YOU should become a LOBBYIST!

Honorable Mention, Experiences category
Samantha McDonnel, UC Davis

Okay I’m going to keep this brief because I know you veterinary students have an attention span of about 0.034 seconds.  Ughh, I probably already lost some of you…  And that’s only if you glanced down at this title for long enough after tabbing over to Facebook from your pathology notes during one of your professor’s digressions, and decided to keep reading.

For those select few who are still with me… you’re probably thinking that you don’t want to be a lobbyist (ew); you want to be a veterinarian, and actually, you know, do some benefit for society and make your mom proud (things lobbyists clearly never accomplish).  But if you reach the end of this article, I hope you take away one thing: ANYONE can be a (part-time) lobbyist!  

I, Samantha McDonnel, current DVM/PhD student, was a lobbyist in February in Washington DC, petitioning our congresspeople (yes, that is the term, get used to it) to vote certain ways on certain issues.  Hanie Elfenbein (another UCD DVM/PhD student) and I attended the AVMA legislative fly-in and went to the offices of California Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Rep. Mike Thompson (District 1) to lobby on two pieces of legislation of great importance to our profession: the ‘Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act’ and the ‘Fairness to Pet Owners Act.’  What’s that you say?  You’ve never heard of these things??  Of course not.  You’re a student, and you probably don’t even know much about national current events.  But there might come a point (soon) when you have heard of such bills, and when it really matters to you whether or not they pass.

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