Volume 51: Issue 2 Winners!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS to this round's winners! We will be uploading their wonderful submissions and others that were so close but didn't make the cut over the next few weeks. Thanks so much for contributing to this round, and for making our jobs as judges difficult wink emoticon

Trivia (Random correct answers were selected):
Alyssa McDonagh - Tufts
Miranda Anthony - Oklahoma State
Brian Murphy - Michigan State

Creative Corner:
Gabriella Iannuzzi - Ross
Shanna Johnson - Cornell
Isabel Jimenez - Cornell
Maxbetter Vizelberg - Tufts

Photography:
Andrew Tsai - Western
Chris Dolan - Texas A&M
Honorable Mention: Alison Smith - Tufts

Facebook Cover Photo Award:
Louise Qu - Western
Ali Frye - Atlantic

Foot in Mouth Disease:
1st place: Kate Connell - Penn
2nd place: Cassandra Rodenbaugh - OK State
HM: Lara Stephens-Brown - Minnesota
HM: Morgan Jacobsen - Western
HM: Joseph Swartz - Texas A&M
HM: Wilson Chung - Atlantic
HM: Lynsee Melchi - Illinois

Experiences:
1st place - Alexa Veale - Colorado State
2nd place - Kanyon Mclean - Ohio State
Honorable Mention - Alex Ripperger - Minnesota
Honorable Mention - Diedra Metzler - Ross

Overall best submissions:
1st place: Maxbetter Vizelberg
2nd place: Andrew Tsai - Western

Compassion for Paisley

You left Paisley in my care today. When I met her this morning, she had a 106 degree fever and she was in respiratory distress, breathing harder than I’ve ever seen a dog breathe before. You agreed to leave her with me for 24 hours, so I could give her supportive care and start her on the therapy she needed. Before I took my lunch break, I walked Paisley outside, where she collapsed from weakness. I carried her, all 75 pounds, back inside and continued the plan you and I had discussed, then I ate my lunch. When I got back half an hour later, I found her dead in the kennel. I performed CPR on her for 20 minutes while my coworker called you and asked you to come right away. You both walked in on me doing chest compressions on Paisley.

You screamed at me to stop. He screamed at me to keep going.

Paisley was gone.

I watched him run from the building, big deep sobs echoing in his wake. You yelled some more, “How did this happen?! Why?!” then draped yourself over Paisley’s cold body, crying into her fur and kissing her face.

I worked for four more hours, finishing my shift without appearing to be phased, forcing myself to address every client and patient for the rest of the day as cheerfully as I had greeted you and Paisley this morning when I told you that I could help her.

I held it together the entire drive home, surprisingly.

I slid my key in the lock, turned the doorknob, took 2 steps inside, and collapsed on the tile in a screaming, sobbing heap, pulling at my hair, rocking, trying to melt away into another dimension far far from this one.

People in the medical field, police officers, and soldiers all suffer from some form of PTSD. We see things everyday that nobody should ever have to see, while being forced to pretend we don’t see them.

“Compassion hurts. When we feel connected to everything, we also feel responsible for everything. And we cannot turn away. Our destiny is bound by the destinies of others. We must either learn to carry the universe or be crushed by it. We must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the table with its worst horrors.” -Andrew Boyd

I need to stay human. I need to be the doctor that my childhood-self dreamed I would be. I need to remain logical. I need to save them all. I must remain sane.

I do not know how to be all of those things at once.

To help myself heal at night, I cram as many living, breathing, furry warm bodies into my bed as possible. By surrounding myself with their life, eventually the death that’s consuming my soul starts to subside. I keep them close while I try to sleep.

In the morning, I get up, and do it all over again. 

Alexa Veale
Colorado State University 

Obligated Gift Giving

an op-ed piece that comes at just the right time with holidays around the corner.  At what point do gifts become less meaningful and more of a formality?

I have sat on several boards and a common theme I hear is how much we should give our speakers or faculty that helped during a wet lab. Is this present only in my school? No. I have meet other students during symposiums and conventions and know that speaker gifts are common. We ask these DVMs and other speakers if they would like to volunteer their time to progress our knowledge. Most if not all gladly say yes for the philanthropic aspect, these people enjoy helping future colleagues. Many are even repeat speakers and I highly doubt they return for the gifts, and if so are these the type of speakers we want?

Some students even base the size of their gifts on the size of a speaker, especially those that were flown in or paid to speak. What I don’t understand is how some student organizations can afford to compensate a speaker more by adding a gift. Just because these speakers were paid, are well-known, or flown in, do they deserve something more than those speakers who are local or were not compensated? 

Sometimes I feel gift giving is a way to cop-out on writing an actual thank you. A thank you note should not be written in advance, but after the event. How can you truly thank someone before the deed has been accomplished? I think a thank you note should include a learning or enjoyable aspect taken from the event.

What I fear is that this will become a cycle, where students expect to give gifts and speakers expect to receive them. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate these speakers, enjoy learning from them, and do believe they should receive the utmost gratitude, appreciation and thanks. Am I saying not to give any gifts? No, but don’t worry about it being too little or not enough.

It is just my opinion, but thank all your speakers equally, give feedback, and don’t worry about the size of gifts.

Thank You,

MarkBen Paulino
Michigan State University 

The Road to Vet Med

"Experiences" Submission by Kailey Beckman - Western U

When most people are asked when they decided they wanted to become a vet they will all reply with a similar response: since I could walk. Well this is fairly true for me. An event that happened to me at the age of 8 has made me want to pursue a career in veterinary healthcare ever since. When I was 8 we adopted an amazing dog. This dog came with fleas and ticks so we got him treated and we thought all was well. Unfortunately we were very wrong about this. Our dog started to become very ill; he started to get very thin, had a hard time moving, started to lose his eyesight, and wandered around aimlessly. It was obvious that our dog was in pain but we couldn’t tell where or why. We took him to the veterinarian and after many tests, he was diagnosed with Lyme disease. Sadly our dog passed away a couple years later. After this event I knew I wanted to help animals but I hadn’t concretely decided on veterinary medicine. A few years passed and I turned 18 and I started to become sick. Like my dog, I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. I had so much pain and felt incredibly sick; I knew it had to be the same as my poor dog. However I had one advantage, I could speak. I could tell a doctor where I had pain and how I felt. Like most dogs, my dog didn’t have this advantage so my veterinarian had to try his best. This is when it truly hit me that I wanted a career in healthcare as a veterinarian. I wanted to provide a voice to animals who did not have one and be able to diagnose and treat animals who could not explicitly tell me where they were in pain. I believe that going through the same experience as my dog has made it clear to me that I will always try my hardest to cure an animal and I will never give up trying to treat an animal even if I have hit a bump in the road. I want to pursue a career in healthcare because I know that nobody should go through that pain and everything should be done in order to help somebody or an animal through it.

Cosplay...part 3!

If there's anything I've learned from being the new Editor-elect of TVG, it's that our fellow vet students love cosplay!  Here's another INCREDIBLE submission by Jilian Athey of Texas A&M!  Congratulations on your Life as a Vet Student Award!!!

   I make and compete costumes, so this is my most elaborate, intricate, and well done set thus far! I am the pink-haired girl, and with this set we managed to take home Second Place in the Intermediate division. It encompassed prop-making (yes I made all of the fake guns, the gauntlets, the armor, goggles, and jewelry), sewing, wiring LEDs, wig styling and make-up, and a million other things. It took me a little less than a year to finish making all of the components, but I had a blast doing it!

So, my costuming hobby, more commonly known as "cosplaying," has taught me a bunch of practical (and maybe not-so practical skills). I've gotten skilled enough at sewing to actually make wearable garments; I've learned a ton about construction, tool types, drill bits, and all that jazz; I've perfected the basics of hair and make-up; I've taught myself how to wire LEDs; and finally, I've learned a bunch of sculpting, forming, priming, and all around crafting techniques. I really enjoy doing this because it combines your stereotypical art class with creativity, foresight, and planning to execute a successful costume. I think this hobby is so addicting because, you go to a Comic-convention dressed as Batman and you get treated like a celebrity for a day! People stop to ask for your photo, others will ask for hugs, and kids will even stare in wonder as they walk by. But, don't get me wrong. I don't do it for the attention, I do it because I love crafting, I love challenges, and I love being able to dress up and "be" a character for a day. It's like Halloween! 

I've attached some progress shots and then the final product of a costume based off of a character, Rengar, from the popular computer game, League of Legends. He is actually a lion, so it was fun to try and figure out how to maintain the feline elements without having a mascot suit. I managed to make heel-less cat feet, gloves, a tail, cat ears, and to top it all off I even had fake teeth! In retrospect, it was definitely NOT the most comfortable thing to wear, but people loved it!