Spring break this year was anything but normal in all aspects but one, my annual Texas State Park parade.

Every year, I venture off with my dogs, Luca, Svarta, and Zoey, to three Texas State Parks for a week filled with hiking, exploring, and copious amount of fresh air. In the past, we’ve gone to Lost Maples State Park, Garner State Park, Dinosaur Valley State Park, and a few others. But, by far, our favorites to go to are Enchanted Rock State Park, Pedernales Falls State Park, and McKinney Falls State Park, which is exactly where we headed to this last spring break.

The first park we went to was Enchanted Rock. The park is located right outside of Fredericksburg in the beautiful hill country of Texas and the pink granite and white quartz of the area make hiking around the area breathtaking!

After a long and fun-filled day at Enchanted Rock, we made our way back home and recouped for day hikes at Pedernales Falls and McKinney Falls. Toward the end of the week, and after getting our fill of sun and nature, we packed up our things and headed back to College Station to prepare for the unknown in the remaining weeks in the semester.

These past few weeks have been very dynamic, but one thing that is unchanging is the dedication of our professors here at vet school.

Every day, they send out email updates and meet us via video chat for our lectures. Classes that would have otherwise been impossible to incorporate via an online platform have been rearranged to accommodate us in this trying time.

Our surgery class is now distance learning from home as we video chat with our professors while performing procedures on the synthetic organs distributed to us. Our anesthesia class is now fully virtual with helpful question and answer sessions to reinforce the subject matter, and our clinical skills course still pushes on with at-home tutorials of how to perform necessary skills like equine dentistry, hoof care, and much more.

The curriculum was, to say the least, difficult, if not impossible, to adapt to an online format, but the staff and faculty which support our education have done it. One of our professors, while recording a lecture for us, was having mic issues and so aptly said, “we must adapt and overcome”, and that is exactly what we are all doing.