the DVM life - Doctor of Veterinary Medicine

So it's been a long while since I've posted. What happened since mid of first year second semester?

Well, I made it though the end of second semester with an average of 90 flat. That was nice. I really enjoyed second semester, despite how annoying large animal anatomy was. We did a good job dispatching of our notes after exams....heheheh....

It was a busy time, but it was fun. I remember frequently skipping useless lab for funner outings. My favorite memory being that we ran off to a nearby park - the weather was beautiful. Not too hot, not too cold. The sun was out. Bees weren't out yet. We were on the top of the hill and purple flowers were springing up everywhere. You could see for miles. It was great. Like the whole land was finally waking up from a long sleep, getting ready to enjoy the upcoming summer.

That summer I went home and back to the clinic. It was both good and bad. It was good because the clinic experience was nice. It was bad because I got rather burnt out. In so many ways I felt stupid and useless. I only had the barest scraps of usable info. I still suck horribly at restraining, especially cats. On one cat I didn't find fleas (which the doctor found many), even though I looked. Each day was like a little blow to my morale about becoming a doctor. I longed for freedom, to just run about in the nice sunny weather.

I guess when it comes down to it, I was just hoping that I'd be more useful after my first year. I was sorely let down. I didn't know if it was just me being useless, or my education didn't yet give me to tools to make baby steps?

I was caught in some weird limbo of not being a technician (clearly! from my lack of technical skills) and not being any scrap of a doctor. I didn't know where I fit in, since all the assistants had better handling skills than me, all the techs had more technical knowledge than me, and I'm not even going to pretend that I knew all the things the doctors were saying. Mostly it was just a summer of me being confused. Like trying to catch a train in a foreign station where everyone speaks a different language.

The summer ended all too quickly and it was back off to school. I was a little excited at first. And then school started.

To my credit, I really was revved up and ready to go. For the first few weeks I attended all the classes, was there always on time, and had all my work done ahead of time. I still remembered the good times I had in the previous semester and was a bright shiny student.

And then....

I don't know what happened. It was like all the magic disappeared. Not only disappeared, it was like all the magic got sucked out through some wretched joy killing vortex. Replete with fangs and life draining noises.

I think it started with talking to the residents. Yes, that's where it started....

Being interested in an internship/residency I attended a "Residency Advice + Q&A Session" with two residents from my school. Boy, was that a mistake.... joy killer #1.

Both residents were morose, despondent. They painted such a bleak and completely awful picture of what the whole process was like. It was like they were saying "HA! Your chance at a residency is like a snowball in hell! AND when you do get one (which you'll never get, btw) you'll be completely miserable for the next few years of your life. Did I mention *completely* miserable? No? Well, read my lips: completely miserable. And you'll never get one."

So that was a great kick to the proverbial nads. I'll admit that it really got me down for a while. Why are they so unhappy? Would I really be unhappy just like them? If I'm lucky enough, that is, to get the chance to be that unhappy....

Joy killer #2. Class for 7 hours a day, many days a week. Not fun class either. Mostly just endless facts thrown at you which you'll be expected to memorize. I can deal with the first few hours, but after that I absorbed nothing. It is not, nor will it ever be, my way to learn by sitting on my ass and getting wads of knowledge told to me for several hours. Agony is a good word for it.

At least first year we got to touch dead animals. This year we touch NO animals at all. Unless you count bacteria, then I touched billions. No, last semester was just me sitting on my keister previewing the load of stuff to memorize, and being bored out of my skull. Maybe we're learning more useful information, but it was still painful. Just like going to cooking school but never making a recipe or trying a product. Just memorizing recipe after recipe.

Joy killer #3. The disgruntled 4th year student.

We're required to observe different parts of the hospital a few times each semester. This semester we got shuffled to community practice. Basically, it's where people bring in their animals for simple things. Vaccines, health certificates. The 4th year will do an exam, fetch the clinican and tend to the animal. In theory.

In real life, the 4th year does an exam, spends 40 minutes trying to find the clinician, and only gets to do the simplest of clinical duties (I do more at my summer clinic than the 4th years do in their CP rotation). It was horrifyingly inefficient. No wonder the new grads I have met are worthless at time management. They're sure not learning it at the hospital.

Then the 4th year opened his mouth and proceeded to kill more joy.

You see, 4th year has been like the holy grail for me. It's a time where you get to be a doctor, to touch and heal animals, a time when you prepare yourself for flying solo. You're free from the classroom. Free from quizzes, sitting in endless lectures and being a lump on a log. In 4th year, you *actually do things*.

Or at least that's what I thought. This 4th year told us, in no uncertain terms, that my holy grail was instead more like a cheap plastic cup. A cheap plastic cup than had even been run over several times.

According to him "You don't get to do anything in 4th year. It's pretty useless." WTF?! He told us about his experiences so far and his lack of hands on learning. How there were few opportunities to learn the practical skills he wanted. How you spend hours of wasted time cleaning cages, not learning. How you walk dogs at 8am instead of participating in surgery. How you spend long hours at the hospital, not because you are accomplishing much: only because you're wading through an inefficient system.

Great, just fan-freaking-tastic. All the glorious thoughts of my 4th year had been crushed. Instead of seeing myself diagnosing, suturing and shouting out life saving commands I now had a vision of me, just as I am now. Cleaning cages, getting crapped on, and not able to do anything "cool".

All of these kill joys had been coupled with exams every week and the onslaught of mind numbing, ass numbing, lectures. Many of them were about things I could care less about. Like super rare cow diseases. I always hated it when they said "You'll probably only see this in your entire career once, if ever, but you should know....." Thanks for wasting my brain space on things I'll probably never see. I appreciate it.

Somehow, for reasons far beyond me, many of my classmates enjoyed this past semester. Maybe they didn't encounter the soul crushing residents or senior student. Maybe they like hours of lectures and then memorizing pages upon pages for exams. Maybe they love endless NOT hands-on learning? Maybe they like learning diseases they'll probably never see?

So if I sound bitter, annoyed, and quite despondent myself .... it's because I am. Some odd combination of events conspired to really make me un-enthused about school. Despite working part time and hating school, I did reasonably well with an 86 average of all my classes.

And so here I am on the eve of second year, second semester. I really hope that I find something enjoyable about this semester. I promise I'll try to find a silver lining if it promises to suck less.