New Beginnings!

Yesterday was the first time the new small groups at Athens Church met and it was a lot of fun. The girls in my group seem very nice and so does our leader. Because I'm from the farthest away out of everyone there last night, I won us all a trip to Transmet! We're pretty excited about that. haha Due to labor day, we wont be meeting next weekend but maybe I'll see them after service anyways on Sunday.

Today is also the first day of rush for Sigma Alpha! I'm not really a dress wearer but I've got one for tonight and Wednesday night. The one for Wednesday I really like since it goes with my cowboy boots. :3

I worked as a groom at the first horse show of the semester on Saturday. You could have also called me a personal assistant and somewhat of a babysitter. haha But it was a lot of fun. I have the best horse to take care of at those shows. And the hog show afterwards was cool too.

I was assigned a new AC in GDF and hopefully I'll be able to work more with the dogs again this semester. I've barely done anything the last few months.

A little over a month until Luke Bryan's Farm Tour concert in Athens again! It was so much fun last year and I'm super excited to be going again!

Busy busy busy

No, it's not a post about guide dogs... ;)

It's gonna be a busy junior year for me! I'm going to more club meetings that I used to to try and meet new people and just be more active in general. I don't know how much I'll do with my old clubs, especially Horsemen's (don't really wanna give that up completely) but I'm excited about all the new things!

"Sassy in boots, classy in pearls. Nothing's better than a ΣA Girl!"

I went to a Sigma Alpha info session and will most likely be rushing next week. They sound like fun events and I'd really like to be a part of it but I'll have to see. I'm already broke so that might be a problem there..
Yesterday I went to Block and Bridle though and I'll definitely be joining them! They're the ones putting on the Southland Stampede Rodeo and a bunch of other events, so that'll be fun.
Tonight was the FFA meetings and next week I think is Cattlemen's and it sounds like I'll be doing those too.

It's gonna be a busy year for me but I really want to get involved with all of them. There are some awesome people and it sounds like it's gonna be a ton of fun. :)

Helping with a hog show check in tomorrow and then working a horse show on Saturday. I'll have my first small group meeting at church on Sunday too, so it'll be a good weekend. :)

Ivy is being her usual spoiled self. She's getting better at meeting people outside of home but at the house we definitely still got some work to do. But we'll get there! Eventually she'll be a people dog!

A new semester

And so the third year at UGA begins. It's weird to think I've been here that long already, but it must be true. I like it here though, so it's alright. If I get the choice, then I will stay here for grad school as well. I like the professors and the departments, what more could I ask for?

Today was the second day of classes and I've gone to all but one once already. It's a bit hectic, running from class to work to class, but that's ok. At least I'm done at 4:15 the latest every day and don't have to work every single weekend anymore. This semester I'm taking repro (again), horse production, animal biotechnology, an orientation class (writing resumes etc) and a linguistics class. All of them are in the same building (in front of which I get to park - which is a super hard parking pass to get!) besides linguistics and the HorseP lab, which is at our livestock arena usually. All of my professors are awesome, so I'm looking forward to a fun semester. It's about time I get mostly animal classes. I'm an animal science major after all!

I took Ivy to the dog park for the first time in two months today. She did bark at people here and there, but she also ran up to some people without any problems to be petted. We're making progress!

At the beginning of the summer, I started a new job. I really like it, a lot more than my old one. haha I take care of some of the vet school's research animals, mostly mice. A lot of them. I may have developed a mouse allergy, but we're still trying to figure out what exactly the problem is. It's not enough to have to quit though, so that's great. I really like it there. Especially now that my new goal is to become a researcher!

This was on a hiking trip with friends last fall. Ivy had so much fun in the woods and was exhausted on the car ride home. A tired pup is a good pup. :)

Change of Goals

I've been sitting here for a while now trying to get all of my technology ready for the semester. If you know me, then you know I suck at this stuff. Usually I just ask my roommate to do all of this but he's sleeping and I don't really wanna wait. And I think I've figured it all out.

I'm updating my iPad right now to a new iOS so I can get the app Splashtop on it since it needs at least 5.0 and I haven't done an update in a while.. I'm trying out Audionote on my Mac to use for lectures. You can record the lecture while you take notes, which is pretty nice. I like having both. But for my repro class, there is also some drawing to do that'll help with the studying but that is hard to do on the laptop. So I guess I could take notes on the iPad since I can draw there too but I'm picky and don't like the keyboard I have for it. I'm just not as fast on it as I am on my Mac. So I tried figuring out a way to display my Mac screen on the iPad so I can take notes on the computer but skip over to the iPad for drawing. But I wanted it all on one file, the recording, notes and drawings so I literally needed exactly what is on the Mac to display on the iPad. I asked my computer smart friends and they didn't know what to tell me.

Well, I guess this time I might be smarter than them! I found Splashtop which lets me access my mac from the iPhone and iPad. I'm still trying it all out. It worked pretty well from the phone and I'm updating the iPad now to see how that works. I'm just worried about the audio. Will it record from both devices at the same time? Cause that might suck. We'll see. But if it does work out, I did it all by myself! haha

Splashtop and Audionote are the two apps I'm using if anyone's interested.

But now for what I really wanted to write about as indicated in the title: Change of Goals!

My whole life I wanted to be a vet. Here and there, I had other ideas but I've always come back to the same dream of becoming a vet, mainly a food animal vet or maybe a mixed practice. But this spring, that dream changed. I thought about the cost of vet school, the stress of getting in and being in vet school, the starting salary and the job market itself. It just does not look good. At all.

Over the last year, I've been thinking about also getting my PhD after vet school so I could do research as well as being a vet with the ultimate goal of working at a vet school (so teaching, practicing and researching). But then it got me thinking, if I really want to do research, I don't necessarily need to be a vet. And I could still teach at a vet school. I just wouldn't be able to work in the hospital.

So I decided to not go to vet school and go straight to grad school for my PhD if they take me without a masters. If not, a masters I will get I guess. All this vet school skipping is gonna save me around $150k and I also have better job and starting salary prospects. So far, the goal is to work for the CDC eventually in infectious disease research, hopefully with zoonotic diseases. And I'm hoping to be able to travel and work abroad as well, maybe South America or Africa. I have big dreams, I know, but you gotta dream of something first and then you can work your way towards it.

Someone said they were disappointed in me for giving up on my dream, but I don't think it's giving up. It's just a change of plans!

Hey there again..

Ok, so obviously this whole catching up thing didn't really work. I wanted to write about all the things that happened while I didn't post before writing about new things. But you know, that didn't happen. So I'm just gonna update as I write about new things. Or I'll try at least. No promises.

I'm still at UGA and a new semester is about to start in a few days. It's the beginning of my junior year. I've already been through 2 whole years here, can you believe it?!

This one here is still with me. Ivy was released from the guide dog program because of her fear of people. She was awesome at everything until she was around strangers. So it was decided that she'd be happier as a pet and I got to keep her. We've been doing lots of work and she has been getting much better at meeting new people. We went to a disc dog event a little while ago and she did great. Maybe we'll try the whole disc dog thing too eventually but she isn't the best at catching stuff with her mouth.

I've also added to my family over christmas. I'm not sure I talked about that here..

On the left is Maisha (Swahili for life because she went to the hospital for a week when I got her and barely made it) and next to her is Zuri (Swahili for beautiful). I thought I was going to give up Ivy so I got myself two cats. And right after that, Ivy was released and now I have three monsters! haha

Ivy likes cats and she gets along really well with Maisha, but Zuri doesn't like her too much. But Maisha and Ivy are adorable together. Here's the proof:

Those are NOT staged. They love to cuddle.

That's it for now. More another time. :)