Lilspotteddog, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.

I now have the privilege of adding two more letters after my name. Not that I use the ones I already have, but it's the thought that counts.

Don't get me wrong. Completing the M.S. is certainly a Very Big Deal, and I have no doubt that it helped me get into vet school, making up for my deficits in other types of animal experience. I dived deep into the topic of animal nutrition and learned a lot of cool and useful things. Plus, chickens--there's good money in chickens.

There are still a few more hoops to jump through. I have to pass the courses I am currently taking. I have to revise my thesis according to comments from my committee members and submit a copy of that in various places. But for all intents and purposes, I'm done. 

Most uncharacteristically, I did not go to my immunology class today and I didn't do my French homework for tomorrow. As for the former, I told the professor last week that he should expect me to be absent today. He assured me that it was not a problem, given the reason. As for the latter, well, the thesis defense itself wasn't a complete stroll in the park. My committee made me work for it. So I decided that I had scholastically performed enough for one day. 

One of my committee members threw me quite a curve ball on Monday by asking about a particular aspect of my research that I had not covered very clearly in the thesis. His comments were relevant but as a result, I frantically added four slides to my presentation, even getting up at 2am last night because I couldn't sleep to work on them some more. That forced me to change my presentation content elsewhere to keep the talk within my 45-minute limit. These are not things you want to be doing the night before you give the thing. Plus I was worried that my advisor might think I was going too far off-topic with the new slides, which she saw for the first time this morning. First rule of working with other people: no surprises. Turns out she really liked them.

On top of that, I found out last week that I was expected to provide food to the people attending the defense. My presentation and the initial Q&A are open to the public (in reality, that means faculty and students in the department). In addition to my committee, another faculty member attended plus about a dozen students made time to come.

I thought the student who told me about the food-bringing was having a joke at my expense, but he was completely serious. When I went to verify this astonishing fact with my advisor, she said, oh yes, and you should get some orange juice for those who don't want coffee.

Gads.

I went with chocolate chip cookies, the premixed dough that you break apart and bake yourself. That way it would look like I made an effort even though all I did was turn the oven on. And really, who doesn't like chocolate chip cookies? Undercook them by 30 seconds and they are soft and just the tiniest bit gooey in the center.

They aren't healthy at all, an ironic touch since my talk was about improving human health by creating poultry meat products enriched with n-3 fatty acids. The pre-made cookie dough contains corn-based sweeteners that are rich in n-6 fatty acids as well as emulsifiers that have been shown to increase insulin insensitivity and obesity, not to mention seriously messing up gut biota.

I tried to make the best of it. Several of my peers are on calorie-counting diets like me so I carefully weighed every wad of dough, adjusting them so that they delivered the same fixed number of calories. I told my friends this morning, the small ones are 70 calories each, the large ones 80 calories each, you can make your own decisions.

Baking cookies was not how I planned to spend the evening before my thesis defense. I made 100 cookies just to be sure I had enough (laugh away, it's ridiculous and I laugh with you). Still, to look on the bright side, a surprising move given my general cynicism, it prevented me from obsessing over everything else. Well, except when I couldn't sleep at 2am and got up to add some more labels to my slides. Mimi got up with me and curled up in a dog bed at my feet so I didn't feel too crazy.

While this feels like an ending, it's really a beginning. The M.S. was never my only goal, simply a way to help me get into vet school. I think the craziness will start in the fall.

Eh, that's months away. Plenty to do between now and then.