The Five-Week Countdown
Today marks the five-week countdown until fourth year. That’s right; in just five short weeks of my entire veterinary academic career, I will be entering into clinics. I’m pretty sure yesterday I was going through orientation for my first year of veterinary school, and I was eating, breathing, and living anatomy.
Yet, somehow, in what will seem like the shortest month and some change of my life, I will already be a year from graduating and becoming a veterinarian. When you’re entering into your four-year journey of becoming a veterinarian, everyone will continuously tell you to “enjoy it” because it will “go by so quickly,” and while you’re studying for a mountain of tests, working on homework assignments, and trying to balance your sanity, it is really hard to believe them. But let me tell you, from the perspective of someone who is only a year away from being done, yes, there will be weeks where it seems like class will never end—you are constantly busy and sleep is a distant idea of a future self that will never be—and, sure, there will be weekends that will fly by in the blink of an eye because you really needed that time to study and somehow a minute went from 60 seconds to 10 seconds; yet, with this rollercoaster of quick and slow, these past three years of my academic career have flown by. I blinked and I feel as though I’ve almost missed it.
I’m feeling a little nostalgic of my past years in school, during which things like Spring Break, Christmas Break, and summer existed and when I made small adult decisions rather than large ones concerning new jobs and contracts. So with these last few weeks of faux adulthood before entering into true adulthood and my last ambassador blog post, here are my pearls of wisdom to you:
Cherish your undergraduate years, when you’re living on campus with your friends or with friend access right next door; when you can skip class and not worry about missing a week’s worth of information—not that I condone that; when you can go to class in yoga pants or sweats; and when you have adult responsibilities but they’re cushioned by an environment where you can make mistakes. If you go to a professional school, like veterinary school, enjoy every moment, even the moments that are not at all enjoyable. You have around 130 other people experiencing exactly what you are experiencing and taking this journey with you, so get to know them, be involved, and understand that this is the last time during which you will be in an environment saturated with your peers. And lastly, drink up all the information you can; when you get out into the world you have to go searching for information that while in college is shoved into your brain at a rapid and alarming rate. The access to knowledge is so vast and to have it concentrated in one place is often taken for granted until you’re out in the real world.
And with that, I move on to my last few weeks of school. Soon I will be a clinician, and I wish all of you the best of luck in whatever your academic/professional endeavors are. The knowledge is out there; the opportunities are endless and so should be your dreams!
—Chantz
DVM Student
Class of 2018