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.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
Thursday, May 07, 2015
Impostor
Like most departments, our runs a series of seminar classes that graduate students, or a subset of them, are required to regularly attend. For example, the animal nutrition grad students meet weekly to read and discuss journal articles in our particular area. There are also monthly seminars for the dozen or so first- and second-year grad students with guest speakers telling us about useful resources on campus. While I don't necessarily need that information (for example, how to use PubMed to find useful peer reviewed articles, which I can do in my sleep), I am technically a "first-year" graduate student so I have to attend. Sometimes I learn something useful but most of the time I listen politely and try not to fidget or doze.
Our speaker this past Monday was from the Graduate Writing Center. I've used the more general services of the writing center that are not necessarily grad-student focused, and found them to be extremely helpful. Last summer, I took in the personal statement for my vet school application for them to review, and they made some extremely useful suggestions that without a doubt improved the document. I have recommended the Writing Center to other students and I was interested in hearing this particular speaker.
That is, until he flopped out this question as the lead-off to his presentation: "Who in here feels like an impostor?"
I had to pick my jaw up off the table.
"No, wait," he said, "no need to raise hands. I'll tell you that I certainly do. I know that we all do."
I know that we all do.
I came very close to walking out at that point. But that action would have reflected poorly on the two faculty members present (I couldn't have cared less about the opinion of the guest), and most of the students in the room would not have understood why I was leaving.
If you spend years of your life studying some bit of scientific minutiae in detail, you damn well better become the world expert on that bit. If you feel like an impostor, you didn't achieve that. You, Mr. Guest Speaker, have now told me that you are not an expert in anything except perhaps self-denigration and low self-esteem.
To tell a room full of young graduate students, still damp behind their ears from their undergraduate experiences, that "everyone feels like an impostor" is possibly the worst message that anyone could give them. That suggests that no matter how hard they study, no matter how many papers they read, no matter how hard they slave in the lab, no matter that they spent years learning how to navigate within a rigorous scientific field, no matter that they get a good job right out of school, it doesn't matter because they will never feel like they earned any of it.
That is complete and utter bullshit.
Here is how I see it. When we speak as professionals, at a seminar or at a scientific conference, people come to hear us because they are interested in what we have to say. They don't come to tear us down or trip us up with sophistry or the throwing of rotten fruit. They may disagree with us but that's how science advances. We test ideas, we make observations, we talk about what it means, and we find ways to make a better test or different observations.
I've had to give several presentations in the department during my time here. One student wrote on an evaluation that listening to me talk about my research "was like having a conversation with me"--and she studies bonding behavior in domestic cats and knows nothing about nutrition.
Just two days ago, I had another student ask me when my thesis defense was going to be (it is in four days) because she wanted to make sure she made time to attend. She said, you are always so confident when you speak. I'd like to be more like that.
I thanked her for her kind words, then I said, there's no secret. People come to hear you speak because you are the expert in that particular piece of science. They want to learn more about it and they want to learn it from you. Confidence is about your attitude. Be confident in what you know but never be afraid to say "I don't know."
An impostor is someone who practices deception.
I am not an impostor.
UPDATE: I've learned there is actually a thing called "impostor syndrome." This makes it even more important that shiny, new grad students aren't given this message.
Our speaker this past Monday was from the Graduate Writing Center. I've used the more general services of the writing center that are not necessarily grad-student focused, and found them to be extremely helpful. Last summer, I took in the personal statement for my vet school application for them to review, and they made some extremely useful suggestions that without a doubt improved the document. I have recommended the Writing Center to other students and I was interested in hearing this particular speaker.
That is, until he flopped out this question as the lead-off to his presentation: "Who in here feels like an impostor?"
I had to pick my jaw up off the table.
"No, wait," he said, "no need to raise hands. I'll tell you that I certainly do. I know that we all do."
I know that we all do.
I came very close to walking out at that point. But that action would have reflected poorly on the two faculty members present (I couldn't have cared less about the opinion of the guest), and most of the students in the room would not have understood why I was leaving.
If you spend years of your life studying some bit of scientific minutiae in detail, you damn well better become the world expert on that bit. If you feel like an impostor, you didn't achieve that. You, Mr. Guest Speaker, have now told me that you are not an expert in anything except perhaps self-denigration and low self-esteem.
To tell a room full of young graduate students, still damp behind their ears from their undergraduate experiences, that "everyone feels like an impostor" is possibly the worst message that anyone could give them. That suggests that no matter how hard they study, no matter how many papers they read, no matter how hard they slave in the lab, no matter that they spent years learning how to navigate within a rigorous scientific field, no matter that they get a good job right out of school, it doesn't matter because they will never feel like they earned any of it.
That is complete and utter bullshit.
Here is how I see it. When we speak as professionals, at a seminar or at a scientific conference, people come to hear us because they are interested in what we have to say. They don't come to tear us down or trip us up with sophistry or the throwing of rotten fruit. They may disagree with us but that's how science advances. We test ideas, we make observations, we talk about what it means, and we find ways to make a better test or different observations.
I've had to give several presentations in the department during my time here. One student wrote on an evaluation that listening to me talk about my research "was like having a conversation with me"--and she studies bonding behavior in domestic cats and knows nothing about nutrition.
Just two days ago, I had another student ask me when my thesis defense was going to be (it is in four days) because she wanted to make sure she made time to attend. She said, you are always so confident when you speak. I'd like to be more like that.
I thanked her for her kind words, then I said, there's no secret. People come to hear you speak because you are the expert in that particular piece of science. They want to learn more about it and they want to learn it from you. Confidence is about your attitude. Be confident in what you know but never be afraid to say "I don't know."
An impostor is someone who practices deception.
I am not an impostor.
UPDATE: I've learned there is actually a thing called "impostor syndrome." This makes it even more important that shiny, new grad students aren't given this message.
Friday, May 01, 2015
Sheep! Lambs!
My stint of feeding the sheep and lambs is nearing its end. You can see that it is a highly technical procedure. The triplet lambs get bottle-fed twice a day. They nurse from the mother but since she may not be making quite enough for all three, the evaporated milk is an important supplement. After two weeks, two of the lambs are on board with things and come running up to me. The third one, the smallest one of course, is a little butthead and I have to catch him to feed him. Fortunately, catching him isn't difficult since he follows his mother closely and all I have to do is herd her into the pen and he'll tag along.
Besides the six ewes and nine late (that is, little) lambs, I also have to feed 21 lambs and I think 15 or so ewes that are kept in the upper field. In the video, you can see the lambs going into a creeper pen. The openings are too small for the ewes. Some of the lambs are now almost too large to get in there too. Waiting for them inside the barn are green alfalfa pellets and brown concentrate pellets with corn and other grain and molasses. They all go nuts for the brown pellets, thus the literal feeding frenzy as the lambs all try to push at the same time into the one opening that is still large enough for them.
Besides the six ewes and nine late (that is, little) lambs, I also have to feed 21 lambs and I think 15 or so ewes that are kept in the upper field. In the video, you can see the lambs going into a creeper pen. The openings are too small for the ewes. Some of the lambs are now almost too large to get in there too. Waiting for them inside the barn are green alfalfa pellets and brown concentrate pellets with corn and other grain and molasses. They all go nuts for the brown pellets, thus the literal feeding frenzy as the lambs all try to push at the same time into the one opening that is still large enough for them.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Applying to Vet School: Horse Trading and Wisconsin
The University of Wisconsin at Madison called to make me an offer of admission. I was expecting this call since their letter to me indicated that I was ranked number one on their alternate list. I will think it over tonight and review my notes, but I will probably turn them down. Like Cornell, Wisconsin is a fine school, well ranked, with a good reputation. I am extremely pleased to get offers from both of these schools.
There is one other school that could very well change my mind about staying in Oregon. To be honest, they didn't love me enough to go for me in January. The fact that I haven't heard from them yet in this horse-trading time tells me I wasn't very high on their list. So I'm not holding my breath.
I start my new job on Saturday. What happens there will no doubt strongly influence my decision to stay. I went for training last Saturday and when I learned what I would be doing, I was over the moon with excitement. It was far more than I had hoped for.
There is one other school that could very well change my mind about staying in Oregon. To be honest, they didn't love me enough to go for me in January. The fact that I haven't heard from them yet in this horse-trading time tells me I wasn't very high on their list. So I'm not holding my breath.
I start my new job on Saturday. What happens there will no doubt strongly influence my decision to stay. I went for training last Saturday and when I learned what I would be doing, I was over the moon with excitement. It was far more than I had hoped for.
Applying to Vet School: Making Decisions
A post or two ago, I mentioned that there were additional reasons for me to decline Cornell's offer of admission (and I did decline it). But rather than think of them as reasons for turning down an offer from a perfectly fine school, you could think of them as reasons in favor of staying here at Oregon State, another perfectly fine school.
You can go online and view rankings of the U.S. vet schools. Cornell and UC Davis typically come out at the top in most of these. And why is that? Are they substantially "better" than other schools? In terms of bringing in research grant dollars, yes. In terms of the DVM educational program, not necessarily. Few vet schools in the U.S. are going to deliver a completely shitty education. When getting a degree like the DVM, like nearly all things in life, you are going to get out some result equivalent to what you put in. So a person's dedication and investment in their success can play a large role no matter where they go to school.
Having said that, it is true that some schools have more resources than others: more and newer equipment in labs, more diverse specimens for study, and so forth. These can make a difference in your education, no doubt. But there are other things to consider too, such as a faculty invested in teaching.
A friend, aghast that I turned down Cornell, said, but what about networking opportunities? I told her, what do you think I used to get my spiffy new job? I used the network that I built up right here. Didn't need to be at Cornell to do that.
A few weeks ago, I attended a tour of the Oregon State vet school that had been arranged for its out-of-state applicants who had received offers of admission. I'm in that group because, despite living here for two years, I have not met the requirements for obtaining legal residency. No, a driver's license and voting registration card are not enough. I would have to drop out of school for 12 months and work before I could be considered a resident. That's the law of this state; other states handle this differently.
Anyway, back to the tour. I accepted the invitation because it was conveniently during spring break and because I figured that there were plenty of things I would learn about the program, despite spending four weeks as a student volunteer in the large animal clinic, despite attending lunchtime lectures at the vet school fairly regularly, and despite just being here and already knowing some faculty from the vet school.
There were 11 other applicants who also attended the tour day, some accompanied by significant others, some with parents in tow. All but two of them had received offers from multiple schools, all but two of them had applied to 8 or more schools. I felt like a slacker in comparison. All of them were painfully young, and I could detect no rhyme or reason in the schools they applied to, except perhaps a trend to apply to the "best" schools. Why then did they apply to Oregon State? It is unusual in having such a small class size (52) and that may have attracted their attention. It was clear throughout the day that none of them had done any meaningful research into Oregon or any other school. Even though the thought of being stuck with some of them for four years worried me a bit, all of that is their problem to sort out.
I won't give you a blow-by-blow account of the tour day, but I will tell you about three things that really stood out for me.
First, we had not one, but two different demonstrations of specialized equipment in the vet school with live animals, well, one animal who was used for both demonstrations. She was an utterly enormous and amiable draft horse named Taffy, weighing a petite 1700 pounds. The vet school keeps her as a permanent member of their herd because she is a blood donor. An animal that large can give 8 liters of blood in one session. I asked around among the group and not one other school bothered to incorporate animals in their tours, despite the fact that they are all, you know, vet schools.
We had a brief Q&A with some current vet students. Their strongest criticism of the program? When you do your rotation in the large animal hospital, because of the small class size, you may personally have under your care 5 to 7 critical patients at a time and that can get kind of stressful. One of their peers came in wanting to be a small animal vet, but when she did her large animal rotation, she fell in love with that instead, and switched her career path! Oregon State also has its students spend three weeks in Portland working at the humane society. In many vet school programs, because of the class sizes, you are lucky if you have removed the left ovary of a dog by the time you graduate, another student having removed the right one. (I exaggerate but only slightly.) At Oregon State, by the end of those three weeks, the students told us, you will have personally completed 40-50 spays and neuters. Ironically, I think students at Cornell and UC Davis would trade places in a heartbeat for that kind of experience.
In the afternoon, two members of the admissions committee came to answer any questions we might have. One of the young ladies somewhat snottily asked them how they can deliver a thorough education when the vet school program lacks specialists in ophthamology and neurology. The two faculty paused, looked at each other, then delivered the most brilliant answer to that question that I could have ever imagined. They said, when you leave this program, you will have extensive, hands-on experience with multiple species. You will have journeyman skills--you can walk into any vet clinic in this country and get right to work, confident that you know what to do and how to do it correctly. You will have a solid foundation so that if you want to specialize in those or others areas, you can do so.
In other words, they defended their program not by protesting, not by saying, oh, those things aren't important. Both of them, without hesitation, gave the same answer: here, you will learn how to be a vet.
I was impressed with what I learned, and to be honest, I was surprised that I was impressed. I went home and thought about all of this, and decided that I could be very happy going to school here.
You can go online and view rankings of the U.S. vet schools. Cornell and UC Davis typically come out at the top in most of these. And why is that? Are they substantially "better" than other schools? In terms of bringing in research grant dollars, yes. In terms of the DVM educational program, not necessarily. Few vet schools in the U.S. are going to deliver a completely shitty education. When getting a degree like the DVM, like nearly all things in life, you are going to get out some result equivalent to what you put in. So a person's dedication and investment in their success can play a large role no matter where they go to school.
Having said that, it is true that some schools have more resources than others: more and newer equipment in labs, more diverse specimens for study, and so forth. These can make a difference in your education, no doubt. But there are other things to consider too, such as a faculty invested in teaching.
A friend, aghast that I turned down Cornell, said, but what about networking opportunities? I told her, what do you think I used to get my spiffy new job? I used the network that I built up right here. Didn't need to be at Cornell to do that.
A few weeks ago, I attended a tour of the Oregon State vet school that had been arranged for its out-of-state applicants who had received offers of admission. I'm in that group because, despite living here for two years, I have not met the requirements for obtaining legal residency. No, a driver's license and voting registration card are not enough. I would have to drop out of school for 12 months and work before I could be considered a resident. That's the law of this state; other states handle this differently.
Anyway, back to the tour. I accepted the invitation because it was conveniently during spring break and because I figured that there were plenty of things I would learn about the program, despite spending four weeks as a student volunteer in the large animal clinic, despite attending lunchtime lectures at the vet school fairly regularly, and despite just being here and already knowing some faculty from the vet school.
There were 11 other applicants who also attended the tour day, some accompanied by significant others, some with parents in tow. All but two of them had received offers from multiple schools, all but two of them had applied to 8 or more schools. I felt like a slacker in comparison. All of them were painfully young, and I could detect no rhyme or reason in the schools they applied to, except perhaps a trend to apply to the "best" schools. Why then did they apply to Oregon State? It is unusual in having such a small class size (52) and that may have attracted their attention. It was clear throughout the day that none of them had done any meaningful research into Oregon or any other school. Even though the thought of being stuck with some of them for four years worried me a bit, all of that is their problem to sort out.
I won't give you a blow-by-blow account of the tour day, but I will tell you about three things that really stood out for me.
First, we had not one, but two different demonstrations of specialized equipment in the vet school with live animals, well, one animal who was used for both demonstrations. She was an utterly enormous and amiable draft horse named Taffy, weighing a petite 1700 pounds. The vet school keeps her as a permanent member of their herd because she is a blood donor. An animal that large can give 8 liters of blood in one session. I asked around among the group and not one other school bothered to incorporate animals in their tours, despite the fact that they are all, you know, vet schools.
We had a brief Q&A with some current vet students. Their strongest criticism of the program? When you do your rotation in the large animal hospital, because of the small class size, you may personally have under your care 5 to 7 critical patients at a time and that can get kind of stressful. One of their peers came in wanting to be a small animal vet, but when she did her large animal rotation, she fell in love with that instead, and switched her career path! Oregon State also has its students spend three weeks in Portland working at the humane society. In many vet school programs, because of the class sizes, you are lucky if you have removed the left ovary of a dog by the time you graduate, another student having removed the right one. (I exaggerate but only slightly.) At Oregon State, by the end of those three weeks, the students told us, you will have personally completed 40-50 spays and neuters. Ironically, I think students at Cornell and UC Davis would trade places in a heartbeat for that kind of experience.
In the afternoon, two members of the admissions committee came to answer any questions we might have. One of the young ladies somewhat snottily asked them how they can deliver a thorough education when the vet school program lacks specialists in ophthamology and neurology. The two faculty paused, looked at each other, then delivered the most brilliant answer to that question that I could have ever imagined. They said, when you leave this program, you will have extensive, hands-on experience with multiple species. You will have journeyman skills--you can walk into any vet clinic in this country and get right to work, confident that you know what to do and how to do it correctly. You will have a solid foundation so that if you want to specialize in those or others areas, you can do so.
In other words, they defended their program not by protesting, not by saying, oh, those things aren't important. Both of them, without hesitation, gave the same answer: here, you will learn how to be a vet.
I was impressed with what I learned, and to be honest, I was surprised that I was impressed. I went home and thought about all of this, and decided that I could be very happy going to school here.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Lambs
I'm taking care of a flock of ewes and lambs for a friend for 10 days. One ewe gave birth very late in the season--turns out she had triplets. I have to bottle feed the babies twice a day. This is a very high-tech operation!
No, the lamb isn't drinking beer. She's drinking evaporated milk. A glass bottle can easily be warmed in a flask of warm water, it's easy to sterilize glass if needed, and you can see the level of the contents.
No, the lamb isn't drinking beer. She's drinking evaporated milk. A glass bottle can easily be warmed in a flask of warm water, it's easy to sterilize glass if needed, and you can see the level of the contents.
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