UPDATE!

So I realize I haven't updated this blog since basically the first week of the semester. I've definitely been meaning to because I knew it would come to this moment where now I really want to update but I don't even know where to start. So much has happened. Sometimes I wish I were a better writer because then maybe I could just talk about everything right now in a single post and it would all flow and sound really nice. Instead, since I am not that great of a writer, I will do my best to give a fairly thorough (and hopefully not boring) update. I may split it into multiple posts depending on how it goes.

So I just want to start by saying (and I'm sure I may reiterate this point a few times throughout): VET SCHOOL IS AWESOME! =D

So where to start? Classes? Sure. Classes are awesome. For the first time in my life I feel like I am actually learning something that will be useful to what I want to do. I can actually see how everything we learn relates and applies to the field. It's so cool. This comes especially in handy when classes get hard - which they definitely do. Don't get my wrong, just because I love my classes and love vet school does not mean they are not hard. They are extremely hard. I have never studied more for anything in my life. And honestly? I could still easily study more than I do (and do better because of it). I feel like I slack off a little bit compared to some classmates. It's just not in my nature to kill myself studying. Sometimes I wish I could force myself to study more but I can't (and deep down I know it is better that way - it's what keeps me sane). That being said, I do definitely spend a lot of time studying but I enjoy it a lot more than I ever did in undergrad because I can understand why I need to know it. 

So right now I think if I had to rank my classes (purely by subject matter and not by the professors or the time of day of the class or  by who I work with during the class) from most favorite to least favorite they would be:

Physiology, Anatomy, TAU (teaching animal unit), Bacteriology, Evidence Based Medicine, Histology, Careers in Vet Medicine. Physiology is just so interesting - learning how everything works. Anatomy is super cool too since there's so much to learn and when I think about everything I already know now compared to just a few months ago it's crazy. And, of course, TAU is amazing since we get to work with live animals every week. Not only that, but they're also animals that I have no prior experience with so it's a pretty amazing experience each time. For example, my group's most recent TAU was the swine one. At first, when we were in the pig barn and they were just explaining to us what we were going to have to do (which was snare the pigs and draw blood and give an IM injection) I was finally convinced this was going to be a TAU that I would not enjoy. These pigs were making awful noises and we had earplugs in because they were so loud and as this woman was explaining everything to us all I could hear was the end of certain things and I swear it felt like I just kept hearing her saying "and then you'll have a dead pig" without hearing whatever warning she gave before that. That freaked me out. Then, as I stood there watching the first pair go I got even more freaked out because it took them forever to snare their pig and then equally as long to draw the blood and inject the saline. Not to mention, those awful noises the pigs were making? They got even worse once the pigs started to get snared. But then it was my turn and it was almost magical. I got into the pen and snared my pig on my first try (basically) and without any trouble. Then I had no trouble holding the pig still while my partner did her part (take blood and do the injection) other than I had another pig nibbling on my boots the whole time. Also, I had no trouble releasing my pig. Then, my partner also had no trouble snaring her pig. And I, with the assistance of the professor, was able to so easily get blood. It was my best blood draw so far this semester. It was awesome. It went so smoothly. I felt like a pig whisperer. So even a TAU, where I momentarily thought it was going to go horribly, ended up being amazing. Enough about classes and TAU. 

What else? Oh, my professors. My professors are ALL really cool. I like them all. Sure, I can think of some negatives about them but I do like each and every one of them so far, on an individual basis. And overall. I definitely like them as an entirety too. It's really nice to have professors that I like. I can't speak for my whole class, since I know some of my classmates do and don't like certain professors. But I definitely like them and they all seem like they genuinely care about teaching us. 

The last thing I feel like talking about/mentioning briefly for now is: my classmates. My class is awesome! Sure, there is definitely a group of people that I have bonded more with than others but overall I don't think there is a single person in my class that I do not like. There are some people who I still don't know so well so I can't really have much of an opinion of them yet. But yeah, overall everyone seems really cool. And I definitely love that there are at least some that I bonded a lot with and get along super well with because they make classes and school so much fun. My class is definitely a fun group of people. And with that being said, I am going to end this post for now. I definitely need to write about my first large animal hospital experience sometime soon though because that's a story worth sharing (teaser: it involved a miniature donkey and it was awesome). 

Late night anatomy

So it's 2 a.m. right now and I just got home from the anatomy lab. Late nights in the anatomy lab are so much fun. Admittedly, sometimes having too much fun in anatomy lab can be distracting and take away from my productivity level but it's still more effective and efficient for me to spend my time in lab than at home (where I get distracted by other things like River....and food....and TV.....and outside....). Anyway, I promise I will try to at some point in the near future (hopefully) give a longer and more informative update about vet school. I can't promise it will be a well organized thought/post, though.

Countdown to my first anatomy exam: 3 days!

Still behind....

So I still feel kind of (but not badly) behind in Anatomy but that's mainly because yesterday evening (after classes) I went and picked up my bookshelves that had finally gotten in AND assembled them. Assembling them took me about 3 hours.....and then add in the time it took me to make dinner, etc. so that I basically didn't study at all last night and believe it or not, that's enough to get you behind in vet school. But on the upside, now I have somewhere to put my books!


First anatomy exam countdown: 6 days!

Not knowing what to expect...

Not knowing what to expect for the first anatomy exam is killing me. So last week was my first week in vet school. Technically, it was only half a week so I'm actually considering tomorrow the start of my ACTUAL first week in vet school. Either way though, I have completed 3 full days of vet school and so far I enjoy tremendously. Unfortunately, I'm freaking out on the inside not because I'm super stressed about how much  we need to know for anatomy (which is a lot) but more because I just don't know what to expect. Basically, I don't know enough about what to expect to be any more descriptive than just "a lot" when describing what we need to know. Of what we've gone over so far in class, I know we'll need to know the bones of the thoracic limb, each part of each bone, the muscles, the muscle attachments, the muscle actions, the joints, but where does it end? Do we need to know the fascia? Do we need to know (for the first exam) the muscle attachments that are not on the thoracic limb (like the sternebrae ones)? When it comes to the muscle actions, will it be sufficient to know just whether it extends or flexes that particular joint or will we have to know all the other minor actions as well? My assumption (both a safe, and probably accurate assumption) is that we will need to know everything in as much detail as possible. And that's okay with me - I truly do enjoy learning about this stuff. I just wish I knew what to expect for the test. The anticipation of the first anatomy exam (in a week and a half) is almost too much to handle.


With that being said, I honestly do feel behind. I feel like I probably know about 75% of what I should know if I were on a good pace. Being behind isn't really stressing me out though. I think I just feel behind because it's been a WHOLE 2 DAYS since our last "official" anatomy lab and I definitely think our scheduled anatomy labs help me a lot. I used the words "official" and "scheduled" to describe the anatomy labs that I was referring to because there have also been a few times already that I have gone to the anatomy lab during off hours just to review/study. Tomorrow is Monday though, which means it's time for 4 (possibly more depending how I spend my weekend(s)) straight days of anatomy lab this week and every week following. So after tomorrow I'm hoping to feel on track again.


I started this post with no particular ideas or organization in mind and it has led me to this....

"It's gonna be awesome...."

So the title of this post is a quote from a classmate and it actually was not related to vet school BUT the conversation was hilarious so it is definitely quote-worthy and in this case, I feel this way about vet school so it applies....

Anyway, yesterday was my last day of a 3 day Orientation and a 1/2 day for the White Coat Ceremony. Orientation was long and quite boring at times and in my opinion, not particularly informative about anything we didn't already know BUT I'm not really complaining because it was fun meeting my classmates and everything. The White Coat Ceremony was pretty awkward, in my opinion, so that was a lot of fun too :p

I have to go pick up my books and supplies and ID card today around 2:30-3 but other than that today is our "day off" before classes start tomorrow. So yeah, classes start tomorrow and I'm pretty sure it's gonna be awesome.

Right now I am updating this blog just for the sake of "updating". I would write more but I really don't feel much like "writing" right now. 

Early mornings start soon

So this summer I have naturally been waking up around 9:30am every morning. To many of my college friends, this would be considered getting up early but to many others I have had the pleasure of "sleeping in" most of the summer. On Thursday, however, I will basically be starting a 8-5 job (plus all the extra hours that will go into studying). My first day of Orientation is on Thursday from 8am until 5:15pm. The second day of Orientation (Friday) is from 7:30am until 3:20pm and then return for dinner from 5:30pm until 7:30. We then have our White Coat Ceremony on Saturday from 2pm until 5pm. Finally, the last day of Orientation is Monday from 7:30am until 5pm. Then classes (from 8:05am until 4:30pm most days, I think) start that Wednesday! I'm pretty excited to start classes. As for Orientation, I am both excited and dreading it. Orientation is SO long and a lot of it is just person after person talking to us about topic after topic of this giant load of information. Sure, that's what classes will be like but at least that information will be more interesting. Based on our Orientation schedule, I wish some of the stuff they have scheduled for us was optional since I don't feel like it's all things that I necessarily need to know right now. Nevertheless, I am super excited to meet ALL of my classmates and do all the cheesy ice-breaker games that I'm sure we'll play. Also, I'm really looking forward to meeting all the faculty.


Anyway, time to get ready for a movie at the $1.50 theater tonight with some of my awesome classmates! :)

One Week!

I will hopefully update soon with more than just a couple sentences (maybe talk about my Orientation schedule or something) but for now I just wanted to say:


One week from today I'll be sitting at Orientation - starting vet school!

3 weeks and counting(down)!

My first day of orientation is August 5th. Three weeks from tomorrow I officially start vet school. I'm so excited!!!!


I came back up to NC, finally, about a week ago. Since I've gotten back I've mainly been trying to finish unpacking (which is difficult since I've reached the point now where nothing is really in my way anymore - so I've lost a lot of motivation to continue unpacking the more minor stuff) and meet people! So far I've met some of my classmates and they all seem pretty cool. I've also met some Class of 2013 people who seem really nice too.


The day after I got back up I went and got my car registration and now I think I've completed everything I need to do right away for getting residency next year. I'm going to try to make an appointment with or send an email to the lawyer that handles residency questions and just make sure there's nothing else I need to get done before classes start.


Hmmmm...what else? Oh, today I applied for a job. I need to get a job to help with getting residency and if I could get one before classes start then I could put in some more hours/make a little extra money before I get busy with classes and can't work more than a few hours a week. If this job doesn't work out, then I might look into some other jobs but I also might just wait until orientation and try to get one of the jobs that are offered through the school. The job I applied to today is at a veterinary clinic but I don't necessarily care if I get a veterinary related job (since I can always volunteer for a variety of veterinary related activities to get more experience in the field). I could also tutor math or something as well. My main criteria for a job is that it needs to be something that I can just do on weekends, probably - maybe one night during the week. I'm not particularly looking forward to working while in school but I think I can handle it, as long as I'm not working too many hours.


As for the area: I love it up here! It might be just as hot as Florida right now, but it's far less humid so the weather is slightly nicer. Also, up here it does stay "cooler" a little bit in the morning and it cools down a little at night - whereas in Florida I feel like it doesn't matter the time of day. Plus, there are hills and "winding roads" so driving can be a little less "boring". The hills are going to be an issue when I try to start running again (which I am going to do right after this post) since my endurance is pretty low right now. They make walking River more interesting, though, so I bet they'll have the same effect on running. My favorite thing about being up here so far? The fact that I saw a deer at 2:45 in the afternoon. Sure, I saw deer a few times in Gainesville but only in the dead of night. Never in the daylight. I probably won't appreciate the deer population here as much after the first time I almost hit a deer late at night, though. I didn't think about that before today.


I think River is adjusting pretty well. She doesn't seem particularly anxious or anything. She loved the hike I took her on at Umstead Park. I'll have to do one of those again soon - maybe a longer one this time. Oh, I took River on a "play date" with one of my classmate's girlfriend's dogs (and his dog a little too) and that was really good for her. She was actually pretty good. It went pretty well.


Oh, and while I was there I got to see my classmate's snakes. That was really NEAT because I know next to nothing about snakes and haven't seen too many close up. He was really nice and took out almost every snake for me to see and told me a little bit about each species. It was pretty cool. Man, I can't wait to learn more about all the different animals we're going to be exposed to while in vet school. It's going to be awesome!

(pre-)Anatomy course

So this week I actually started kind of going through this optional online anatomy course we can do. There are 8 units and so far I've quickly read through/gone over the first 4 of them. I have never taken an anatomy course before so I wasn't expecting to know much other than maybe just what I've picked up from working in vet clinics but man, I can already tell Anatomy is going to a beastly (not sure why I used that adjective - just the first thing that popped into my head, I guess) class. I've been doing pretty badly on all the pre-tests but significantly better on the post-tests (so I guess that means I'm learning something - at least short term). The one section so far, though, that I had a lot of trouble with both the pre and post-tests was the unit on bones (and joints, tendons, muscle, etc.) which was kind of discouraging since I really like Osteology. Maybe I was just having a bad day when I did those post-tests. So anyway, the point was - Anatomy is going to be hard but I think I'll like it a lot (like the lab portion of it, at least).

Mangoes

So after eating one of my dad's tree's delicious mangoes this afternoon I think I've come to the conclusion that mangoes might possibly be what I'll miss most about Florida (other than friends and family here). When I went to Costa Rica last summer I spent a lot of time eating the delicious fruit there. Mangoes, however, were the one fruit I tried there that I didn't like more than what I was used to back home. I LOVE Florida mangoes. I'm not used to shopping for mangoes at the grocery store since there's no reason to buy mangoes in South Florida (there's such an abundant supply from the trees). Maybe I'll be able to find some at the store that are comparable. :/

Last week in FL

So this week is my last week in Gainesville - actually, in Florida, for that matter. Well, since my family and lots of my friends are in Florida, I'm sure I'll be coming back to visit for holidays and breaks. So I guess technically, my last week in Florida was a couple weeks ago since I already "moved" to Raleigh. Right now I'm just in Gainesville as more of an extended visit, seeing people and taking care of some move-out duties. Anyway, in less than a week I'll be up in NC, starting a new life (or at least that's what it feels like right now). It's crazy. I'm sad about leaving the people I love down here but I'm also really excited - new place and VET SCHOOL, so soon! Of course, I'm also pretty nervous. Everything will be so different.


Update on some vet school stuff: By now I have submitted any forms that were due by today and tomorrow. That includes a bunch of forms for the student services office but it also includes my books order form, my supplies order form, and my second white coat ceremony form (the one concerning my presenter). Also, finally today my financial aid/FAFSA stuff has been worked out and I can finally see what they're offering me. Honestly, it's less than I was expecting but I might be able to make it work. Otherwise, I might have to look into getting an extra small loan from elsewhere. I'll have to crunch some numbers before I decide on all that. Another thing I have left to do is take an online Myers-Briggs personality test and some other type of test (I forget right now what it's called). Both those I still have a few weeks to complete. Speaking of that, we received an email giving us more details about our orientation. The information about those personality tests was included in that email. Oh man, Orientation actually seems like it might be a little rough. Compared to classes, I'm sure it will be a breeze but still, the orientation schedule is pretty jam-packed.


Oh, and we finally got our Big Sib assignments! So I've spoken with her via email a few times now. Right when I first heard from her I was in the middle of moving and then in a rush to get some last minute stuff submitted by July 1st but now that all that is taken care of I've gotten a chance to ask her some questions just about vet school in general. So far, she's made me feel a little less nervous about the difficulty level of it and the fact that I'll probably have to work while in school. She didn't make the "job while in vet school" thing seem as scary as some people have.


...so I got distracted from this post and lost my train of thought (yes, I have trains of thought even if it doesn't seem like my thoughts ever follow any type of normal "track") so I'll just end this post for now.....

Sick and moving :(

So I started to get sick Tuesday morning. It didn't get bad until Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Luckily, by Wednesday afternoon I had already began feeling better. Unfortunately, I am still feeling pretty bad :( and this was one of the worse times to get sick since today I'm packing all day (taking a short break right now before my mom gets here with the U-Haul) and I'm driving up to NC tomorrow. I guess it's better that I got sick starting Tuesday and getting (I'm assuming) the worst of it on Wednesday than getting sick on Wednesday or today and getting the worst of it today or tomorrow. Anyway, back to packing now. Here's to hoping I don't start feeling worse again....

Books, Supplies, and Courses

Since the week of my admittance, more and more information about the details of what I'll need and what vet school will be like has slowly but surely been trickling in. On my acceptance letter itself I was informed of when the first day of mandatory orientation is and on which day classes start. Shortly after I was given information on what I need to start working on for getting financial aid. Since then I have learned more about financial aid, my semester calendar and weekly schedule, my book and supplies list, my optional summer pre-anatomy course, and much, much more.


This past week I received my books and supplies list and now it's all becoming so real. I will be starting vet school in less than 2 months! Surprisingly, there were only two textbooks listed as "required" on the books list. There a few more "recommended" books and then a bunch of "reference" books. I have not decided which ones I will be ordering yet, nor exactly what of the many supplies I will be getting. I know I will need to get a white lab coat, coveralls, gloves, and blades. There are other things, like a dissection kit and boots, that I already have but I'll definitely be looking into it more to make sure they're sufficient enough. One of the reference books listed was one of those "5 Minute Consult" books and it's funny because I was recently having a conversation with a small animal vet in South Florida who mentioned those books. He was talking about how they're like "cheating." Hearing him talk about them was great.


Oh, and my schedule for vet school: in class and/or lab from 8:05am til 4:30 or 5:30pm everyday, about what I expected. But oh, how that schedule makes me think of high school - only even longer days. It will certainly be a change going back to having class all day. The closest I've had to a class schedule like this since high school was one semester of undergraduate where I was able to schedule all my MWF classes straight through from 8:30am til 12:35pm those days, and that doesn't even compare. Probably after only a short period of time after I start, this schedule will feel all too exhausting but as of right now, I am SO excited for it!


Anyway, I have more to say because of all this excitement but I am going to try to start working on making each one of these posts shorter (and maybe just posting more often if I can). So, next time....

OOS hassles

So I don't officially move up to Raleigh for another week but the process started months ago. Moving, oh how I dread it so much. It's not that I don't want to move to North Carolina. I actually am eager to move to NC; it was one of the many reasons I wanted to go to NCState. I mean, I do worry sometimes about moving to a place where I know no one and with weather I'm not used to (but quite excited for). There will be times where I will actually have to put on real shoes, rather than flip-flops, to take my dog for a quick walk. Granted, Raleigh doesn't even compare to many other vet school locations out there on the coldness scale, but I'm from S. Florida. I've lived in Florida my entire life. While I have gone on snowboarding and other trips where the temperature has gotten pretty low, I have never lived anywhere where the temperature has ever been below freezing. Okay, maybe there was like a night or two during the 4 years that I lived in Gainesville where it MAY have dropped into the high 20s....

Anyway, back to dreading the "move" itself. As my moving date gets closer and closer, I'm starting to dread it less and less. I think that's just because I know it will be over and done with soon and I'll be getting settled in and then before I know it I'll be starting classes. Maybe it's also because I finally have almost everything worked out. I finally know how I will be moving. We decided to rent a U-Haul and do it ourselves. Movers are just too expensive and most of them cannot guarantee an immediate delivery. For an across state move like this, they can only guarantee to deliver everything within a month. They like to pick up your furniture and store it until they have more furniture and such from other people as well to move in the same direction and then move everything at once. I also finally decided on exactly what day I will be moving, unless something goes wrong. Also, once again assuming nothing goes wrong, I have all my electric, water, gas, etc. set to turn on the day I take over my new place (also the day I'll be driving up there). I already have an appointment to get my auto-insurance transferred to a NC policy and an appointment to get my cable and internet hooked up a couple days after the move. I still need to make an appointment (if I can) with the DMV up there to get my NC driver's license asap. But all in all, almost all the specifics of the move have been worked out at this point and knowing that takes off a lot of the stress of it. Now here's to just hoping nothing goes horribly wrong......

Good luck!

I know VMCAS for the 2010-2011 cycle opened recently (June 3rd I think) so I just wanted to wish good luck for anyone who is applying this year. Good luck! If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them to the best of my ability and/or memory (of the application).

VMCAS, I hate you

So VMCAS opens in a week for next year's cycle - which means it's just about application time. The good news is there exists this nice and convenient place to fill out a single primary application for many of the vet schools out there. The bad news is that place is VMCAS. Obviously, from the title of this post, I had some issues with VMCAS. That might just be me though. There is also the possibility that a lot of the issues I had have been changed/fixed since last year. My main issue with VMCAS was that it was set up to be way more tedious than it needed to be. I'll explain in a second but first let me just talk about the application in general.

The first thing you need to do is designate/set up your Evaluators section. You want to make sure to give your evaluators plenty of time. The second thing you need to do is start on your personal statement, if you have not already. I won't lie - I didn't start my personal statement until July but in my opinion the sooner you start, the better. I don't think you actually need the full four months to write your personal statement. I just suggest starting right away because you'll need good amount of time between drafts/rewrites to just forget about it for a while before you go back and read over it again. Write a draft. Read through it and edit it yourself. Send it to anyone you know who will be honest and give you good input on it. Take their comments into consideration and edit it accordingly. Continue to do all this until you think you have your final draft. Then - take a month break. Forget about it and work on other parts of your application. After a month, come back to your draft and go through all the steps again. Continue this until you run out of time. I had six "official drafts" for my personal statement and I only saved it as a new "draft" if there were drastic differences between my current draft and the previous one. I compared my original draft and my final draft after all was said and done, and you wouldn't believe how much it changed. After comparing them, it was hard to believe that for a short period of time I was happy with my original draft.

As for the rest of the application on VMCAS, I would fill out the basics of the basics first. This includes: address in formation, personal data, background information, high school, previous professional & undergraduate enrollments, institutions attended, tests, and other/previous applications. I don't remember having any issues with any of those sections. I think they were pretty straight forward. The first section where I ran into a problem was the "Parent/Guardian" section and that is mainly because it asked for information that not even my parents knew the answers to, like the exact date that my father and the exact date that my mother became residents of Florida.

The other two sections I left out from above are the "Experiences" section and the "Coursework" one. These two sections are an example of what I meant earlier when I said the application was set up to be way more tedious than it needs to be. The reason for that in the Experiences section is that they want you to list everything in order from most recent to oldest. This wouldn't be an issue except that it is set up so that you can not edit the order you enter them in. So if you forget something or if you get a new job between when you start filling out this section and when the application is due then you need to start all over since that new job would now be the "most recent" and would have to be entered in first. Hopefully they changed this set up for this cycle of applications. As for the Coursework section - I just found the method required for entering the information to be very annoying. If they haven't changed it, I think you'll soon agree. Nonetheless, it's very simple - just tedious.

Despite my issues with some of the ways VMCAS is set up, I couldn't be more thankful for the convenience of the service. Sorry for the sudden end to this post (it's getting kind of long anyway). If anyone is interested, I can have at least one more post about the application since I'm sure there many things I forgot to talk about in this one.

Choosing where to apply

In applying to veterinary school, I honestly don't believe there is such a thing as a safe school. Personally, I was admitted to my top choice without evening getting into my "safe school" on the list of schools to which I applied (and by "safe school" I mean the one I originally thought I had the best chance of getting into). That just goes to show that the admissions for each school might not be what you think. So in choosing where to apply I would consider a few main things:

• Total cost of tuition and living (keep in mind that most schools will not allow you to switch to in-state tuition at any point during the entire 4 years)
• Location: can you picture yourself actually living there and not being miserable for 4 years?
• What type of vet you want to be (and if that school has a program that will suite you well) if you already know that
• Each school's minimum requirements and if you'll meet them (keep in mind some schools do have alternate eligibility options as well)

When I was applying some people would tell me things like "Apply to so-and-so, they'll love you" and "Don't apply to so-and-so, they won't accept you." I do believe there are some truths to that type of advice sometimes but only when it comes from someone who is really "in the know." Many people are often misinformed, and also, sometimes there is just something about you that a school likes. So, my advice is if there's a school you really want to go to but you've heard your chances of getting in are low, do it - apply. You never know.


In terms of deciding how many schools to apply to - that I do not know. Applying is expensive and the more schools you apply to, the more expensive it gets. If you have the money, apply to more (if there are more that fit your criteria). I don't think applying to too many schools will look bad but I can't promise you that since I am not "in the know" on that. I can tell you that I only applied to 5 schools and shortly after my applications had all been sent in and the deadlines had passed I had quickly began to regret not applying to more. Of course, after I got an acceptance letter, I was no longer regretting that choice. But, those four months before that letter came were pretty bad. If you feel like I felt (you don't want to apply to a lot of schools) and you feel like you can't narrow down your list anymore based on the above mentioned criteria then maybe even take into consideration the application itself: Does that school use VMCAS or will you have to fill out an entirely separate application? How much will that cost? How much do the different supplemental applications cost and what do they ask for? I wouldn't use the application itself as a primary means to choose between schools but maybe just as a last case thing - if you really need to narrow it down and feel like you have no other way. And speaking of the application, I think my next post will probably be about VMCAS and maybe about the application process in general.

I did it...

...I got in! And that's only the beginning...

For being only the beginning, it was quite the journey, though. Decidedly, the journey started for me less than two years ago. Unofficially, it started when I was born. I grew up with a small animal veterinarian for a mother and I loved going into the office with her whenever I could. For a long time, I thought I wanted to be a vet but I actually started to doubt it more and more as I got older. Since my mom was my most prominent role model growing up, I wasn't sure how big of an influence her career choice was having on mine. So when I started college at the University of Florida four years ago I spent a lot of time exploring many different fields of study and possible future careers. I quickly and undoubtedly decided to major in Mathematics. To this day I do not regret that decision. I did love and still do love math classes. I, however, never felt that same way towards any career involving mathematics. Two years into my undergraduate career I was still completely undecided on what I wanted to do. With so many possible careers to consider, veterinary medicine had been pushed to the back of my mind. At the end of my sophomore year of college I got my border collie, River. That was when everything changed. Getting a dog brought the field of veterinary medicine back into my life. Like any obsessed dog owner, I shared any and every story about River with anyone who would listen, including my mom. It quickly became commonplace for my mom and I to have extended conversations about River and all of her minor injuries (being a very active and playful border collie who spent a lot of time playing outside she would injure herself in a wide multitude of ways - run into a tree, bite her tongue, scrape up her pads, conjunctivitis, etc. - luckily nothing was ever bad enough to require more than an inquiry with my mom and maybe some eye drops in the mail). Suddenly, I knew, without a doubt, what I wanted to do and I wondered how I hadn't figured this out sooner. I started to get lots of "I always knew you'd become a vet" from friends and family. Apparently almost everyone in my life knew about my career choice before I did. I'm glad no one tried to persuade or push me towards it, though, since I feel like I could never really feel confident about my choice if I hadn't done all the experimenting with other possibilities and come back to it on my own. Granted, it would have been nice to have known sooner - since not deciding until junior year required me to have to squeeze in A LOT of prerequisites into my last two years of college. But I did it....and I got in.....and that's only the beginning.