Tuesday, September 05, 2006
First 24 hours in Athens
(Georgia, that is)
The trip
I got into town last night around 7:30 Eastern time. I left Saturday evening and spent the night at a Days Inn outside Nashville in a room that smelled like pee. The windows weren't the kind you can open, so I didn't sleep too well and got a late start yesterday morning.
The drive through Tennesse is great in the daytime, very hilly and green and there's a beautiful point along the Tenessee River off where there's a rest area off Interstate 24. Great place for a picnic lunch.
The temporary digs
I'm staying with Peter and Carol Goerig, a very nice retired couple who fed me gourmet pizza and Canadian beer when I got to town. They host vet students from all around (they had on from Denmark I think not too long a go) a few times a year. I think it's a pretty neat way to use some of your empty rooms when your kids are all grown up--rent them out to make a little extra cash and get to meet and help out some interesting students. Carol participates in some local drum circles, Peter seems to be pretty good with computers, and they have two grown daughters, one here in Athens and one in Spain.
I should have guessed these folks are parents--the pizza and beer, and when I got to my room I found that they bought me fruit, cereal and milk in case I didn't make it to the store by morning. I'm wondering if my folks shouldn't move to a college town and host transient students--the cereal thing is totally something my mom would do.
Anyway, the attic set-up I've got here is a million times nicer than most apartments I've lived in and definitely nicer than anything I've seen during vet school: quiet tree-lined street; a five-minute walk to campus; a huge bedroom; a sitting room with a fridge, lots of books, and a t.v.; and my own bathroom. They have it all set up like a hotel or bed and breakfast: perfectly tucked sheets, teddy bears and decorative pillows on the bed, fancy stationary at the bedside, and this morning I discovered they even left a bowl of candies in the sitting room. I probably won't be around much to enjoy the place since I'll be spending my nights out in the field during the week, but I will be able to enjoy the weekends and get work, studying and reading done. And I'll probably walk to town to check out the food and local music acts, both of which I hear are wonderful here.
The Vet School and Campus
The CVM is great. They have a great facilty and the classrooms are very well laid out; it looks as if they had some professional consultant help design the classrooms for efficiency. I walked into a radiology class in which there were actually light boxes for every 3 students and people were all looking at radiographs in small groups, and. . . get this. . . faculty were floating around to answer questions and help interpret the radiographs! Who knew that radiology labs could be facilitated this way? They also have a great library that is open until midnight on the weekends, and has microscope stations. I haven't visited the snack bar yet, but I will definitely find my way there eventually (we had a big lunch today at a local Cuban place).
Dr. Keel (the SCWDS coordinator) took me for a brief car tour of the area. The campus is beautiful, very green, very nice brick buildings that look older in design but newer in condition--either they are older and very well maintained or new but built with a timeless design. The campus is efficiently laid out so that everything is walkable, and some residential neighborhoods are right across the street from campus, making walking to school and work a feasible option (unlike the sprawled-out, auto-addicted midwest). I'm beginning to realize I'm not crazy to think that the midwest night not be the best place for me. . .
Oh yeah, the reason I'm here--
So I've already met (very briefly) about a dozen folks today whose names I have already forgotten, but I'm sure I'll be working with some of them very closely later this week. Some of these folks were working on avain flu back in the 80s before it was the flavor of the month, some are working on West Nile virus, some on chronic wasting disease, et cetera. There's also some entomologists involved in the tick- and moquito- borne dieseases, so I may get to do some serious bug-watching. (Did I mention that when I deceided to go back to school for a second career, I was condisering entomolgy as well as vet med?)
So I have an assignment to write a lit review blip on
Leptospirosis for a web site +/- a handbook on infectious (perhaps specifically zoonotic) disease. I'll also help perform some necropsies on deer and write pathology reports. And later this week I'll probably go out into the field to collect fish and worms for a study on
myxosporea in ducks. Now isn't it every tomboy's dream to land a job looking in riverbeds and under rocks, mucking for worms?
