Diary of a Dick Vet

When I started blogging about vet school, it was a project borne out of excitement. New country, new people, new course…there was a lot to say.

Now I’m in third year, and it feels like the mojo is gone. We spend all day in lecture, with the occasional practical sprinkled throughout. We haven’t seen any real cases, at least nothing to blog about (I don’t assume for one minute that you want to hear about every dog/cat submitted for diarrhea, especially if we don’t get details at this point about treatment.) There are no funny client or animal stories, we don’t get bussed anywhere interesting, and my weekend are dreadfully plain. As an example: I’m taking a beginner’s Dutch class, and our weekly assignment is to practice the past perfect tense by describing what we did this weekend. Every week I rack my brain for something beyond ‘I studied’ and ‘I knit’ and ‘I went to a cafe and drank coffee.’ Meanwhile my classmates talk about trips to Cogenhagen, concerts in Glasgow, dinner parties and museum exhibits. So that what a weekend is like!

I know it’s a good thing, study-wise, that my weekends are so mundane and structured. Still, I can’t say if I study more, or if I’ve just become more of a hermit. Knitting is a nice, soothing way to break from studying, that tucks in nicely throughout my schedule, filling study breaks and wrapping up the day as I enjoy some television in the lounge with a cup of coffee; yet, hoping on a bus or a train, or walking up to Princes St or George IV Bridge to pop into a free museum is clearly more exciting than the meticulous advancement of a project as it builds, knot-by-knot, from the germinal substance of a few balls of yarn, to a fully-fleshed wooly creature. Some days I can look at myself as a student, and see the same laborious progression from the raw materials of mind and will, hopefully someday to transform into a real, certified, vet. And adult and working citizen, who watches movies, and doesn’t knit to avoid another hour looking at a page describing each type of tumor to be found in the lymphoid system, and doesn’t have to blog about how guilty she feels that there is nothing to say.

But, there’s nothing to say. I could show you the dozen or so rows of the pullover vest I’ve started knitting, but why bother? I think it’s more interesting to wait another eighty rows or so, when I reach the sleeves, and what you look at isn’t just a large green rectangle, but the beginning of something useful. And interesting.