Honestly, I don’t even know where the time has gone. This week is a little over halfway through with the internship, and I’m a little stunned at how much I’ve learned since beginning, and how much progress I’ve made on my five learning objectives.
We set these learning objectives when we were applying for the Newcomb grant, and mine haven’t changed much since. Mine are as follows:
1. Learning new technical skills.
As a pre-veterinary student, one of the most important things to me is learning technical skills that will benefit me in veterinary school and beyond. I will be working, essentially, as a veterinary technician, over the course of the summer to help the birds that come through the clinic and the technicians themselves.
2. Be better able to think ahead.
I find myself too often ruling on the instructions of others in an effort to not interfere with the plans of anyone else, but I think that I would grow as a person if having to make decisions separately from those instructions that supervisors give me. It’s something that I’ve found myself struggling with at the center, and definitely something that I know I need to focus on even more now that we’re halfway through. I don’t want to let myself, or worse, anyone at the internship, down.
3. Learn how to network.
I have found that veterinary medicine is sometimes an insular group, and being able to ask questions of the supervising veterinarians will be an asset to me in the future to have. Working with the people in the center has given me some clue into how to make these connections, and that is simply to ask questions and make myself more useful during the course of a conversation.
4. Work on thinking on my toes.
I already feel like I have the ability to improvise in tough situations and to think ahead, but I want to get better at this. In this internship, where many cases may come in as emergencies already and others may develop with little to no warning, I’m being constantly challenged.
5. Figure out what specialization I want post-doctorate.
I know that I want to be a veterinarian, but I’m still unsure as to which type of veterinary medicine I feel most passionate about. I’ve worked with equine veterinarians, small veterinarians – you name it, I’ve probably tried it once or twice – but I have yet to really get into conservation veterinary medicine. I feel like I could make a real difference in the world with this field, and I want to make sure that it speaks to me as strongly as I think it will. So far, and especially after my trip to Yosemite, I really am feeling connected to the work we’re doing and wanting to do more.
I’m going to keep working and growing as a person, and hopefully I’ll be able to answer more of the questions and goals that I’d set for myself with definitive answers by the end.
But until then: here’s the coolest thing I’ve done so far in the internship. This is one of our eagles that had some pretty major lead poisoning and has been with us for several months now. In this picture, we’re doing a routine physical and coping its beak, which means trimming it down. If it were in the wild, it would be sawing it down on her own.
