocrinology final; fourth year clinics orientation
Saturday: toxicology final
Monday: topics in advanced equine medicine final; leave for home.

Somewhere in there I need to meet my new landlord for a key to my new place, move some stuff over there so I don't have to schlep it home, pack all of my stuff, clean everything in my current place, take my fish to his fish-sitter and tie up any remaining loose ends before I hit the road for home.

Ack.

When I started Blog Topic of the Week, it was to encourage other bloggers to post regularly (because that gets people reading, I think; who wants to read or follow a blog that was last updated five months ago?) and to get a sense of community going among the pre-vet/vet students over at SDN. As much as it drives me crazy to only ever be surrounded by people in the vet community, I know how important it is that we all stick together. After all, we're the ones who really "get it" when it comes to the tough issues facing our profession and our persons.

But truth be told, I also wanted a way to provide guidance for blogs. I know I feel a sense of obligation to update regularly but sometimes I log on to post and all I can think to write about is school, stress and my impatience to be done with this whole thing. I know a lot of bloggers don't update regularly because they don't have something to write about. So the BTOW thing was a nice way to tie all of that together.

Every once in a while though, something happens in every day life that provides me a good blog topic aside from BTOW. Today's topic is social media and online presence.

Seems that throughout vet school, the pervading attitude from students is that they are perfectly within their rights to post whatever the heck they want on Facebook because they're adults and their friends think pictures of animals or procedures are cool and everything is fine. The administration doesn't roll with that line of thinking though; they have a public image of the school to uphold (and some might argue the image of the profession in general) and we're essentially not permitted to post any pictures of anything - teaching animals, patients, tissues/specimens, etc. - on social media. The general public has complained to administration up here about what they've seen from vet students posted on Facebook and the administration has made very clear to us what we can and can't post. (Nevermind the fact that I find posting of these pictures to be attention-grabbing antics and I don't really respect those individuals who choose to post them.)

Anyway, there was a recent rash of surgery pictures from the current junior surgery students on Facebook and we got a pretty strongly worded email from our Academic Affairs boss lady. A number of people were up in arms, feeling that they are adults and don't want to be told what to do. Which I understand, but in this instance (and in instances across the veterinary schools), it is bigger than you. It's about showing the general public - your future clients! - that you are an exceedingly professional individual who respects the animals and people they interact with. The majority of people wouldn't have batted an eye at the surgery pictures, but all it takes is one unhappy person and you've shot yourself in the foot.

The profession of veterinary medicine is in a rough patch right now, assaulted from all angles. The public are pissed about how much it costs to treat a pet (that's another post entirely...), they don't understand the role of veterinarians outside of fixing your family dog and they are getting mean about it on the internet. The only way to uphold the profession on that side is to be as stringent as possible with social media etiquette, whether it be Facebook, blogs, forums, whatever. There is no room for error and I think many students who post a bunch of stuff on social media don't actually grasp the gravity of the situation, in part because they haven't been out in practice and dealt with people judging them directly.

Life isn't fair, and I wish there were more room for error. But the fact is, students should keep the vast majority of details of their veterinary school career off Facebook. If they want to share what they did with friends or family, I think that's totally acceptable! But I think it should be done over the phone or in person, not available for potentially anyone to see.

On a similar note, I have strongly considered deactivating my Facebook after graduation. On the one hand, Facebook allows me to keep up with my friends all over the place; after school, a chunk of friends will be in Canada where a visit isn't exactly feasible. But especially with my path in lab animal medicine, I just don't think the risks (and honestly, the frustration I get from seeing so many anti-lab animal posts) are worth it in the end. I've thought about LinkedIn though, and will be scoping that out an an alternative.

It has finally stopped snowing, the winds have quieted down a bit and I am still toasty warm. I think I can confidently say I have survived the blizzard! As of 5:00am, Charlottetown had reported 53cm of snow - that's over 20 inches in a little less than 24 hours. There is an enormous drift in front of my porch steps but because of the wind, the driveway is relatively clear. It's going to be a hell of an effort to get myself dug out for school tomorrow (good thing we have this second day off so I an be lazy about it...)

Did a bit of residency research yesterday as well as some relaxation and getting more and more excited for my trip home and the start of clinical rotations. I have a decent amount of stuff to do when I get home (visiting friends, spending time with family, banking, doctor's appointments, etc.) so I know it'll probably fly by but after that, the next time I come home will be for good :)

After all this time of having this blog I've finally figured out the intricacies of the background image! It's shameful how long it's taken me to find the little hideaway part to get more images but I'm happy now. I like changing up my blog template/background either to reflect my mood or the season. This time it's a city because I'm missing the comforts the city has to offer (as evidenced by my previous post).

We're due for another big winter storm on Wednesday...maybe I'll dig up something interesting to write about other than the drivel of my every day life.

It feels like forever since I got back to school, not less than a week!

We got settled into the rhythm of our first block (three for the semester) and I'm more or less enjoying all of the classes. Comparative med is my favorite (of course) but the others are all interesting in different ways. I think the most brutal part of the schedule is having three hours of fish health on Mondays, and not because I don't like fish but because three hours of anything all in a row is just too much for me. The rest of the schedule is good - I get to sleep in an hour on Wednesdays and Thursdays and for two hours on Fridays.

Since I don't have junior surgery this semester, I'm excited to have the lab animal club be a little more active. We have our first lunch lecture planned: zebrafish in research. Fish are getting to be more and more important in the lab animal world (as I learned while doing AAALAC stuff this summer) so I think it should be really informative :)

In miscellaneous news, I picked Fergus up from his fish-sitter on Thursday and it's nice to have him back in the house. I got him a floating log toy for Christmas - basically a hollow log that floats near the surface. He's been in it and near it quite a bit so I think he likes it. (Am I becoming a crazy fish lady...?) I've also been touching up the last of my external rotations stuff (letters, resume, etc) and should be able to have everything on its way by next week! Unfortunately, I think my original plan of having all of my internal rotations before winter break aren't going to pan out, but on the flip side, it means I can do some of my lab animal rotations before residency applications, which isn't a bad thing.

Our class had a night out last night, which was really fun, but the rest of the weekend should be pretty low key - rotations stuff, NFL playoffs, miscellaneous academic stuff.

Today, I went to visit my supervisor from work who's in the hospital with a nasty post-op infection. She is like a favorite aunt to me and was one of the people who kept pushing me toward my goal of vet med even when I had lost confidence in myself. While we were chatting today, she told me that because she never had kids, she considered the students that came through work (like me) to be like her kids, and she wants us all to succeed so badly, especially because she thought she wasn't smart enough to be a vet. She told me how proud she was of me (overcoming my measly 2.97 GPA to get in to vet school and now doing really well); she introduced me to all of her doctors and nurses that stopped by as "her friend, Dr. [mylastname]." And yeah, I'm not a doctor yet (and I didn't pretend to be), but I knew she called me that out of pride; I can't even describe how that makes me feel.

I'm so lucky to have such amazing people in my life. My husband never complains about me being 1200 miles away, in another country, for four years while he saves money to buy us a house. My family takes me even every school break and puts up with my worldly possessions in their basement. My friends and co-workers invite me to spend time with them as soon as I'm home, and are always so happy to see me. I hate that I'm still in school, so far away, which makes me the selfish friend. But I am so, so fortunate to have such great people around me and I hope I never take them for granted.

My last final of the semester is tomorrow. Afterwards, I'm getting into my car and heading home! I always stop in Portland, Maine overnight to break up the drive (and also because there is a Chipotle there for dinner...) but it'll still be nice to be back in the States :) I still have quite a bit to do today - mainly cleaning up the house but also running a couple errands in town and, of course, studying for this last one.

I'll try to post a few times while I'm home, but I usually end up really busy with visiting friends/co-workers, doing my Christmas shopping, hanging out with my family and Danny and just unplugging my brain for a while. Can't wait!

In the time between now and lasting posting, so much has happened.

Perhaps most importantly, I put my beloved dog Ella to sleep. She was old, in kidney failure and just not having a great life anymore. I think I was mentally prepared for it to happen (and I knew I would do "it" before going back to school as its a long and stressful journey for her even when healthy) but it's immeasurably sad to not have her around any more. Many people have asked if I will get another pet and the answer (for now) is no, both because the loss is still too new but also because it isn't really fair to any animal I would get (especially a dog or cat) to go through me not being there for long periods during rotations, or being away from home frequently for classes. I've considered a small animal (bird, fish, rat, guiena pig) but right now I think I just need time to feel sad.

On a different note, I moved back up to the island this weekend (Danny tagged along and helped with the drive) and started school today. It's great to see everyone again and I'm glad to finally be settled in instead of having it looming ahead of me constantly. I am ridiculously disorganized right now - and conveniently have 2948348351 things to do - but I think time will go quickly with so much on my plate. Among other things I need to get my parking pass, put together a display for the lab animal club's table at club day (Wednesday), set up my printer, print out notes, put away my clothes, put away my food, do the dishes and get the house to a more liveable state. Whew. I think it's time for a to-do list...

I promise to post more about classes and school as we get going, but I've got a coffee date tonight!