Last Post

This will be my last post for this blog. I achieved my goal of getting into the vet school at Minnesota, and I've been grateful for all of your support. I know I said last time that I would do a vet school blog, but I just don't see how I can accurately describe my adventures without compromising the privacy of specific cases. I just want to maintain the integrity of my future school. And I know that my audience is not very broad, so most of you will hear how I am doing by other means. You are more than welcome to contact me individually for updates, but this is not a private forum. I just don't want to infringe on anyone else's privacy, and I want to be the most professional student that I can be. I'm sorry if you are disappointed, but I just don't feel comfortable blogging anymore.

That said, I am so excited for the opportunities that await me! I cried when I found out, and I've received so many congratulations and wishes for good luck in the coming four years. The moral is that this story has a happy ending, which is the best kind in my book. Thanks for reading! You guys are the best!

Winter Term 2012-2013, Week 10: It's the End of My World As I Know It

Well, the end of my college life, anyway. I can't believe it's finally here. All that stands between me and freedom for the next six months is my Animal Communication final, which will take me all of 15 minutes on Thursday. What can I say that I haven't already said? It's been an amazing time here. There have been so many ups and downs. I have enjoyed college more than I thought I would, and I've been informed that grad school is even better. I have so much to look forward to right now. I think it'll be nice to have such a long time off from school. It'll help me recharge my batteries and get ready for the hectic world of vet school. And yes, if you're wondering, I will be blogging about that, which is really exciting for me. I haven't decided what to call it yet, but I have a little bit to decide. I found out today that I've been placed on the alternate list for Iowa, which means that if any spots open up after the April 15th deadline, I may be invited to join the class of 2017 there. I'm still waiting on Minnesota, but I should know by Monday at the latest. Fingers crossed! If all else fails, I still have Kansas!

I also can't wait to be home to start our garden this summer. We didn't get one in last year, which was disappointing. In addition, I will be home for the start of the MLB season, which I haven't been home for in four years. The same goes for Easter. I missed the last two years because of not being able to find transportation, but I will be there this year! Finally, I am eager for the actual graduation/commencement ceremony here in May. It'll be so great to see my friends again and to celebrate our achievements with them. Assuming my Winter Term grades go the way I think they will, I will graduate Augustana summa cum laude, which means "with highest honors" for students who have a GPA of 3.9 and above. It will probably be listed in the graduation program, and it's something I can include on my resume when I am applying for positions after vet school.

Anyway, about this insane week. It really felt like two separate, very short weeks because of my short jaunt to Minnesota for the interview. I was so impressed with the school. Not only is the location great, but the opportunities there and the community of scholars is just so fantastic. Students there start their first year with two full weeks of just hands-on stuff with horses and cows, the latter of which is right up my alley as an aspiring food animal practitioner. There is a cool special study room just for first-years complete with personal desks and microscopes, so they don't have to purchase their own. For students pursuing careers with dairy cows, there is an opportunity to stay for two weeks at New Sweden Dairy near St. Peter, Minnesota. The facility is equipped with dorms and teaching areas so students can get the most out of the experience. The sheer variety of rotations and elective courses is just astounding to me. Plus, everyone there was so nice. Even the other candidates who were interviewing were really nice. I talked to another girl who also applied to Iowa, Minnesota, and Kansas and was accepted to Kansas. I hope we both get in at Minnesota, though. :)

One of my favorite parts of the day was when we got to see the anatomy lab and adjacent Anatomy Museum, which features a lot of plastinated animal specimens. One of the U of M doctors helped develop the process, which is how Body Worlds came to be. All of us candidates even got to take home CDs with anatomy slides on them of everything from poultry to cows to horses. I've only just scratched the surface going through it, but I can already tell you that there's some pretty darn cool stuff on it. Mom says I'm such a biology geek, but I reply that at least I know I'm headed into the right profession!

All in all, and as I predicted, visiting Minnesota just made me want to go there that much more. Just in general, it made me want to start vet school already! I know I'm going to meet so many incredible people and participate in so many awesome experiences. Success is going to require a complete revamping of the way I study, but I'm ready to change if it means learning the material and being the best vet I can be.

I just want to take this time to thank all who have supported me from day one. It's meant so much to me to have such encouragement to do my best and be my best.

As far as finals have gone, I felt really good about both of them. I am thankful that I've been doing well despite having my attention somewhat diverted from school work. There's obviously a good reason for it, but I just know that God has been helping me along every step of the way.

Well, that was basically my week! Now I just have a few little errands to take care of before I'm ready to be home and working a bit at the thrift store (and doing more shadowing!). I hope you enjoyed my baby animal post as much as I enjoyed writing it. Nothing lifts my spirits more than precious young creatures with big, round eyes.

And happy early Valentine's Day to all! I hope you can celebrate it with people you love. I will try to do the same here at school with my friends. But before I go, I wish to share with you something else that I love (besides the people in my life):

That's right. My home state! Part of the reason I want to be a vet is so that I can support agriculture in Minnesota because I just really feel loyal to the place where I grew up. It would sort of be my way of giving back to my community.

Because that's what Valentine's Day is for me. It's about celebrating all sorts of love, not just romantic. And chocolate. It's also about eating chocolate.

Yay, finals!

This is just a quick note that I probably will not get to my weekly blog post until Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Sorry for the delay. I just have my priorities with studying...

In the mean time, please enjoy these pictures of adorable baby animals.

Yup. Cutest kind of puppy alive. Photo courtesy of www.ataboy.ca.

Kitteh! Photo courtesy of loves-animals.com.

How can you not love this?? Look how blubbery it is! Photo courtesy of cdn.hdwallpaperspics.com.

My absolute favorite kind of baby animal, after puppies, of course. Photo courtesy of img0.etsystatic.com.

A baby animal I will hopefully be working with a lot as a vet. :) Photo courtesy of 24.media.tumblr.com.

I like this because the chick looks half-suspicious, like, "Hey, didn't I just hatch from one of those? I'm NOT going back in there!" Or maybe it's more like, "Hey, Susan, it's time to come out now!" These are thoughts I think during Finals. You're welcome. Photo courtesy of www.marlerblog.com.

Well, that's all the fun I have for you today, kids. Hopefully I'll have more time later to tell you about my crazy Week 10. Suffice it to say that the Minnesota interview went fairly well. I'll know in about eight days...but who's counting? ;)

Winter Term 2012-2013, Week 8: Girl Power

I was reading an article in the Augustana Observer (our school newspaper) earlier this weekend, and it mentioned how girls are having their time in the sun here at Augie lately. We had a female speaker for Symposium Day, over 60% of the students here are female, and I guess our women's sports teams are doing pretty well. Fortunately, I got to witness a little bit of this girl power last night. My good friend Hannah sang in a choir concert that I attended where most of the singers were female. Afterwards, she, her parents, and I sat in on the last half of my friend Devon's varsity women's basketball game against Carthage. We ended up losing, but Devon made a final-seconds two-point basket! It was awesome! I'm glad that I got to support two of my friends on the same night.

After the game, Hannah's parents were kind enough to invite me along to dinner. We found this cute Thai restaurant in downtown Moline called LemonGrass Cafe. And let me tell you, it was fantastic! We started off with some delicious appetizers, including some fresh spring rolls with peanut dip, shu mai dumplings with chicken and shrimp and a nice soy sauce, and something called the Crying Tiger--strips of steak on a bed of cucumbers, carrots, and lettuce and served with a pungent, spicy garlic sauce. Everything tasted so fresh, and I just love Asian spices. For the main course, I had Pad Keemao, which is basically wide rice noodles with lots of veggies and chicken. I topped it with a medium-heat sauce for an extra kick. It was quite the dinner! I would love to go back for lunch because they have bento boxes and a banh mi sandwich, which I have wanted to try for some time now (it's pretty much a staple of Vietnamese cooking). So, not all the food there is Thai. There are Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese influences, too, but as far as I'm concerned, it's all Asian and all delicious.

I'm sorta glad this week is over because I got two group presentations out of the way. Our courtroom-drama-esque presentation in Microbiology went over well, I think. I enjoyed watching everyone else's because some of them were hilarious, like an SNL Weekend Update spoof on the topic of Lyme disease. On the other hand, our Journal Club presentation in Physiology about sodium transport in saltwater and freshwater pupfish did not go so well. The article was really complex, so our presentation ran a bit long, and people in the audience got really bored. I also didn't do as well as I wanted to on the last test in that class, so I will really have to buckle down when we write our follow-up for the article and when I am studying for the final.

Meanwhile, I am pleased that I will actually be able to complete the requirements for Mortar Board. This basically means that I get a special medallion to wear at graduation in May! I was worried because we have not been doing much with Mortar Board, but it appears as though I will be just fine!

Microbiology is winding down with a really cool identification lab. We are running all these media tests to tell which organisms we have been given, and it is just really neat to look at all of the results and be able to tell which bacterium it is based on them. I suppose that's an important piece of a career in health, taking the results of many different tests and coming to a conclusion with the information they provide. I have already identified one of my two organisms based on its growth pattern (or lack thereof) at two different temperatures. The other is more difficult because I had to inoculate about eight different types of media to be able to distinguish it from other related organisms.

On a broader note, I am sitting here contemplating how I have just two weeks left here. It's so crazy to think that my college career is almost over. There is so much I did not do during these three-and-a-half years. I sort of have some regrets, but I'm mostly happy about the things I was able to do while I was here. I don't regret not going Greek. That whole lifestyle is just not for me. I don't regret joining anything that I did. I do regret not being a part of things like the UNYK dance group because they look like they have so much fun. I do regret never getting to Niabi Zoo, the color-changing bridge in Davenport, and not meeting many people until quite late in my college career. But those are just a few, and I want to keep this mainly positive. I'll probably wax more poetic next week or the week after that when everything really is ending, but it's just amazing how fast time flies. I'm sure you understand this better than I do, as it's part of growing up and becoming a real adult. Your life just starts to be crazy. One minute you're entering a dorm as an awkward freshman far from home, and the next you're moseying around campus like you own the place. Because you do. It's become a home away from home, a true alma mater for my growth as a biologist and future health professional. It makes me wonder how I ever worried about anything related to college. Before I began, I was nervous that I wouldn't do well, that my professors wouldn't be approachable, that I wouldn't make friends, that I'd get homesick, that I would never have time for fun, you name it. Now I look back on that version of myself and laugh.

But looking forward to this coming week, it should be quite the ride. I'm flying home Wednesday for my third and final vet school interview at the University of Minnesota on Thursday. As much as I hate airplanes for a multitude of reasons which I will not delineate here for the sake of keeping your attention, they do get me home a heck of a lot faster than cars. I'll have more time to relax and mentally prepare myself for Thursday, and I'll get some downtime after the interview to chill at home before I have to head back to the airport. For the most part, I'm not missing too much that's important as far as classes go. I've got it mostly worked out with my professors. Then, I can focus on studying for my finals when I get back so that I can end my college career on a high note academically. It seems appropriate and almost funny that I go my whole time here without missing a class until the very last week of my very last term at Augustana. But it's for probably the best reason I can think of, so I really don't mind too much. Honestly, I'm feeling really laid back about it, not in an I-don't-care way but in an I'm-not-going-to-worry-about-this-because-it's-not-going-to-do-me-any-good way. I have a friend at the U of M vet school right now, and she's told me that the interviewers are really cool, plus I've done this behavioral interview thing before, so I know what to expect. I do think I need to get away from campus for a little bit before finals because I've just been under so much pressure. A tiny stint at home could be just the thing I need to power me through Finals Week.

And now I leave you with some pictures I took this week.

These are the multicolored handouts given to me by  my Microbiology professor. She really, really wants to make sure we don't lose them. Obviously.

The view of the woods around the Slough from the fourth floor of the library. I was just "stopping by snowy woods" on my way back from working on a project one day, and I thought I should snap this while I could.