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.