Friday, September 17, 2004

  Yes, I'm a stay-at-home-and-blog-on-a-Friday-night loser. I just lied to a classmate and said I couldn't go out partying tonight because I'm going to bed. Well, I am going to bed soon, but the real reason I'm not going out is because I just need to sit at home alone and maybe get in a session of blog therapy. It's been an emotionally weird week.

Anyway, whenever I come across copies of the local entertainment weeklies, I check the horoscopes. This week's were disturbingly accurate, so I've decided to start posting the more accurate ones.

The keys to my future?

this week, Free Will Astrology says:

In the coming week you will be prone to eruptions of intuition about exciting future events that you have not previously imagined. Lucid visions of challenging adventures may pop into your mind's eye out of nowhere. When you come into the presence of people who may one day figure prominently in your creative departures from routine, you might feel chills run up and down your spine. Be alert for these signals from the Great Beyond. It's time for you to become your own fortune-teller.

Wow! Right on! I had several discussions this week with Drs. Val Beasley and Ronald Smith about my career direction (which will hence influence my personal life, geographical location, lifestyle, adherence to my principles and so on) and came to some interesting conclusions--or rather, revelations.

I know I cannot read the future, and I know that my mind may change, but there are some ideas I've held fast for a long time.

Things I've known for a long time:

I want to work outdoors

I want to travel internationally as part of my job

I want to serve the underserved

I enjoy teaching

I want to work hands-on practicing medicine and improving the health of individual animals

I also want to study the big-picture connections between animal health, the environment, and human health

I like aksing questions

I like discovering new questions to ask

I find bats absolutely fascinating (and thanks Mom and Dad for the bat book for my birthday!)

Revelations that came to me this week, via discussions with "people who may one day figure prominently in my creative departures from routine":

Bats are ubiquitous

Bats carry diseases that affect humans (rabies)

Bats eliminate critters that carry other diseases that affect humans (mosquitoes/malaria/West Nile)

Bats are a central component of many ecosytems

Not a lot of veterinarians are currently studying bats

Bats exist all over the world, affecting underserved popuations of people and animals, and providing a bat vet with travel potential

Many questions about bats remain unanswered or un-asked

I now have experience researching the predator-vector relationship (a vector is a disease-carrier)

I can get my DVM, an internship in internal medicine, a few years clinical experience, and a Master's of Preventive Veterinary Medicine (MPVH) by the time I'm 36

I can get a PhD in lieu of the MPVM (while studying bat health) by the time I'm 40, and then have opportunties for teaching at a vet school

I wonder how this revelation about bats and PhDs will pan out. I may look back in ten years and ask "What the hell was I thinking?!?!" or I may be sharing my love for bats with rest of the veterinary, agricultural, epidemiological and ecological communities. A revelation about leaving a bureaucratic job to come to vet school got me here. . .so we'll see.

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