Christmas Is All Around Us

Two years ago, I decided I wanted to be a veterinarian. I had no idea how to get there or what I needed to do. I had never had any real science classes in high school; at least, not nearly comparable in caliber to what most other highschoolers get. They had attempted to teach us some chemistry, but all I remembered from that was that I didn’t get it. At all.

But I decided to jump in and go for it anyway. I had about a hundred hours of animal experience from volunteering at the Humane Society, and I had just started volunteering for IndyFeral. Every other Sunday I scrubbed surgical instruments and had no idea what they were used for. The towel clamps looked sinister, the hemostats were vaguely self-explanatory by name, but I really could not fathom what a spay hook could be used for. In good time, I learned.

I’m pretty amazed at what I have accomplished since that summer of 2009. I found out that chemistry wasn’t impossible, biology was much more complicated than I had anticipated, and that statistics and physics were totally doable with enough effort. I also found out, to the great surprise of my introverted nature, that making friends with my classmates makes a huge difference.

I’ve racked up over 1600 hours of animal experience, including everything from cats and dogs and horses to baby deer and full-grown cheetahs. I got my mediocre undergraduate GPA to inch up, little by little, to where it wouldn’t be automatically dismissed by the admissions committees. I wrote and rewrote my personal statement.

Oh, and I totally rocked the GRE.

But, sometime last November, I started to get a funny feeling. It wasn’t the stress or the exhaustion from working four days a week, shadowing one day a week, spending 30 hours a week studying biochemistry and finding the off chance to do my physics homework on top of volunteering and trying to participate in clubs. It wasn’t even the knowledge, in the back of my mind, that I was too keyed up and busy to appreciate the love of my life who was doing everything he could to help me along. It wasn’t the realization of how much vet school really costs or how little veterinarians tend to get paid these days or actually figuring up how much undergraduate debt I had already racked up (a lot). It wasn’t any of these things that really got me to doubting the one thing I had been so certain of achieving. It was Thanksgiving.

The day before Thanksgiving, I took one of those horrid biochemistry tests that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. I had taken a physics test earlier that week, and suddenly realized that I had nothing to do over the holiday weekend. Nothing school related, anyway. It was the first breath of fresh air that I had encountered in months, and it was heavenly. I actually had time to spend with my boyfriend. We discovered the classic movie channel and watched hilariously old films all night. I had time that weekend to spend with my family without the nagging feeling of needing to study something. I had time, for the first time, to take the time to enjoy the things that are me. I felt like a different person, and when I went back to school and work and activities the next week, I had a nagging little suspicion that something wasn’t quite the same.

It wasn’t until the next semester that I lost my resolve, little by little. I quit my Physics 2 class after the first week, blaming it on the crappy teacher. I started my zoo internship, but it wasn’t as interesting as I had anticipated. I decided to enroll in the online nutrition class that I needed to apply to Purdue, but after a while I decided that I would rather use that money to pay off my car. Tentatively, I started thinking in terms of, “what if I don’t go to vet school?” I was still pretty gung-ho about applying, but I was worried that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t really want to anymore. It felt kind of like losing my religion. I couldn’t see the meaning in everything I had done or was doing, if it didn’t relate to getting into vet school.

After a time and through much inner struggle, I came to terms with my loss of motivation. If you were to see my journal, you’d notice that every entry from November 21st to the present is a whirlwind of “maybe I shouldn’t”s and “is this right for me?”s, interspersed with the inevitable “yes I will”s and “of course I want this”s. Eventually, the “maybe not”s won out, and I decided that I just wasn’t anywhere near ready to apply to veterinary school.

“Not ready” is a bit of a cop-out, though. It leaves me room to reconsider vet school as a possible future goal. Perhaps, with time and experience and a good dose of “normal” life, I will some day be ready to get back in the saddle and fill out that application. Perhaps not.

Until then, my five year plan is to live life to the fullest while doing whatever it takes to get out of debt completely. As for my ten year plan? Well, I’ve always thought it’d be fun to be a farmer. 😛