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At 1:00pm on Wednesday, May 9th 2007, the class of 2008 at the NC State-CVM officially became 4th year vet students.  There was no fanfare, unless you count one last free lunch with the 76 of us who survived the previous 3 years.  I did, though, have a private ceremony by taking 4 extra cookies off of the free cookie plate. We were then all assigned text pagers, and like true professionals we spent the next 4 hours joke texting each other (My favorite page so far being just a simple “I know what you did last summer”). 

 At 1:00pm I headed to the radiology department to officially kick off my first block.  I assumed that the fanfare must be waiting through the doors that officially separate the “classrooms” from the “hospital”.  We have very clearly marked ‘restricted access’ doors which separate the two…and even though during orientation we were clearly told that nothing was ‘restricted access’ to us anymore…you still feel like an outsider when you go through them…kind of like those kids must have felt when they crossed through the cabinet doors into Narnia…only with less talking gophers. 

Now when I say fanfare, I don’t mean that I expected a marching band and clowns to greet us (and ESPECIALLY not clowns…I have a fear of clowns… some might say that it is an irrational fear…I say those people clearly did not grow up with the likes of Poltergeist, It, and to a lesser extent Killer Clowns from Outerspace).  A horn section and a little face-painting would have been a nice touch, though.  I guess I just expected to feel different when I crossed through the doors..more confident, poised, and ready for ‘battle’.  I didn’t.  I felt like an impostor. 

Even worse was that I felt like an impostor who was just in the way of the technicians and doctors doing the real work.  Let’s just say that it takes a few hours/days to adjust to life outside of the classroom.  But after those few hours/days, you get hooked.  You get hooked on actually being in the action for once (and on using cliches like ‘in the action)…You get hooked on getting to work with amazing technicians and clinicians (who are completely different folks from when they were killing you slowly with power point)  You get hooked on looking like a complete imbecile because you can’t use roentgen signs to describe a lung pattern on a radiograph…or even remember what the roentgen signs are…or tell the difference between a thoracic and abdominal radiograph. OK, so maybe not so much that last one. 

The good news is that what the previous fourth years had been telling you for the past 3 years was true….fourth year is freaking fantastic (and there’s a little alliteration for you…it’s the only literary device that I can remember….though I do love to say onomatopoeia even though I can’t remember what it means).  

This past Friday I completed my first block, radiology.  I think that I know a little bit more now than when I went in…which is probably dangerous for something.  I started my second block (anesthesia) today, and I have a feeling that I’m about to be rudely introduced to the four letter word that is ‘Call’.  I still feel like an impostor right now.  In fact, I do believe that I’ll reserve that title until I’m at least 5 years out of school.  Wait a minute….A BUZZ…OOH…here it is!!!…My first REAL PAGE!!!  What a monumentous occasion!!  Alright, Todd, just calm down and read it……………it says……….it says…..”Drink…More… Ovaltine”….great….is that an ‘A Christmas Story’ reference?!?…wonderful…I think that I have just found my new favorite page. 

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that ”Veterinarians aren’t real doctors.”   Aren’t real doctors? Aren’t real doctors!?  Why because real doctors only treat humans?  I don’t think so, buddy.  Real doctors are able to take a set of clinical signs and extract information from them to diagnose a problem.  Then from there, they can treat the problem.  It doesn’t matter what species you are treating!  A lot of people are amazed by the advances in veterinary medicine… I mean, how many people have toured your school’s hospital and made the remark, “Wow, its just like a real hospital?”  Well, duh!  Only difference is that our patients are usually four-legged and have fur (or are birds, reptiles, etc.)  As much as I know, there are days where I am still amazed.  One case, (that wasn’t even mine), was one of those amazing things to me.  We had a dog come into the hospital for eating the recalled pet food.  He was in acute renal failure.  When a human is in acute renal failure, doctors will put him on kidney dialysis.  Guess what, we did just that!  This dog must have been some dog b/c he laid in our clinic for about four days straight on 24 hour kidney dialysis.  Then stayed in our ICU for the next week being diuresed.  After all was said and done, the dog got to go home to the happy owners.  Now try to tell me that those clinicians and students who treated this dog are not “real” doctors.  They saved his life.  Isn’t that what real doctors are supposed to do?  How awesome is it, that we have the ability to save lives?? It’s something that when I am reminded by cases like the above, its humbling… but also instills a deep pride in me.  As veterinarians, we truly take care of living things that can literally not take care of themselves.   Ahh, chills.  Okay, enough rambling by me.  Just thought I’d share. 

Several news articles have caught my attention recently concerning conservation biology and veterinary medicine…

1) For those of us in the San Francisco Bay Area, news of two humpback whales (mother and calf) traveling 70 miles up the Sacramento River all the way to the Port of Sacramento has dominated the headlines for the past several days. The efforts to turn them back to the ocean did not start until after they had reached the port and wounds were seen on both from a propeller hit. Now, several agencies, including NOAA, USCG and the Marine Mammal Center are working to move them back, using everything from water from a fire boat to herd the whales to playing sounds of killer whales attacking a gray whale to sounds of “contented” feeding humpback whales. None of these methods to date have been successful. Veterinarians are also debating whether or not to administer antibiotics, which apparently has never been done before with humpbacks. With the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, there are concerns that increased traffic on the river will further stress the whales (USCG is maintaining a 500 yard perimeter at all times). Are these measures necessary? Are they too extreme? Are they not enough? Personally, I think we have a duty to help these wayward endangered animals, but I’m not sure anyone knows enough about them to determine the best means of helping them home.

2) Federal scientists are actively pursuing permits to kill sharks in order to save the endangered Hawaiian monk seal. Many adult seals have been observed with shark bite wounds and the pups are especially vulnerable. The article makes it seem like there are enough sharks to go around that killing up to 10 will not impact the shark population while conserving the seal population. There is no indication that veterinarians are directly involved, but I just have some random thoughts on this topic. It concerns me that we (as stewards of animals) have gotten to the point where killing other animals is the solution for saving other animals. Is this the only option? Has this been done elsewhere? I know of examples, where diseases have been introduced in non-native animals (e.g., European rabbits in Australia) to eradicate populations only to end up with disease-resistant animals and no decrease in the population (after several population rebounds). We try to correct our past mistakes by placing emphasis on endangered or nuisance species, sometimes with deleterious effects. I know from classes that I have taken that our conservation methods have improved by leaps and bounds, but it’s alarming to come across an article like this…

As I look around our classroom, there are more than a few empty seats…far more than there were during our white coat ceremony about eight months ago. We haven’t lost all these students due to attrition, and our biggest exam of the week was yesterday. So I wonder, “Why all the no-shows”? It’s a somewhat silly question to ask, because there are a lot of reasons. Some are scheduled for only two lectures and no afternoon labs. Others prefer to study for this week’s parasitology quiz rather than sit through immunology and genetics. Even more might have worked late last night at the teaching hospital. Just as in undergrad, it’s nearly impossible to find a seat on the first day, but towards the end of the semester/quarter, one can practically lie down across a row of seats in the back.

I am not judging by any means whatsoever because I’m just as guilty for writing this post as lecture goes on. I don’t look at it as not paying attention…I consider it multi-tasking. Saying that I underestimated the demands of veterinary school would be an understatement. I figured that after five years of undergraduate and graduate education in engineering and two years of working full time while taking vet school pre-requisites and gaining veterinary experience would be comparable to life as a vet student. My previous life was easy compared to life now. Not that life now isn’t great…I love being a vet student. But sometimes I find it difficult to balance all of the extracurricular opportunities with electives and core classes and laboratories.

So why am I trying to “multi-task” in the middle of lecture? I told myself eight months ago that now that I had been accepted to veterinary school, grades were no longer the utmost priority. My new mantra was that life should be more about getting hands-on experience inside and outside of the teaching hospital, socializing with friends and making more time for myself. It sounded like a fair and logical trade at the time. But as the first quarter moved on, I found myself striving for the best possible grades while getting involved with more clubs and activities than I could possibly handle. The old, grade-obsessed me wasn’t making room for the new, enlightened me. I was juggling studying with treatment crews, webmastering, fundraising for clubs and volunteering at weekend symposia. I was handling vet school like my closet: I tend not to throw away old favorites, yet I enjoy adding to the collection with new polos and buttondowns (making for a very packed closet…OK, maybe that was a bad analogy).

As the first year comes to a close, I’m finding a better balance with life and school. I’ve done a better job about taking on new activities while letting go of others, all while maintaining respectable grades. Being a recent convert to veterinary medicine, I have a strong feeling that it was my grades and test scores that helped me the most on my application. I didn’t have nearly enough time to get the average number of veterinary experience hours (~ 2500) that many of my colleagues had while applying. But as I look forward to post-graduation plans, I realize that grades aren’t the only things that land a good career in this field. A solid understanding of clinical skills will not only be essential for letters of reference, but also for the confidence of walking into a job on day one and not being too overwhelmed. It probably doesn’t hurt to know how to multi-task either.