Two years from now

When I have the time, I sporadically read several blogs I've encountered that are written by other veterinary students around the country.

It's really interesting to see other vet students' perspectives on life in vet school, and to learn the differences in curriculums, tracking, clinical rotations, etc.

One of the blogs I read is called "My Vet School Days." It's written by a vet student at a different school who is two years ahead of me - now a senior.

For the last 6 months, I've been following this student along their senior clinical rotations, studying for boards, taking boards, and, finally, passing national boards in this recent post.

I've never met or talked to this blog's author, but her post has me thinking ahead toward my future. I find it both really exhilarating and mildly terrifying to think that merely two years from now I will (I hope) have passed national board exams and be ready to be licensed as a DVM in just a few short months.

I love my vet school. I think it's a great school. I think we students get exposed to a lot of material. I think courses are generally well-planned and well-organized. I think students get a lot of support in their learning and help monitoring their progress. I think the school does its best to help us integrate material and develop solid clinical reasoning skills.

But I still can't imagine, two or three years from now, actually feeling competent to go into an exam room and diagnose an animal.

I feel a little bit like I have these few brilliant moments of insight, like "Aha! I immediately understand this problem, its etiology and pathogenesis, and how all of the clinical signs are interrelated and caused by the underlying disease."

At this point, those brilliant moments aren't happening all that often. But I know that I'm really only 3 semesters into an 8-semester program, and I haven't even started the clinical portion of my veterinary education yet. So I've got time to get it figured out.

Two years just seems like a really short time!