Anonymous asked: I keep reading about your externships and experiences and I feel so behind! If I follow/shadow a small animal vet, an equine vet, and volunteer at a wildlife center, will that be enough for vet school? Also, how do you find all this information about diseases and whatnot? You're always posting all these fascinating posts about vet med, and I've been wondering if I should be familiar with these things already?

Don’t feel behind! I’m a college junior who started late in the game in terms of getting experience hours, so I felt the need to carefully select really good ones and cram as many hours into my vacations as I could. Most people do part-time stuff over longer periods of time rather than doing pre-vet on crack like I feel like I’m doing. Your experiences sound varied and if you have decent hours and make meaningful relationships and experiences for yourself you should be okay - don’t base your “stats” off of anyone else’s. There is no one true formula for vet school admissions and in the end the experience is your own. 

Also, I find cool stuff by following other blogs, so you should do that too! You will definitely not have to know all this stuff as a pre vet student, but I just like reading about them and looking at the pictures etc. So don’t let it stress you out. Check out the amazing blogs that I reblog a lot, and follow them too! :) 

i’m so, so sorry for the week and a bit more of tumblr absence! after getting back to dartmouth from my externship i basically spent most of my days sleeping, eating, drinking with friends, and doing really silly things with my boyfriend. today he chased me into his room because he was doing scary things with his arms and then i hid under the blanket. i’ve only been 21 for 5 full days and already i love acting like a child.

my externship at the equine clinic is one of the hardest things for me to write about, because so much happened. it exhausted me - i was on call day and night and weekends and emergencies and quickly became an expert on setting up for a colic - but it also educated me, in a no-nonsense down-and-dirty way, and i think i kind of loved that. i loved the simple pleasures of my externship, like doing 8pm medications in the quiet surgery barn with just the radio playing, but i also loved that i got to see the scary and sad and frustrating parts of equine practice, like the owner that just wouldn’t euthanize her horse even when he was lying in his stall with his eyes begging us to do it. i learned so much about lameness and neuro exams and colic workups and nasogastric intubation and nerve blocking and ulcers and Tildren, but also about clients who just want to take their horse home now, and clients who just think this foal is a little off, and clients who don’t want the intern injecting their horse’s hocks, etc etc. i didn’t love all of it while it was happening, but being there for everything has unquestionably made me into a more competent and capable and knowledgeable pre-veterinary student and vet school applicant. 

i wish i could sit down with all of you pre-vets and talk about everything i can remember - the first foal i got to restrain or the last colic emergency i helped with, who made several heartbreaking attempts to stand post-surgery but just had too weak a hind end to do it. feel free to ask me any questions about what i learned, how the externship worked, etc. if given the choice, i would most certainly do this again, and i’ve already talked to the vets about coming back when i’m a vet student!

that’s the other thing, the last thing, the most important thing: i’ll never forget the people. they were inspiring, likeable, admirable veterinarians and technicians and horse people - the vet that took me for ice cream and the vet that picked me to take on farm calls and the tech that told dirty jokes and the vet who offered to write me a recommendation letter when i wrote him a thank you email. i hope i remember their faces forever. i can’t wait until i meet others like them. 

i start work on thursday (weird, i know) and i hope this humane society stuff all works out but i also already know i’ve done well this term finding something worthwhile to spend my time on. i will never forget 13Spring. 

the past couple of days have been a whirlwind of polaroid snapshots and mike’s hard lemonade and a deliciously dangerous chocolate cake. i love my friends, and i think i have the capability to love myself.