Hello everyone. Tyring to keep up with a regular blog here. Hoping that this works and before I get to the main topic of my blog. I have two things to say.
Number one, college has ruined my immune system. I was never really prone to getting sick very much. Maybe a cold once a year that lasted a week but other then that I was always pretty healthy. Man I have been really sick three times since I have been at college. And this last time I am just now getting over. But over the weekend I had my temperature get up too 101.3 and thats very bad for me. I am normally running a bit cold, about 96.1 is my normal temperature. So least to say I spent valentines day at prima care getting something to fight off my awful cold/flu/whatever I had. So there you go, I have said it, be warned that when going to college you are exposed to all sorts of new germs and it might take the whole year for your body to adjust to the new germ infested environment known as college.
Number two, tonight was Waltz Night for orchestra. My first orchestra performance since I joined the college chamber orchestra. It is a two hour long concert with dancing and everything! It was so much fun! Although my back and wrist are still aching I fully enjoyed performing and dancing. Most of my friends came and ended up staying the whole time because they were having so much fun. We played many Waltz’s such as sleeping beauty 
as well as Polka’s like Dance of the Comedians, a crazy fast piece but super fun to play, and we played some Tango’s like the well known Habanera. I hope our next concert is just as fun and enjoyable, even without the dancing.
Finally the main topic of my blog. Since I can remember all I ever wanted to be was a veterinarian. I put myself through extra science classes in school, took a job at a vets, and volunteered many hours at animal shelters learning how to give tests, mend bones, feed infant animals, draw blood and give shots. I truly felt like I was on my way to becoming a veterinarian like I’ve always dreamed. It has finally taken until now for me to wake up and realize how much I am just really not good at science stuff. I think it’s interesting and if I could just memorize everything I need to know to be a vet, like the giving shots, the medications, the differences in body structure between animals and call it good I would still be aiming towards becoming a vet. Unfortunately its not that simple, I have to take dozens of biology and chemistry classes. Trying to do that would be my worst nightmare. Trust me I have already tried, I signed up for general chem 1 and dropped it. I was scared out of my mind in that class it was like a foreign language! Then I went to cell biology and I stuck with it for awhile until I realized that unless I decided to only focus on cell biology and fail all my other classes that I was going to fail miserably in cell biology. So that was dropped too. As much as it is interesting it just doesn’t stick and I can’t make it work.
No worries though, I am staying optimistic and knowing that it is not the end of the world if I am not a veterinarian. There are so many other options I have in a career that involves animals. I just wasn’t as open minded to it before because I was too stubborn and convinced that I would never be happy in life if I couldn’t be a veterinarian.
Alas I have found a new love. A love for psychology and how I have only known my love for it after taking AP psych in high school. I signed up for intro to psych in college and that was it. Hook, line and sinker I knew that this was what I was meant to do. Major in psychology and take a good look at my options as a career with that. Besides the typical clinical psychologist I have tons of options. Options that even include animals. One of those is animal behavior therapy. Therapy for people or children with disabilities with animals. It is so amazing and a friend of mine here in arkansas has that as her job. I observed her at work a couple times and its just so fascinating to me how much psychology plays a huge role in this type of therapy with animals. Also there is hippo-therapy which is with horses and I could go on a long ten page paper about what that is. Just look it up and you will understand. Just basically therapy with horses involved.
Strangely enough I was flipping channels one day and came across the dog whisperer. I have never seen this show before and only heard of it briefly. I was curious so I watched it for awhile. What I learned was that everything this guy was doing was good psychology. He used psychology to help people learn how to understand their pets, how to train them, and he showed you how animals are so heavily influenced by our own behavior. It is not that he can “talk” to dogs and understand them. He merely sees the behaviors, as pet owners we exhibit, that the animal picks up on or sense and use in the wrong way. It is amazing that he turned his love for animals and psychology into something that can be extremely helpful for people and their pets. Now I am not saying I want to go out and become the next dog whisperer but maybe there is a job like that out there for me. One incorporating animals and psychology, besides therapy, which is always an option.
As a vet turned psychologist, maybe I don’t have to give up on working with animals in my career just yet. Staying optimistic and looking for opportunities.
