bodldops | (no subject)

To Do: Monday
Walk Fozzie
Finish off the Feline Med test
Study for Anesthesia
Clean up room
Figure out what to do with myself on Friday

Still enormously freaked out over clinics. One month, people. Just one month. And then I'll be treating real live client-owned animals.

WAUGH.

My first application to vet school doesn't seem like that long ago. I still lived in that crazy on-campus apartment complex, the one that had serious issues concerning their own self-importance. Also issues concerning increasing rent, which (to judge by ads in the Aggie) has only gotten worse. But I liked walking from the parking lot, down the fire lane, to my apartment (except when I had a duffel bag, two boxes, and my hamster cage to haul at the same time - I wish I'd had a digital camera then, because I don't think I have any pictures of Critter). Anyway. Mom and sis came down from San Jose to help me prepare the night before. Backing up just a bit, I'd gone suit shopping a few weekends before that - I remember standing in front of the mirror and thinking "Wow, I look like a grown-up in this". At twenty-one. Sheesh. Anyway. That first interview was murder. Straight-up murder. I was scared to death (not before, I was fine before, but once I got in there? Augh), and they nailed me with ethics questions. I also made the grand mistake of mentioning I liked behavior - I think they weren't happy I didn't know a whole hell of a lot about behavior beyond the basics. I liked it, but I certainly hadn't found anyone who knew anything about it! (And after taking the main behavior class here, I can't say I learned a whole lot in-class...) Anyway. Couldn't have impressed them much - didn't even make the waiting list, and the secretary who did the post-interview wrap-up told me flat out I shouldn't re-apply, and should go somewhere else if I wanted to go to veterinary school.
So I went to vet tech school instead. I wasn't entirely happy about it, but it would get me experience, and it was still veterinary something. I met some good people there, and spent two years alternately having a blast and being enormously frustrated by my on again, off again job at the local shelter. (Aside: I still need to see their new building - they must still be having the same management issues, since they are still looking for a vet two years since I first saw the ad in the CVMA magazine) I just recently found my journal (the paper one, not the online one) from that time - I'll need to type up some of the entries some time. Middle of the second year, I applied again, but this time I hedged my bets - sent out applications to four schools (actually five - and two weeks later got my first rejection of that round, from Colorado. I hadn't meant to apply to Colorado, and thus, didn't meet all their requirements. Oops?). Weeks and weeks and agonizing weeks later, I started getting back letters - Three letters, actually (never did hear back from Oregon). Three interviews to go to - Washington, Florida, and UCD. The only one I remember getting was the one from UCD - I was just finishing up my run for the day, music blasting (as usual, when I'm on the treadmill, I like loud, and if possible rock, music), and mom came in with a big envelope. I remember swearing when I read it, and mom being not too impressed with my language. But I'd gotten an interview with my dream school - I was so shocked. After what that secretary had told me... anyway.
We went to Washington first, flying into Seattle, then hopping cross-state to... somewhere else, and then driving to Washington State. I gotta say, that is a grim little town there. I knew if I was accepted there and no where else, I'd go, no questions asked, but... there were no trees. There was one used book store, but it was kinda... dunno. I did almost pick up 'The Gunslinger' there, but held off. Got a different book, one I can't reeber the title of, some mystery thriller that failed to thrill but was more exciting than the cable TV in our hotel room. The campus did have one of the most hilly set-ups that I'd ever seen, and a huge gym (near the ice-cream shop, the irony), and grizzly bears. No really, grizzly bears, there's a research center, you can visit them. It's pretty neat. I thought the interview went well - there was a written portion, where I sat and petted one of their blood-donor greyhounds, and an oral interview with three guys in suits and ties. I don't remember the questions, other than by the end we were talking about the local white-water rafting, and about 'Master and Commander'. One of the interviewers liked it, and I had been reading one of the books in the series just before leaving home.
The next interview was UCD. I drove up alone, in the same suit I wore for my first interview. I played Queen (the 'We Will Rock You' musical CD, belting out the lyrics for 'We Are the Champions as I turned onto 113) all the way up the highway. I remember digging around in my purse for change to pay off the meter in the parking lot next to the Silo. I was ages early, so I sat in the car and read 'Good Omens' and kept a wary eye on the clock.
The interview went slightly better that time - I had talked about my shelter work in my essay, and that's what they honed in on, and I was ready for those questions. Two years in the shelter and I could answer anything they threw at me. The ethics questions were still hell though. No one I've talked to has ever liked the ethics questions. Even though I knew what I was talking about this time, I still came out of there feeling like I'd been run over by a Semi.
Played Queen extra loud on the drive home. Didn't play the sad songs.
A few weeks later, I went to Florida for the last of the interviews. Picked up 'The Drawing of the Three' in the airport bookshop before starting the drive to the campus (I would've been a Gator, if I'd gone). I remember the drive being longer than I thought, and we got to campus after dark - I remember some of the dorms, all brick and ivy and I totally fell in love with those dorms. We got utterly lost, but eventually found a map and, after a bit, the campus gift store (and didn't get Grandpa a Gator cap - he's a Seminoles fan, it would've gone over like a lead balloon). We had Cracker Barrel for a late dinner. We had Cracker Barrel for breakfast too, running back to our hotel room to change while a wild storm broke outside. Nothing like thunder and lightening and palm trees flailing around to make one totally ready for an interview. This interview was easier, I think - three mini-interviews, with one person each. All of the interviewers were so nice. It was a huge change from UCD, where it was a little like going up in front of a firing squad. I remember one interviewer talking about that case about the lady on life support, the one who was very brain-dead but the... husband didn't want her taken off? Or was it the family, and the husband did? Anyway, the question was about euthanasia, but... yeah. Shelter work. I'd even done euthanasia at that point (and failed - damn cat frigging tried to wake up. Not my happiest moment ever). The campus had a nice set-up, if a bit remote from the undergrad side (very much different from Washington, where it was smack dab in the middle of everything else), and by the end the storm had blown itself out. We stayed for a week with my Grandparents, where I finished off 'Drawing of the Three' and 'Neverwhere'.
Traded in 'Drawing of the Three' (and kinda wish I hadn't, it's my favorite of the series) for the next book in the series (isn't it the one with Susan and Cuthbert (oh Cuthbert, you're always my favorite) and... no, that's the fourth isn't it, third is the one with the giant bear and getting the kid and the crazy train and all) for the flight home, which included one abandoned backpack (along with security hustling everyone out of the tram it was in) and a lack of PB&J at one of the little stores despite an ad for it, and some truly awful burrito things from Chiles.

My acceptance e-mail from UCD was in the inbox when we got home from Florida. (I think it was in that order - for some reason, I'm wondering if it was Florida first, then UCD, then Washington, but I think I have it right. I seem to remember telling my Grandparents it was all over but the waiting, now. I do remember them being rather proud of my cousin, who was finishing up culinary school, and who is now going to cook for the Olympic head honchos in China - go J!)

I was accepted at UCD and Florida, and wait-listed at Washington. It was so strange turning down Florida - I was turning down a veterinary school. Me. Turning them down. But accepting them would have meant advanced... what was it, calculus? UGH. And... UCD wanted me. There was no way I was saying no to UCD. Not in a million years. Ever.

I remember the first day of school - our lecture hall was an old converted large animal dissection lab (the vet school was still in the process of moving out of Haring Hall and into new, supposedly better buildings, ours was the last class to have a home room in Haring), and it was eight in the morning, ungodly early, but we were all there, bright and anxious and not quite believing we'd made it. All of the posters we'd made during orientation (oh lord, it was the single most silly, ridiculous thing I'd ever had to do, full of team building projects like 'walk across the imaginary pit of lava using these planks and bricks. No really. Stop making plans to hitch-hike back to civilization, please.') were plastered all over the walls, and stayed there for the entire quarter.

And then we had Dr. T and her New York accent and her 'you'd better damn well keep up because the only other way you're getting this info is in your text books, kiddos' attitude. No easing into the pool for us, it was straight into the deep end. (Of course, we also had Dr. B that quarter, who is very very sweet, if enormously predictable).

And it all seems like last week.

And in one month, the gal who was told not to apply to UCD again will be TREATING ANIMALS AT THE VETERINARY HOSPITAL AT UCD.

It just doesn't seem real, somehow. That, and I want my anatomy dog back so I can re-learn all the muscles and bones and nerves and waugh I don't remember any of this!