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Happy birthday to me, I suppose XD First time celebrating it in years, and only because a couple of our friends here (Alexya and Christine) had birthdays almost immediately before and after this past weekend, so we mashed it all together into one big celebration. Knocked off a bit early on Friday afternoon so I could get home and pack quick before Albert and I picked up Ann and headed to Kansas City, where Christine's boyfriend Eric had gotten hotel rooms for all 6 of us near the major outlet store cluster (Legends) which also had a Dave and Buster's. So Dave and Buster's for dinner (with Reema, Alexya and Christine's high school friend) and then lots of playing yay :D And then back to the hotel room to just hang out and futz around and draw on people as they fell asleep XD
And then the next day we checked out around 11 AM and went to a nearby Chick-fil-A to eat lunch... my first time eating at Chick-fil-A (never really had the opportunity before the whole fundie anti-gay thing and then just continued not bothering ever since), but I can kind of see the appeal. The chicken is really good, even though the rest of the sandwiches are just your standard fast food slop. And holy crap the employees are really cheerful and helpful and nice... there was this one guy I think was the manager, and he was 110% cheerful and chummy as he helped us put tables together to accomodate our 6-person group and also checking in afterward noaw and then. Something you pretty much never see in fast-food chains.
And then we went shopping at the Legends outlets, and then we stopped in Lawrence on our way back home for ramen (according to Eric, the only real ramen place in Kansas - it was all right, on the better side of edible) and boba tea (excellent pearls, lackluster milk tea). And then we scattered briefly to gather supplies, and then set up the "real" birthday party at Ann's place. Because of course it's not a party if people aren't getting shitfaced drunk =_=;; Fucking social people, I swear.
So anyway, Ann had invited a bunch of her Chinese friends over, and Albert told me later that this was, in a way, a sort of test of her ability to throw fun parties amongst the Chinese undergrads. Which makes the rest of the night even more hilarious. Anyway, Christine and Alexya had also invited some of their friends, and nobody 'fessed up to inviting this gay white guy who's also kind of a weaboo about all things Asian... Ann doesn't like him >_>;; Also he came way late and super drunk, having driven (yes, drunk) from the local collegetown bar area. The Chinese undergrads included three snotty guys who Ann was trying to impress, particularly one of them that she seemed attracted to. Christine and Alexya's friends included a Korean guy who seems attracted to Ann, but is also kind of a snotty little kid. So yeah, hilarious mix. Most of the evening passes all right, drinking and talking and sometimes kind of dancing... I mostly chat or sit and peoplewatch, along with Eric who couldn't drink because he was on call for his military job and so was amusing himself by making "I'm way too old for these shenanigans" remarks about what was going on in the rest of the room.
Party party Chinese people smoking, party party and then it became late and people started leaving, and I wanted to leave to go to bed. Eric said that he and Christine were planning to leave at that point anyway, so he could give me a ride... except Christine was talking to Korean-kid and the conversation was getting a bit heated, so Eric drove me back first and then went back for Christine. In theory. I'd sat in the car for a while because Eric was going to drive another friend back too, but she'd gotten sucked into the whole drama going on in which the three snotty Chinese boys were getting into fisticuffs with Andy and Ann of course was siding with the Chinese and was upset that Christine would side with Andy over her and the other friend was caught in the middle trying to play peacemaker... anyway I got all of this secondhand from Eric and Albert and was like, guess I left the party at the right time! o_o;;; Jeebus, social people and their drama.
So yeah, and then Eric drove Albert back sometime later too, and Albert had to bang on the door and window to be let in because he'd forgotten his keys at Ann's and I was dead asleep so he woke the neighbors instead before he woke me, oops >_>;;; But yeah anyway TL;DR fucking social people lol, but it was pretty fun and a nice change of pace.
I wrote a stupidlong thing in an email to behindpyramids about my residency so I'm just putting it here
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Who I work with: Resident-wise, the anatomic residents are two second-years (Shambhu and In-Joong) and two first-years (me and Pankaj). And then there are some 3+-years - one passed all her boards exams last year (her second try) and another flunked a couple of sections and needs to retake them, but either way they mainly do Ph.D work now and only sometimes come back to the department. There are 2 clinical pathology residents - clinpath looks at liquids from live animals (blood, urine, aspirated-from-random-body-cavity fluids, etc.) so they are actually "on call" and have to come in and run tests even in the middle of the night if the school hospital's ER makes them. Makes me glad I work on dead animals where there's generally no hurry (unless there's a potential herd-destroying livestock disease)... and then there are 2 clinical pathology interns (pathology internships are rare, these ones are kinda experimental 'cause the department just started them like 2 years ago) who can run some of the more routine tests, and do some other technician-type jobs but get paid far less than technicians =_=;; One of them is actually more interested in anatomic pathology so she was hanging around and doing necropsy-type stuff for a while, I took her under my wing for that like she was a mini-resident lol.
And then there's a whole roster of pathologists, who are kind of combination mentors and teachers. Three of them are really old and full of experience, there's one or two who're more middle-aged, and the rest (3-4) are fairly young, like, within 5-10 years out of their residencies. And theoretically once the old ones retire there'll be spaces open for new pathologists but holy crap I don't want to stay here for the rest of my life and definitely don't want to stay in academia either so, run awaaaaaaay XD;;
Oh and there are also techs to keep the whole metaphorical machinery of the department running smoothly. They sometimes bring snacks to the common break room for everyone to share. Yay.
Ahaha yesterday I mentioned to Albert that our anatomical resident dynamic is kind of like a family - Shambhu is the somewhat overbearing mother hen, In-Joong is the lazy deadbeat dad, and Pankaj and I are the happy-go-lucky kids XD
As for duties, lets say on an average week:
1. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings have 2nd year veterinary pathology classes for 1 hour (starting at 9 am this semester thank Elbereth, I hated having to get to the 8 am classes last semester). 1st year residents are expected to also attend the lecture just to get an idea of what the students are learning (and also as a kind of review for us lol). And then us residents are assigned in turns to the 2-hour labs afterward for TA work (so not all of us have to be present each time). And so this morning I'm frittering away the two hours on this email because the pathologist is still nattering on >_>;;;
2. Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings: Rounds of various types, where people present cases and histopathological slides. Tuesdays are kind of mini-quizzes for the residents, where we're assigned a set of 4 mystery slides and we have to describe them and figure out what's going on over the course of the week, and present our descriptions and diagnoses on Tuesday morning.
3. Afternoons: Either "free" (catch-up-on-work/look-at-slides) time or necropsy duty. As junior resident I'm generally scheduled for 2 afternoons per week; the 2nd years generally do 1 afternoon per week because they've moved on to looking at biopsies (mail-in histopathology-only cases). Basically one resident and one pathologist is downstairs on the necropsy floor with a group of about 8 4th year students, and we take animals apart from 1 to 5 pm. Sometimes the vets or owners who submit the animals only want the gross necropsy (the taking-apart part) and so we just describe whatever we find on the floor and send in the report thusly. Sometimes they want additional tests done, or histopathology, so we collect tissue samples in formalin (basically watered-down formaldehyde) and after they stew in the preservative for a day, I trim them in and the next day the histo techs turn my slices into dyed glass slides. And then I look at them and then take them to the pathologist who looks at them with me and discusses them, and then we write up a full report and submit it. And so the whole histology process usually takes about 5 days minimum - I'm a lot faster than Pankaj is, he usually end up with a buildup of cases that spill over to subsequent weeks, whereas I generally clear mine before my next necropsy duty (unless it's super complicated like this cat I'm trying to finish up which has like 3 different tumors all over the place and a seemingly unrelated huge segment of dead/inflamed intestine FNAR).
Uhm so yeah, I like being able to work at my own pace, and the relatively steady schedule, lack of stress, and higher quality of life XD;;; My vet school classmates are all in clinical practice, either as general practitioners or interns and it all sounds super hectic and unpredictable and long exhausting hours, especially the internships. So glad I didn't have to put myself through that.
Edit:
Oh, and another thing I wrote for another friend about the vet school/residency-ing process -
"Did you feel like this [not liking your chosen career anymore] at all during vet school, or were you always sure you were on the right track?"
Ohohohoho. I went in thinking I wanted to be a clinical vet because, well, that's all the general public is ever exposed to so it's unimaginable that there could be *other* careers for a veterinarian... and I'd be small animal (dog/cat) or exotics ofc, large animal was for the James Herriots of the world. And then around 2nd year I discovered that pathology existed as a career, and was like oh hey that's kinda neat, it ties in with my NEED TO LEARN ALL THE THINGS, but I was still focused on being an exotics veterinarian. And so I went through the first 3 book/classroom-learning years of vet school thinking I'd do that. And then in 4th year I realized I haaaaaaaaated clinical practice, hated having to deal with people and being put on the spot in small room with clients and their pets, hated the stress and worry... and my fellow classmates *loved* that part, loved the bonds they formed with clients and patients, the followup process of charting the pet's healing journey etc. And they hated pathology because it was all depressing gory dead animals. So it's like, wtf is wrong with me? And so I was caught in that tension between "well of *course* I ought to be a clinical vet, what else is there to do with this degree?" and "but holy shit I *HATE* everything about it"... and so I got pretty stressed out and depressed a few months in. And I hadn't really done a whole lot of extracurriculars relating to pathology because I'd still had the idea that I'd go clinical, so when I finally committed to sending out applications for pathology residencies in 4th year I didn't have a whole lot of related experience to show for it, so I got rejected from all of them in the main application period. And that led to me tunnel-vision-ing myself into thinking that I would *have* to be stuck in clinical vetmed for at least a year of internship, or for some undefined amount of time if I got a job in general practice, and *that* led to a pretty spectacular mental meltdown last February which finally convinced me that hey, maybe I *don't* have to force myself to fit imaginary social expectations of being a clinical vet? Maybe it's okay to give myself a breather and not have to have my whole life/career laid out before my feet before I graduate vet school, just take some time off to think things over and consider my options? Maybe in the worst case I could do something else like a Ph.D (even though I hate research, I hate clinical practice more) or, y'know, anything else while building up more pathology-related experience for the next round of applications? And it also helped that I got in contact with a few senpai who'd gone either the pathology or non-traditional-clinical route (one in particular who went on teach biology at a community college and also does some migratory seabird research on the New England coast) which helped legitimize the idea in my mind (i.e. it's *not* a waste of a vet school degree to not go into clinical vetmed).
So anyway, long story short (too late), I continued applying to residency positions as they cropped up after the main application period was over, and the first few I totally flubbed because I was sooooo desperate, please take me and save me from the inevitable horrible fate of being a clinical vet! But after my epiphany and loosening up my expectations for myself, I became a lot more relaxed with the next couple of applications, one of which was the one for Kansas State University which (spoilers) I actually got into. XD;; And now I'm doing what I love and still maintaining a decent quality of life and basically things have pretty much turned around 180 degrees from... huh, actually pretty much exactly a year ago XD;;;
At any rate, hope my story helped... as Kim said, sometimes what you originally imagined is not exactly what it turns out you want to do, but poking around in other fields might help tailor your career to your desires. Good luck!!!