“I can’t believe it, I’m actually here!” After all the years spent thinking about vet school, planning for it, and wishing for it, I can finally see a hazy image of the day when I’ll be Dr. Hemmer. I can’t wait to get started—I’m hankering to jump right in and work with the school’s sheep and teaching beagles, and volunteer on the wildlife baby-feeding teams. That enthusiasm serves me well, as I face hours of lecture reviewing everything I ever learned in undergraduate cell biology and biochemistry courses.
“Wow, everyone here has a different story, and is so fascinating and so… accomplished!” The girl sitting next to me got engaged this summer after doing regenerative research for a few years, while the girl four rows ahead worked on a monkey preserve in Africa for a semester. I’m torn between envy and awe, because my peers are so awesome that it can be kind of hard to remember that I, too, am awesome.
“So. Much. Reading.” Thirty-page chapters, four-page chapters, ninety-page chapters, diagrams/charts/tables—there’s so much material to review, and all the professors recommend coming to lecture having already read the material. Yes, I know undergraduate professors encourage the same thing, but in vet school coming to lecture prepared seems much more pertinent to surviving the course.
“Lunch talks are FANTASTIC inventions.” I don’t know if they do lunch talks at other vet schools, but at Tufts each club organizes professors or outside professionals to give informative presentations during our lunch hour. Not only do we get free lunch, but these lectures, which range from pathology to business management to dentistry, include valuable information that we’ll need to know at some point. And often it’s much more interesting than the biochemistry and histology that we’re learning!
