First Week Of Vet School

One week ago, Friday night, I was saying goodbye to Dr. Pull-My-Leg over tea in Millbrae, minutes from the airport. When my plane took off from San Francisco I cried inconsolably.

One week later, it's Friday night. I'm sitting at my computer in Ithaca, the window's open, it's warm, the house is perfectly quiet and I am tired but happy.

The first week of vet school was a whirlwind of orientation activities and classes. I think that next week, when we have five full days of classes instead of two, it will be even more of a whirlwind!

It's a bit intimidating, a bit overwhelming, but more than anything else it is truly exciting and wonderful.

The part I was most worried about was gross anatomy laboratory. I like dissection, but I am painfully slow at it. I'm a perfectionist by nature, and I am always afraid to cut the wrong thing. When I was on the necropsy floor this summer, the clinicians would yell at me, 'This isn't surgery, just start cutting!'

Well, I absolutely love gross lab. It is so much fun to have everything literally at your fingertips. It is way easier to understand the body when you can touch it. It's one thing to read about a body part. It is another thing completely to feel it and peel back the layers one by one.

Everthing we are learning is super fascinating and directly applicable to medicine.

This is what I have been waiting for. This is my dream.

And my goal is to enjoy every minute of it, to realize every day how lucky I am to be getting the chance to do this, even when I do get stressed and tired and overwhelmed.

It's hard to believe last week I was sitting on a plane in San Francisco crying. One week in my life has started to feel like one year lately. Things are happening so fast. But in a good way finally.