Woo~ The Year is Almost Over...

     So after my last entry, the elections to determine the next POTUS happened and only recently, did the counts became official. The electorates would formally submit their votes to confirm Joe Biden into office next week? Also after being rejected from the super cool heart valve place, I saw this university position open and applied for fun since I have a background in education. Being "relatively" fresh out of school with no real experience in animal hospitals and whatnot, I didn't really think I was in a place of consideration but the odds worked in my favor. It's partially because there were two positions open, I think, and my manager's open to hiring technicians at any level. 

     I never thought I'd be working in a general practice when it came to being a veterinary professional but if I had to, I know I'm in the right place. I'm pretty lost at everything, especially since I spent like two months studying research animal material in preparation for interviews with research facilities. It also didn't help that after being rejected by the HR (almost instantaneously) of several places and applying for positions that would just be filled or taken down not to long after being posted, I started to catch up on reading comic books again and put everything I learned in technician school back into the archives of my brain.

    When it comes to working with vet students at the moment, I'm really awful at answering questions because (1) I barely know how the place operates and (2) I barely remember anything I learned in school. A lot of it is coming back, but I'm still the most amateur, novice, rookie person amongst my colleagues and it doesn't help when even the part-time veterinary assistants are so well versed in the things I should already know. Nonetheless, everyone is super nice and supportive. Being in a pandemic helps a bit since vet students in the hospital are limited and clients can't physically be in exam rooms until herd immunity is reached, so I have some months to know my shit and talk the talk but that doesn't go without me making mistakes and being awful at the skills that require physical practice. I don't even have a dog or cat at home, so it's a bit difficult to even practice and review things I learned in school. 

I'll list some things that others may learn from my mistakes:

• Listen to how many CCs/mls people ask you to pull for them and pick the syringe closest to that amount. That'll save you a scolding, but also it really does make a difference when it comes to accurately pulling up the correct dose. I'm so used to using 3ml syringes that I naturally just gravitate towards pulling them out of the drawer, especially when it's the primary syringe for vaccines and the refrigerated drugs. And then there's drugs like propofol, which usually ends up needing more than 3ml syringes because it requires a projected high dose, but only given until effect (titrated) and all animals require a different amount to become sedated.
• I've been writing notes for clients on post-its just to remind myself to tell it to them but also give to clients, and I only recently realized that I could've been typing them up as "discharge" instructions which look way more professional than a pink post-it in my ugly handwriting. 
• I forget that x-rays often are either abdominal or thoracic and if they're not, it's usually joint focused. And if it's not joint focused, then it's specifically bone focused (but I don't often hear those shots being requested). A vet student asked me once what kind of focused shot should be taken for an arthritic dog's lower back and I was like "femoral?" when it should be like hip joint or something...IDK. 
• This should be like an obvious one but if the owner doesn't mention like "he got a vaccine right?", I'll forget half the time to remind owners to monitor for vaccine reactions, provide examples of signs of that, and what to do if it does occur (which isn't often but it does happen). 
• I absolutely hate dealing with  money (estimates and invoices) because it makes all the difference in the world when it comes to helping the animal get the best care they can receive and dealing with a client with multiple pets at the same time is almost always a guarantee you'll forget something when it comes to billing, so...take your time...double check your notes and written instructions. **Not that working in research doesn't deal with money but it's a bit different because it's either from the corporation [which is basically unlimited] or through research grants** 

There's probably more but I can't recall at the moment. Some cool things I've done or been a part of since working at this vet school:

• I saw my first reptile surgery which was a tail amputation. I also saw how to intubate a lizard which is a bit different from a snake but easier than a cat? You also really get to hear and see how much slower the heart pumps and how little breaths they take. Moreover, if you're like me, you'd wonder why a tail would need to be amputated for a lizard when most of them have the ability to drop their tail? The tail attached, however, had signs of necrosis and it didn't occur to me that even though they could drop it, the priority now was to stop an infection from occurring and traveling into the blood stream (sepsis).  
• I scrubbed into an orthopedic surgery which was kind of like a..."I wasn't expecting this nor am I ready but ok" moment. I didn't really do much besides hold a plate in place so the doctor could drill into the side of the dog's knee. I knew I wasn't going to faint or anything because I've sort of trained myself to see the insides of animals through videos of people doing museum research prep work where they skin dead animals, but holding the leg and feeling the drill go through and seeing the surgeon take a saw to the leg isn't the most fun thing to watch. Likewise, seeing open flesh and a dog's stifle joint and bone exposed is like looking at fresh bloody chicken? 
• The other day, I was taught how to do a rectal exam because your finger is already up the butt to express anal glands. I was basically told to feel for the landmarks (the urethra below and sacrum above) and then feel for uniformity. 
• I've also been corrected numerous times for holding dogs and cats wrong and improper vaccine administration, so don't feel bad if you think you're a dumb POS because I'm also a stupid POS.

Stuff I've been directly taught or indirectly learned:

• Old dogs with heart murmurs can take gas anesthesia fine (we only use sevoflurane which is the safer of the two options anyway, other being isoflurane). The only time it's really contraindicated would be if congestive heart failure is found in x-rays, so that'd be the next procedure to do before getting an older dog into surgery or dental cleaning. You'll want to look at the size of the heart and see if there's any fluid in the lungs. Bloodwork is also super important in determining which drugs to use for sedation and anesthetics. Likewise, going on the chest x-ray thing, there was an English bulldog in for 'trouble breathing' and the exam went fine until it started developing into an emergency situation and the owner ultimately decided to euthanize. After the dog was intubated, given regular breaths, and provided emergency drugs and had radiographs taken, it totally sucks when you try to help return a patient to a normal state but then find that the dog may have developed a mass in its oral cavity and whatnot (not sure what exactly because you don't want to be intrusive with the doctors and the owner around). One of the options was to provide another passage way for the dog to breathe via tracheotomy which is basically cutting open a hole in the throat (think of those smoking ads in the early 2000s). English bulldogs, as cute as they are, have no benefit from the really smushed faces and chunky bodies they've been bred to have. It only makes it harder for them to breathe and difficult for doctors and technicians to treat because of their really fat necks and shortened muzzles. It was pretty wild being only 3 weeks into my new job and thrown into all these situations I'm not ready for (or ever will be, unless forced into it). 
• Grain-free diets are not good for dogs, unless they help with food associated itching. The argument for grain-free diets is basically that since dogs are descendants of wolves, they need a more "carnivorous" diet because they're practically wolves but dogs and wolves are different. They split from a common ancestor thousands of years ago. It's just like how humans and monkeys split from a common ancestor a long time ago, yet we're not pushed to have the same diet as a gorilla or chimpanzee because we know that our species have adapted to an omnivorous diet (and dogs have developed the same diet as both species cohabitated together for thousands of years). Long story short, grain-free dog food is becoming ever more clearly to be associated with dilated cardiomyopathy. The scientific proof is yet to be published as research is still continuing. But if I'm being taught that, then there's enough evidence for my colleague to confidently inform me and other vet students about the connection. **But as a general note though, correlation ≠ causation. Just because one study says something doesn't mean it's fact. It's just what they found...and that can be due to poor controls and whatnot. But when multiple studies lead to the same conclusion, then you can confidently say 'yeah, this causes that'**         

I'll share some pictures but not of patients since you never know if they run into your blog or something. 

    Although I do post a lot of the cute and happy things to my Instagram stories a lot from my work, there's also the patients that are poorly raised or just develop complications that can't be remedied by a general practice. I'll never not get glossy eyed and on the verge of tears over people deciding to euthanize their pet. Watching as the propofol puts the patient to sleep and then the euthasol stops the heart, while I'm just standing there with the doctor and owner around is...not fun. 

    I constantly have to remind myself that euthanasia is part of animal welfare and prolonged periods pain and suffering is not a good feeling. What's worse is that our pets can't communicate how they're feeling and sometimes hide the fact that they are in pain and it's probably one of the wildest guilt trips a person can take from it. 

This Whirlwind of a Pandemic.

Hello written blog.
It's been a while.

    To recap what's happened in life, I finished animal technician school in mid-December of 2019. Although it gave me a sense of freedom, I've been feeling defeated as I tried to get a job in animal research straight from the gate. Got some replies, a phone interview, an in-person interview and still nothing. For one thing, I can see why because I'm an absolute mess at replying. I'm also a horrible interrupter and if the nerves really got me working, then I tend to speak way too fast. Every person I speak to probably thinks I'm insane at this point, but whatever. Every chance I get to interview, it just gives me more questions to log down and think of better replies to later on. Let me backtrack a bit...

    I spent my final semester interning at the California Institute of Technology to finish my animal technician program. Aside from the fact that I spent almost two hundred dollars on parking permits over the course of almost three months, I enjoyed that place a lot and was always in awe when I walked through the campus after my "shift". The staff was all super nice and I felt like I fit in really well there. Moreover, I always felt kind of cool when I would collect gifts from spinning PokéStops around campus in Pokémon Go and sent them out. It'd be from really cool places like "The Laboratory of Nuclear Radiation" or some really specific science you wouldn't immediately be able to pull out of your brain. Sadly, there wasn't any open positions by the time I was done with my hours. Part of me regrets not just taking that open animal husbandry position but at the same time, I didn't go to school to get two degrees and a license to work a position that doesn't even need a college education in the first place. I could do so much more than just taking care of a room of a hundred mice cages, you know? At the same time, if I just sucked it up and took a lower position, I could've clocked in enough hours to take a certification exam and I would have two certifications over other people...oh well...

    In late January and into February, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer and was basically unable to eat and kept vomiting up to the day of his surgery. I mentioned this on my YouTube channel but basically it was supposed to be a laparoscopic removal of the tumor (which is a more sterile procedure) and ended up just being a surgical removal of [hopefully] all the infected cells within his large intestine. 

    Even though COVID19 was starting to appear on the news, we weren't in shut down mode yet because of the idiotic President and his administration. I remember sitting in the ICU section of the hospital beside my dad and hearing the hospital staff talk about how China built a hospital from the ground up within a week or so to handle the excess number of people needing emergency care. During my time sitting beside my dad, I printed out pretty much every chapter of this study book I have for the VTNE and highlighted all the answers because the book was entirely just multiple choice questions. My dad was free to go home after a week in the hospital which I appreciated a lot because my mom literally was shaming me for being against staying with my dad overnight. It's like...the hospital isn't that far from home and there's literally staff there checking on him every couple of hours. Why should I be doing their job and sleeping on a chair, when I could rest up for 8-10 hours and then show up again. It wasn't like my dad was dying either. I'm still mad about that because my brother, even to this day, is still incredibly disrespectful to both my parents and has nothing to show for it. He could very well bring his 3DS and Nintendo Switch (which I didn't have) and tough it out through the night but he chooses to be a royal piece of garbage.

    Well anyway, after I finished animal technician school, I was still waiting for the school to state that I graduated on my transcript before I was able to register for the national exam. I got another interview during the first week of March which was a huge waste of time but it was a learning lesson nonetheless. I got a rejection email during the week of lockdown which was a punch in the stomach. The worst part of it is that the gym is closed and I can't take out my frustrations on heavy weights and being able to physically exhaust myself to get a good night's rest. As late March approached, I got a letter from the college I was attending that stated my transcript was updated and my diploma would be coming soon after. 
    Upon finding out that my transcript was updated, I basically marked the day in April that the next registration window would open and I would sign up to take the VTNE in July as I had planned. For the next two-three'ish months, I basically spent an hour or so a day reading the chapters of the study book I was highlighting at the hospital prior. I also re-registered for VTNEprep and did some practice questions every day until the test day got closer, then I would then do the full practice tests to get a feel of how the duration of the test would go. 

    I literally scheduled my test day during the last week of July because I wasn't sure how the enhanced unemployment would go about. I chose Wednesday because I felt like there'd be less cars around but that's subjective. I drove to the testing center a day earlier just so I wouldn't be frantically looking for the place if I was late the next day. I got there early the next day anyway and with me was the biggest chapter of study questions for some last minute reading. I didn't even read all that much during test day because I had brought my food in the car so that I could use that early time to eat before my test. That way, I wouldn't be "burned out" and thinking of food midway through my exam.   

    The test wasn't easy but it wasn't hard either. I remember my first question wasn't even in any of my study material and I had a flashback to my "applied handling and restraint" class where I my teachers were going over what sheep are vaccinated against. My drug calculation questions were especially hard and the way it was formatted was nothing like what I was taught in school. You don't even get to find out what you got wrong and what the correct answers were in the end, but I passed. Thankfully, it was not like a BARELY passed but over 100 points over the bare minimum. I'm not even sure how the score is calculated though, because it's like a 175 question test with 150 questions actually counting and 25 being experimental questions. My score was like 500 hundred something and the minimum passing was like 420.  

    A week after passing my exam and taking a mental break from all that studying, I felt obligated to let the professor who's most resourceful in the field of laboratory animal know the good news along with my supervisors at Caltech. It was mainly to see if there were any job opportunities I wasn't aware of but I thought they'd genuinely would like to hear from me as well. What I've learned is that it never hurts to ask and the worst someone can say to you is "no", so you might as well try. Even though I've never asked for a letter of recommendation yet, I at least know there are some people who are willing to write one for me. I've also learned that you can be the best out there but landing a job all really depends on timing and luck. Timing in that you aren't bested by someone else more "appealing" than you and luck in that you're the best applicant at that time of need. 

    Following the email, I did get responses. Mostly congratulatory but my professor notified me of a position as a surgical laboratory technician that I could try. One of the vets from Caltech also recommend that I become a member of the local branch of the Association for Laboratory Animal Science which I did so I can just put it on my resume and use it as a resource in the future for continued education credits. Even though I haven't touched a gas anesthesia machine in almost a year, I ended up being one of two candidates for the position as a surgical lab tech. Ultimately, I got rejected which bugged the shit out of me because I know for a fact that there aren't that many veterinary technicians with a bachelor's degree where I'm from. The only reason I could've been rejected was that the other person has a bachelor's in animal science or zoology or something. I don't know. I can only control so much. Even though I wasn't looking forward to the commute had I been hired, it was an opportunity to do really cool things like place implants and stuff to help people with heart disease. 

    Oh well, all I can do now is apply to stuff I believe I can do. Sometimes, I get rejected because I'm overeducated or something, especially the animal husbandry ones. I'm not too focused on getting a new job ASAP being that we're in a pandemic and I'm living in one of the worst countries when it comes to warning the public and contact tracing, so all I can really follow is when I'm looking through the local news and seeing how things like the mayoral debate of a neighboring city is cancelled because one of the staffers tested positive. Things like that keep me grounded knowing the virus is closer than I think.

    At the same time, I really don't want to return to work with my piece of shit, obese brother because it really annoys me seeing him work a job he doesn't deserve. He's been enjoying his enhanced unemployment money so much that he bought a THIRD MONITOR FOR HIS COMPUTER. It's literally one monitor dedicated to a TWITCH stream, one for reddit or video games, and the third for some chat box ticker? He'd also buy a bunch of groceries for himself which consists mostly of packaged sweets and half a year later, my mom noticed one day how swollen his feet are and freaked the fuck out. She was like "that is NOT NORMAL! THIS IS A SIGN OF DISEASE!" and only recently did he decide to start going on an almost daily walk? This is after years of being like "I KNOW I'M FUCKING FAT AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN SAY THAT'LL CHANGE THAT" and now it's like...well, the diabetes and poor circulation is starting to show...heh...because of all the sitting and eating he does in front of his computer...his feet still looks like a dinosaur's. 

    When it comes to me, on the other hand, I've lost almost 20 pounds since I turned 31. I mostly see it in my legs because my stomach isn't as flat as I want it. I'm hoping it will be by my 32nd birthday but it's creeping faster and faster. I haven't been keeping track of my calories since the initial lockdown. I've just been assuming that I'm still eating in a deficit because I haven't been eating as much as I would when I was working. I'm wanting to come out of the pandemic looking fabulous and ready to go back to two hour training sessions in the gym when it opens again.  

    Early voting started in California last week, I already filled out my ballot, signed, addressed, and dated it before putting it in those official 24 hour ballot boxes. I'm hoping young voters will finally understand how important it is to vote and vote regularly, not just at the presidential level. There are evil and corrupt people in your local city council and school board as well. I guess I was lucky enough to be 18 when President Obama was running, so I felt that "excitement" for the first black POTUS. I also majored in Political Science so I know how voting can impact everyone, but now it's very obvious how impacted we are? We probably all know someone who died or had COVID19 and this could've all been prevented if those early cases were traced and isolated and travel was monitored more closely. 

It's so sad what has become of this.

Well, hoping I do get a new job before 2020 ends. 

If there's anything good to come from the pandemic, it's that it gives me better odds at getting hired.

I don't think I'll be posting new pictures to Instagram until things get better.

To end, I just finished rereading this entry and I hope I didn't miss any more of those missing words.

Maybe I'll type another entry around Christmas. Who knows.             

When You Have a Little Too Much Free Time [Pre-Covid Life, Written July 27, 2019]

I'm in the mood to write a blog entry because my phone is (what I believe to be) dying and I can't be in my room right now because it's that point in summer where all the heat rises and accumulates upstairs and it gets unbearably hot as the sun progresses from noon to evening. On a random note, I was watching a phone review on YouTube earlier and this British guy was like "okay, it's about 10 pm and the sun is barely starting to set" and I'm sitting there with a "what?" on my face because the sun always sets by 9 pm here. My mom kind of nags me, every single time it is hot, to just stay downstairs because of it, so I sit in my parent's bedroom beside the ghetto single unit air conditioner until the sun goes down.

Recently, my phone has been getting rather warm and I thought it was because I've been opening Pokemon Go more often, but that wasn't the case this morning. Every morning, I always reboot my phone once I get to the gym because my ghetto Bluetooth earbuds don't seem to connect as smoothly without doing so. If I don't reboot, my music skips so much that it takes less time to just do a reboot and reconnect to Bluetooth than wait out the signal. Usually, I try to get Poke balls from the pokestop before I enter the gym but it didn't load fast enough and once I'm in the door, I just ignore the app. 

Well anyway, after the usual reboot and morning stretches, I spent one hour on the cardio-bike catching up on my comic books (I'm finally caught up to the most recent issue of Aquaman and Justice League!) and then do my usual abdominal exercises before going home. During that hour, my phone went from around 70% to 25% with the screen feeling extra warm in my hand. Oddly enough, in the recently opened apps tab, the only app open was Google Play Music. I ended up rebooting my phone as I changed swapped my sweaty tank top for a dry T-shirt that I didn't care for anymore. The warmth dissipated and left me with enough power before getting home. As I washed my blender bottle and water bottle, the battery was at 15% which starts prompting to be plugged for charging.

This is totally starting to give me dejavu because the phone before this one, I was having similar battery draining issues and the heating came later? Also, for the longest time, I just put up with it by keeping my external battery close to me until the phone couldn't even hold a charge anymore. I did look up if other people had the same issues and cleared my cache (which at one point, I didn't realize took up so much space from the internal storage that it only left me with about 2 gigs left. I thought it was just my music, photos, and videos hogging the space...lol). It freed up almost a gig of internal memory but doesn't seem to help. I have been wanting a new phone, so this is kind of an excuse for it. At the same time, do I really want to waste $500 on a new phone right now? No. 

Moreover, what totally bugs me as well is that my fucking pathetic little brother bought a Oneplus 6T like 6 months ago and his reason was that his phone before that one was "getting slow". First off, my good-for-nothing brother doesn't go anywhere and just sits his obese ass in front of his computer all day and night, so why would you need a phone with top tier specs? What irks me more is that if I didn't get him a job in the first place, he wouldn't have that phone, a Nintendo 3DS and Switch, a PS4, nor the money to build two desktop computers with a 2 monitor configuration (in which he has bought 3 monitors in total and attempted to dump the one he wanted to get rid of in my room. Like, I don't want your trash, bitch). 

The job is supposed to allow for him to finish college with food money and whatnot, but he basically scammed my mom into making me get him a job that he didn't even need to get interviewed for. The only time he ever pays my mom back for anything is when she occasionally forces him to pay a car insurance bill, but doesn't ask him for anything more than that. At one time, he did some online schooling to shut my mom up about doing nothing with his life, but that looked like it stopped after a few months. All I ever see on his computer monitor is one stupid monitor with a manga open and the other with a stupid Twitch stream playing. It's SO ANNOYING when I'm busting my ass trying to get my life together when he can just sleep 10 hours a day, work 4-6 hours at a job he doesn't even deserve, and be a 27 year old baby. He has weekends off and almost every governmental holiday. It doesn't take someone over 5 years to figure out what you want to do with you life, especially if you don't even attempt anything at all.

What's more annoying is when my mom tells me to stop comparing myself to him and that I should be doing what a brother should be doing, be helpful and "set an example". Like, I want to act like a fucking baby too and not do shit because I hate my life as well. No one has ever helped me to the extent that I have for both him and my mom. More recently, my mom's employer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and asked me to explain what the letters meant because she only worked one or two days a week for a while. I would obviously help to the best of my ability in the end because that's just the right thing to do, but I told her to go ask my brother because all he does is sit around all day not doing anything. Might as well make him use his brain to do something useful for once because I'm busting my ass trying to pass all my classes and practicums and while having some food money at hand and be able to pay for my gym membership and my phone bill. I also pay for my parents' service as well because they wouldn't even have a mobile phone, if it wasn't for me. My brother doesn't do shit! He just hides in his room and eats junk food he orders regularly with his Amazon prime membership, because he can't even shop at a grocery store like a normal person. 

  

.... 

So like what my entry title states, I kind of have too much free time and it's getting to the point where I'm like swamped in my own "what if" thoughts and any possible scenario you can play in your head because you aren't occupied with work or academia. I want to not be stuck at home but I have to for another couple of weeks. It doesn't help that my dad is retired, all his friends are dead, and he just sits in front of the TV all day and night. If you can't tell, I practically have no relationship with my dad aside from the fact that half of my DNA is from him. He is the most apathetic being alive and an alcoholic at that, which is why I absolutely despise seeing people party and drink. What was the point of this again? Oh, it's because I'm stuck at home. 

Before this, I was finishing my volunteer requirement at a general practice so I was essentially standing around at an animal hospital for 6 hours a day for 3 weeks. My time at that hospital was pretty great, for the most part. I unknowingly volunteered at a hospital that the girl I sat next to in class works at. It didn't mean that it was fun though because how she is at school and at work is like two different people. I spent most of my time not following her around because of it. I loved the doctors though. They were so nice to be around and tried to include me in things that the manager may not have wanted. Much of the staff learned my name within a week of me being there too. It's funny when the manager' says "we gotta start getting you to do more stuff" while simultaneously being like "you're not supposed to touch this or open that by yourself". It's like, I get it and it's a whole liability thing and so I'm literally just standing around watching, then get told "speak up more" and it's like...I can't do anything anyways...so...why?

In the end, I actually got told that when I'm done with the program I could get in touch with him for a position at the hospital. That was super awesome to hear because the first hospital I ever interviewed for passed me over. Also, if anyone is interested in working with puppies or kittens, general practices are probably the best places to see them where they aren't horribly sick or in horrific conditions. The only gripe I have with working in that field is in the long term aspect of it because I'm not in my twenties anymore and I (obviously) need that growth, challenge, and mental stimulation (if you can't tell from the entry snowballing into this mess). I don't want to be involved with a hospital shutting down in the long run or going corporate. I also want to work with more intellectuals, without trying to sound offensive. 

I might go back in 6 months just to get a kitten because they have a lot and I got asked to take some home. I want to be a responsible pet owner this time, so I need to finish my program first, get licensed, and be working full-time before I can do anything extra. I'd like an extra social, domestic medium hair kitty and another Labrador eventually...I just don't know when...   

I also have class once a week but there isn't much studying involved, so I kind of have too much thinking time. Thoughts include:

- Must be nice to be married or have legitimate close friends: as I type extremely long messages to people and not get a reply for days at a time. I'm not mad about it but there are times where I do want an opinion on something or some sort of reassurance about stuff, and there is me, myself, and I. 

- I'd really like to go to an amusement or theme park right now. Too bad I have no friends: Summer has been kind of a drag and I kind of miss the wild, unexpectedness that comes with working with kids, so I feel sort of stagnated. I want a day to just ride a bunch of thrill rides, eat a greasy meal, and chug a ton of iced regular sugar soda. There's also this dog exhibit I want to go see at the California Science Center but my mom started picking up shifts again, so I don't want to drag her with me. (In a totally unrelated story, on one of my days shadowing a technician at the animal hospital, there was a client with a super friendly and hyper rottweiler that came in because he noticed she's been itchy. The doctor diagnosed it as a hot spot from all the flea bites she's gotten and prescribed flea preventative because she wasn't on any. But anyway, that boy was hot and he was there with his mom and the girls in the back were like bagging on how he's a momma's boy and crap. Anyone that loves and respects their mother is a plus to me, whatever . I still can't get over how good looking that guy was, even though I was probably like at least 5 years older than him. It's also really odd seeing clients that you knew in middle school show up. I was like "yikes" and avoided that appointment.)

-I really need to step up my diet game or change my workout routine: Being that I'm 30, any ache or movement is a death trap to me. As much as I'd like to do squats on things that aren't meant for squats, I don't want to risk hurting myself and making things worse. 

-Why do I keep buying stuff when I'm not even working right now:

-I miss my dog:

[After leaving this entry in my drafts for a year, I'm just going to publish it without writing any further.] 

Woop~woop~

Wild...6 months has passed. I'm hoping to update my YouTube channel before the week ends, but that's besides the point of this entry. Plus, my face has so much acne from all the academic stress, I don't even want to bother updating but I feel an obligation to. I obviously won't rush it though because I do it for me, mostly.

So...these past couple of months have been kind of a battle with my thoughts since I am literally like 6 months away from graduating (again but I'll have a science degree this time!). After that, I pretty much just take my licensing exam to officially become a licensed veterinary technician. It's happening pretty quickly and I'm like...not sure if I'm ready for it but I also can't NOT be ready for it because it'll happen.

Let me try to recollect what has happened since my last blog entry...

Between January and February, I had some free time because I only had one class during those 6 weeks of class. It was a relatively easy class because the professor was super cool and everything was basically guided. The most challenging thing about that class was probably doing a jugular blood draw on a sheep because it's so hard to differentiate the blood vessel from just neck muscle. Like, you can see it rise and then it just looks like normal skin... you end up tapping on the skin hoping your hitting the right spot before inserting the needle and you pray you're not fucking it up in front of the person supervising you. There was also this part of class where we had to learn how to properly wrap the legs of a horse (specifically around the fetlock joint which would be the part of your finger that connects to the palm, I guess) and there were times were I'd drop the wrap on the ground, the roll would unravel, and the neighboring horse would flip out. Thankfully, I never got kicked by the horse I was actually wrapping on.

So anyway, during that time period, I used the free time to apply to some animal research jobs for fun because that's where I intended on going after graduating, plus I used the opportunity to update my resume. To my surprise, I got a call back from one of the universities I applied to but the position ended up being full-time and I wasn't able to fill that role. I ended up sort of trying to reach out to the animal resources manager about possibly interning, but it didn't work out because I had dropped the work experience requirement class already (after checking the school system every hour of every day for like a month to get my classes). Recently, I emailed him back but he said that there weren't any opportunities available. That was a bummer, but I'm getting too ahead of myself.

Between late February and June, I took three classes again and that was exhausting. I only managed to get an A in one class and the other two ended up with Bs that I worked really hard to keep. My medical nursing class was nerve-racking as fuck. I almost died when my intravenous catheter didn't release any blood from my dog. The doctor teaching my class was like "you know, you can still fix that" and I basically took a breath and knew that I'm supposed to pull back and redirect the needle. As soon as I pulled the needle back, there was a flash of blood and I immediately began securing the catheter with tape. I didn't realize that I had pushed my needle all the way in because you only insert until you see that flash of blood and then push the teflon piece forward, before pulling out the needle and anchoring the catheter in.

Skill assessment also didn't end with just that catheter insertion, I had an x-ray practicum I bombed and that made me so upset. I ended up balancing it out during my second one which I took a perfect left lateral metacarpus + phalanges radiograph, and I was only docked for not using gloves (because I panicked when the dog that is usually good started squirming and I was like SHIT!). There was also a slew of other skill assessment that I won't go too much into because it's a lot. It's also kind of hard because I don't have an otoscope to play with at home and then you're expected to know how to operate it, but it's done with! (for now anyway). Oh! I didn't even mention how I hit a girl in the face because I was helping restrain a pretty big dog for her x-ray and it was super eager to get off the table and I reached out to catch his rear and hit this chick in the face! Also that chick drew out a caudal spine x-ray, and took a cervical spine x-ray instead...I literally watched like O_O...

Going back on that animal research job, I always knew I would lean towards animal research, especially in a university setting, because I've basically been working in education since I graduated high school. During my Laboratory Animal Medicine and Care class, it was essentially solidified as I learned how much animal research contributed to scientific advancements and how animal welfare has a huge role in it. It's not caged animals being injected full of stuff against their will, and watching how fucked up they get. Also through that class, I finally figured out how to get that lab technician certification and because I already have a four year degree, I can get certified faster than someone without one, if we got hired at the same time. So after I graduate and I pass the VTNE, I'll be working towards that because I think it's worth it for the pay raise.

So anyway, I passed all my classes this semester and I only have one class left to take and three more work experience requirements to fulfill. I should have no problem getting into that surgical nursing class I need and after consulting with my professor about a question I had, she basically confirmed my plan and kind of made it better. I was supposed to intern at a general practice during my semester taking medical nursing, but I chose to focus on my classes because when I worked at the shelter + worked for money + take three classes at the same time, it was insanely exhausting for my old thirty year old ass.

She said to volunteer at a general practice in the summer and during the fall "why don't you do 120 hours at a lab since you have no interest in emergency medicine" and internally, I was screaming "HELL YEAH! I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT WAS AN OPTION". I was expecting to take surgical nursing and then volunteering at a lab and emergency clinic during that time. It'll save me from all the extra driving and paperwork.

This came about because I always planned to work at a lab but I wasn't able to do my internship at one, as mentioned earlier. Prior to that, I had made this presentation in front of my laboratory animal class about environmental enrichment for the school's llama (refer to my Instagram for his picture) and I did this presentation that turned out funnier than I expected. It totally threw me off because I always script what I want to say but all the chuckling ended up making me talk on a whim, and I breezed through the slides without really considering that it should be at least 15 minutes long. Before I started my presentation, I had to inform the class how I had the worst group mates ever that both bailed on me so I had to finish the project on my own. I told them not to feel sorry for me because I had to do a long presentation on my own to get my bachelor's degree, so it wasn't new and I work with a class all the time anyway, so standing in front of a classroom isn't a scary thing to me. I also was petty as fuck in my presentation and photoshopped myself over my group mates. Ultimately, the presentation ended with my professor asking me what I wanted to do after finishing the program because she could help me. I replied saying how I wanted to do what the UCLA guest speaker does, basically be a zoologist for scientific research and educate the public when there's a need, so she said if I'm serious about it to email her for details.

The next day, I emailed her because I didn't do my veterinary specialty work experience requirement yet. So I asked if her contacts wouldn't be able to take me for the summer because it's too soon, would it be smarter to do a general practice during the summer and save the veterinary specialty for the fall, and I already went over how that turned out two paragraphs above.

Fast forward to the weekend after my last final for the spring, I called the animal hospital that's super close to my workplace about volunteering there and they basically just said to come over and they'll set everything up, so I have my general practice work experience sort of set. I'll be heading there tomorrow morning after the gym to fill out the paperwork and see how it'll end up being. I want to finish my 60 hours in three weeks.

Also during this weekend, I wrote an email to the doctor of a different university that's even more prestigious than the one I had applied to in January and I got an email saying that it's a "most likely yes" that they'd be able to host my internship for the fall. Hopefully that'll end up being a full-time job for me which will be super awesome because that university is so close to my home. It's also kind of a big FUCK YOU to the first university that passed me over and all those animal hospitals that never called me back.

I have this huge load of stress off my shoulders now because I have my interning things semi-sorted out, semi-confirmed. I have a ton of acne on my face which totally drives down my self esteem but hopefully it'll clear up once once it approaches Christmas time.

AH~I'm so stoked for this fall! Now I just need some doctorate student or group of doctors to propose some study using dogs during my time at the university and I'll be one of the first to adopt them once their study is over. I'll have a dog again soon...soon! (after I get that full-time money, buy my own car and pay for my own insurance, so I take a some burden off my mom)...T___T