"At heart I am a generalist. In my years of veterinary practice I have been able to explore several medical disciplines and have been fortunate enough to work with creatures weighing grams and those weighing hundreds of kilograms. I have been able to save lives and borne the responsibility of ending them. At the end of each day I am left with questions. I view a graduate education as a means to further explore these questions and the next step in a career focused on understanding the intersection of animal, human and environmental health and mentoring the next generation of veterinary practitioners."
This is the introductory paragraph to the Statement of Intent that I submitted with my graduate school applications. I have always known that I would want to leave the practice environment someday. Oddly enough, when I started college small animal practice was close to the last place that I wanted to be. Most of interests in vet school were linked with the small animal program, so I ended up with good training in small animal medicine spiced with lots of exotic pet and zoo experience with some fun lab rotations thrown in. The molecular biology clerkship was great. The microbiology clerkship has been helpful in practice and I still want to culture everything (how did someone think to check what kind of bacteria grew in a heartworm?). Government and Corporate Practice and of course the externships at Brookfield Zoo and the Duke University Primate Center (now Duke Lemur Center) opened my eyes to how much is out there and what the possibilities can be.
The problem is that I get intellectually itchy. I like new things, even if I'm bad at them for the most part. And have I ever got questions! What was going on with that tiny cluster of leopard geckos with gout (different homes, same origin)? What impact are those Quaker parakeets having on their newly adopted cities? Are we potentially selecting for genetic issues in the captive endangered species that we hope to reintroduce? How many
Baylisascaris larvae are lurking in the soil in rural versus urban areas? How prevalent in canine brucellosis in our shelter population? Why exactly do eosinophils spike in response to both allergens and parasites (and why won't they get the hell out of my son's esophagus)? Unfortunately, it's seriously cost prohibitive to do a good literature review as a practitioner (or at least as somebody who wants access to conservation and ecology and behavior and general biology journals in addition to the medical ones that I subscribe to). This combined with some other personal factors has me feeling like my performance in practice isn't where I want it to be. I'm not interested in running a business and I think that the best way for me to advance professionally is to take a slightly different direction. So, I'm going to be teaching in the Brown Mackie tech program this fall and I've been offered a graduate position in comparative epidemiology at Purdue for the spring. I will be looking at the incidence of Q-fever in goats in Indiana. I'm reviewing my goat medicine and getting pretty excited about the directions the research could take. We're also looking into the logistics of the move to be certain we can make that part of the change work. My goal is to end up at a college or university, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully this makes some sense to everyone, but you can let me know if you think I've lost my mind.
