As a first-year student, the Cat Action days of spaying and neutering feral kitties were overwhelming and seemed chaotic. There were so many of us working together to help the cats! As a second-year, I started to sense some order, started to learn the flow, and how things worked, even started to participate a little more. By third-year, I was doing procedures and basically knew how everything worked. The days had definitely gotten less chaotic in my mind as I accepted that this is just how the day goes.
Now as a fourth-year, I’m no longer the overwhelmed first-year trying to stay out of the way, hoping not to screw anything up. I’m not the second-year who kind of knows what I’m doing, and I’m not the third-year who thinks I might know what I’m doing. I’m the fourth-year who’s running the show. I’m the one everyone else is looking to for guidance and explanation. I get to teach everything I’ve learned over the past three years of school, and it’s super awesome.
In vet school, I’ve felt sometimes that I haven’t really come that far, that I’m just as clueless as the bright-eyed first-year stepping through the doors. But today in Cat Action, I really got to see just how full-circle my vet school journey has come. I definitely don’t know everything, and I’m still working on my confidence, but I’ve grown so much from that little first-year I was three years ago. This is what matters.
