Hi there; Birdie here!
So you know how I said last weekend was the longest weekend? I had no idea how right I was. We had the snow day Friday and then I went to the CDC (more on that in the next paragraph), but then we had two more snow days, and didn't start class until 10 (instead of the usual 8) yesterday morning. I spent the first snow day watching the lectures I missed from Monday, which was 6 hours of class. The second day I spent studying for the immunology exam we had as soon as we got back (it went totally fine, btw. I had immuno in undergrad, so I wasn't worried). I did have a bit of fun one of them sliding around on the ice with a friend. I didn't even attempt driving on either of the snow days--laugh all you want, people who live with actual winter on a regular basis, but 1) we don't have salt trucks. Like, in the state, at all. 2) We're not used to it, which means about 95% of people on the road will not have any idea what they're doing, which makes for unsafe conditions. Yeah, no thanks. Although I really will have to go to the grocery store tomorrow... I'm glad we had one of those snow days since I don't know how I'd have gotten through all the lectures without it, but I really wish we hadn't now. It's not as if I wasn't already worried about how I'd finish the anatomy dissection...and now we're going to have class until 5 for about 3 weeks now to make up the time. Which is not much fun, especially when we have 4 hours of neuro in one day.
Anyway, the CDC trip. It was really quite a lot of driving...about 8 hours each way. We had two vans--not the mildly creepy white vans you might think of as a school van. They were really nice, the same sort of minivan my parents have. It wound up being a first years van and an everyone else van. The faculty member who was in charge of the trip, Dr. W, rode in our van for the second half of the trip there, and drove all the way back. When the other van followed us, they kept missing lane changes and taking the wrong exit...it got to be kind of a running thing.
When we first got there, everyone was talking about changing, but I'd only brought business casual clothes (as requested) for the actual event day, not for the reception beforehand. I hadn't been expecting to have time to change (and really we didn't--we got there a bit late--but everyone else was in sweatpants and such and really needed to change). Luckily it wasn't too formal; I put on my nicer shoes, took off the sweatshirt, fixed my hair and changed my jewelry and then my jeans were fine. We checked into the CDC building--we had to show our drivers' licenses--and got our security badges, only I didn't have one. I wasn't the only one; I think there were 3 people in our group who didn't. And I know it was not because I didn't register early enough, especially since I got the T-shirt the next day. We had to turn in the badges at the end anyway, so I don't really care, though. It couldn't go in my scrapbook anyway. ;)
The speakers the first night were mainly about why they wanted us there--about how vets are valuable in public health. One speaker was a DVM/MPH who worked in occupational health, which left at least many of us wondering why exactly she needed a DVM for that (or maybe better phrased as how she was using her DVM in that). We also split into small groups and did an exercise in wordplay involving a penny...it's kind of hard to explain, but it was fun in a riddle-y sort of way, and it made me feel pretty clever when I helped get the answers. There was a reception at the bowling alley in the hotel (yes, that was a thing) with quite good pizza and little cupcakes. We didn't stay for long, though--it had been kind of a long day.
The second day's speakers were more focused on presenting us with the opportunities for DVMs in public health (though, see above: sometimes it was more like opportunities in public health just in general). One was a DVM/PhD who worked on vaccine development and did some procedures on bats in association with bringing in a colony. That was my favorite (I also happen to quite like bats). Some of the stuff they told us about Dr. W had already told us about, but some of it was new. Oh, and we also did a little exercise with passing around wristbands to mimic the spread of a disease. The fluff was a modified rabies virus that was basically a zombie virus, so that was fun. Our hotel room came with a red wristband (initial infected, first to start passing out wristbands), but some people got cute bat beanie babies. I kind of want one. Since I didn't have a badge, I didn't get assigned a tour, but they had an opening in the museum "tour" so I took it. Really it was just an initial presentation and then an opportunity to wander the museum, but I really enjoyed it. All the historical scientific stuff was really cool, and the temporary exhibit was about social justice ("health is a human right"), which I was pretty into. If you get a chance to visit the CDC museum, I recommend it--at least if you're a science/historical science nerd like me.
After my CDC experience, I don't think I want to go into public health, at least not right after graduation/in the ways they focused on. I'd rather not go into regulatory government work that doesn't involve much touching of actual animals, and I'm not really interested in food animal work either. I'm coming to realize that I kind of just want to be a small animal GP; I don't have a special interest in anything, I just want to look at all sorts of diagnostic tests and figure out what's wrong with the pet and help its owners make it better. And I don't see why that can't be okay. (some of that is coming from the LVMA networking event--there was one particularly intimidating veterinarian who was more like a harsh interviewer).
We had our first path club meeting this week, on the first day back after snow days. It was a bit of a mess, to be honest, but I consider it like a bad anatomy exam: I passed, and now it's over and I don't have to worry about it anymore. For the sake of completeness, I'll say that the president wasn't able to eat the food I ordered (which I almost missed ordering, too), only one person signed up for open house, and the presentation was pretty insubstantial (the snow days messed with planning for dates). But we have a treasurer and secretary now, so that's honestly better than I was expecting. I'm not looking forward to spending all day at the path club table at open house, though. Especially since there are 3 other things that want me to work for them, and especially since I really wanted to go to a convention that weekend. Don't try telling me I'll be glad I did open house, either. I could do open house next year; I can't do the convention then.
Today there was a "Friday in the courtyard" event (guess where), which happened to be right after class due to making up snow day time. A good number of first years went (probably because of the 'already there' thing); I stayed for about an hour and had a hot dog. They had free beer, which is great if you like that sort of thing. Tomorrow Farm Animal Club is putting on a cochon de lait--a pig roast with all sorts of sides and I don't even know what. I already paid the $5 or whatever for a wristband, so I'll be there. Other than that, as much as I would like to go see a movie or read The Fault in Our Stars (I'm getting it from the library; I want to read it before the movie comes out), I'll probably be spending most of the weekend studying for our neuroscience exam. Speaking of which, I should probably at least look at that tonight...
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