I had a wonderful summer. I went to Hawaii, worked at a corporate vet outfit, and did a little bit of shadowing. Hawaii was amazing. I am not entirely sure why I don’t live there except that there is no veterinary school and you have to quarantine your animals for about 6 months if you move there. Working for Big Vet Corp was interesting. There are a lot of good and bad things I could say about it, but overall I think it was a good experience, especially for between first and second year. Even though I had worked in a practice before, everything was in a different light after a year of vet school. The shadowing I did was amazing. I mostly worked with vets I had worked with before, but I also got to follow a small animal surgeon around for a day, which was really, really awesomely cool.
Speaking of vet school, I am in day 6 of year 2 of veterinary school. We are currently taking Dermatology, Pharmacology, Parasitology, Pathology, Epidemiolgy, and Animal Behavior. Whoa is this year different so far. Overall, teachers are better and the classes are more interesting. Supposedly it gets really tough later because there are 2 tests every week, but right now I am a pretty happy vet student.
We changed classrooms this year. There are 102 of us in my class and approximately 104 seats in this room. So that’s right, people are on top of each other. On the first day of school people who really cared about where they sat, got there really early. After that the whole first week there were mini tiffs breaking out about people stealing seats. I am ashamed to admit that I was a passive participant in one of these tiffs. On day 3, I came back from lunch and someone was in my seat – and then for the next few days I kept having to try and sneak in early to get it back. Luckily the girl in front of me gets to school super early and agreed to save my seat everyday. (I think this is partially because she likes me and partially because the other person talked all through class and was very distracting.)
Another disadvantage of being in such a high density situation is that small things can be amplified – noises, smells, heat, and annoyed people all seem much bigger than they are. For example, last Friday the air conditioning was out and it got hot so quickly. It was 85 degrees by the time our 11 am class started. If someone is eating yogurt 4 rows behind you, you smell it. If someone in the back row sighs loudly because they are annoyed with someone in the front asking questions, everyone can hear it. So far, everyone seems to be handling it well, but I guess time will tell.
My personal drama is that my housing situation is still a mess. Right now I am living with my husband and commuting from about 90 minutes away. That’s right, 3 hours minimum in the car everyday, which means that I have no time to do anything. I feel like I drive, go to class, and sleep. I am stressed about figuring out where we are going to live and am actively trying to solve the problem… but more on that later.
