Saturday, July 23, 2016

Diary of A Second-Year Vet Student: Drama of the Little Sibs

One of the traditions at my vet school, and I'm sure at others as well, is for second-year vet students to take on the role of "big sibling" to "little sibling" first-year students. Each class gets to decide how the big sibs are assigned to or associated with the little sibs. The most common, and certainly reasonable, way is to send a short survey to the incoming first-years then share their answers with the second-year class, allowing each person to select their little sib. That is exactly what our class presidents did.

The survey results from the Class of 2020 were posted in a shared google form, and we, the Class of 2019, were told that on such a day and exactly at such a time, the form would be opened up for editing and we could put our initials next to the person we chose for our little sib. 

Sounds pretty simple. 

Shit went south in less than an hour. People started claiming "dibs" on this or that first-year. Others protested that claiming "dibs" wasn't fair. Tempers flared, mean words were exchanged. Dibs were placed on incoming students who were already dibbed by someone else. Arguments raged about who should get priority in claiming a little sib: "He's from my home state so I obviously get first dibs!" "She wants to work with camelids so obviously she must be my little sib!" This was all happening during the last couple weeks of the term when everyone was just a frazzled mental mess anyway, and the arguments began to spill out into hallways during breaks between classes.

The entire affair began to take on the air of something between auctioning slaves and trading Pokémon cards: she's mine! No, I called dibs on her first! Sadly, very sadly, this was only happening for a very small number of the incoming first years, the result of the cool kids fighting over the cool kids.

After reviewing the google form, I made my selection of little sib quickly. He's an undergrad here at the university and I've known him for several years. I like him a lot, and I think he'll be a good vet. I contacted him and asked him if he'd be okay if I put my name in as his big sib. He said yes. Nobody was fighting over him. I guess neither he nor I qualify as cool kids. Fine by me.

Then the form opened up as duly promised by our presidents and the shit didn't just go further south, it went nuclear. 

Some of my classmates began replacing initials already in place in the form with their own. Did they know that google documents retain a complete editing history, what and by whom? They didn't care! This was playing for blood, a fight to the death. This was about getting the most cool first-year as their little sib. Because clearly that would mean they were cool too.

I quietly logged in, put my initials next to my little sib's name, watched some of the drama (you can see real-time edits in shared google docs), then quietly logged out. Just in time, too, because one of the class presidents, who was also involved in a bidding war for one of the first-years but has yet to own up to his participation in the shit show, finally closed the form down, about three hours after he had opened it up. Of course, his initials were firmly in place by his choice of little sib when he closed it down. Keepin' it classy!

That still wasn't the end of it. One of my classmates who was engaged in some of the more public and nasty fights with another girl forced the dean to meet with both of them. The dean, who surely has better things to worry about. I haven't heard the gossip about the outcome, but really, what difference could it make? The entire affair was petty and unfortunate. 

I truly hope that the next three years provides some tempering for my classmates. 

I met with my little sib last week. I gave him a tour of the building--he'll get a tour during the orientation before classes, but I gave him a tour of the actual places he needed to know about; the official tour is pretty worthless. I shared suggestions about which textbooks he should consider buying and which ones he didn't need to buy at all, where he could find all the digital resources that the students share between themselves, what he needed in terms of lab materials, and gave him tips like "keep one clean lab coat and a set of scrubs in your locker". I told him that the schedule in the college course catalog was completely bogus, that the vet school sets its own schedule for courses and finals, then I showed him where to find this information. I discussed professors and their expectations and teaching style. These are all things that I wish my big sib had shared with me, but she wasn't very proactive, and in fact turned out to be sort of weird. So I figured that I would pass my knowledge to him in the hopes that, since he's a nice guy, he'd pass things on to his little sib in turn. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are a good egg!