It’s unfortunate that deceptive trade laws don’t apply to job advertisements, because A&M pulled such a bait and switch on me I would have had an open and shut case.
By the time I received the phone call from the head of Veterinary Gastrointestinal Department (I don’t want to use names), I couldn’t remember which job I was even interviewing for. I must have filled out a dozen applications for positions at the College of Veterinary Medicine, and they all kind of blurred together. But having learned my lesson from a previous interview, I decided that it would be a good idea to prepare for a thorough interrogation of my knowledge of the GI system.
I spent the weekend reading over everything from megaesophagus (not as cool as it sounds) to canine inflammatory bowel disease (way more disgusting than it sounds). I could tell you that the standard treatment for feline exocrine pancreatic insufficiency is enzyme replacement therapy, and that the enzymes are obtained from ground up pig and cow pancreata. Did you know that “pancreata” is the plural for “pancreas,” and if you say “pancrei” you obviously aren’t qualified to work in a GI lab? I studied close-up pictures of dog feces, for god-sakes, so that could distinguish between different types of worm infections. Although, to be technical, you really should say intestinal helminths. Gastric torsion, chronic colitis, excess gas, if it was in, around, or came out of the GI tract, I knew about it. I was ready to destroy this interview. Of course, it would have helped if I studied a map over the weekend so that I could actually get to the interview.
Imagine a small city populated entirely by young adults who have zero sense of direction but have absolute confidence in their ability to give them.
“Vet School? Oh yeah, that’s like, right next to the biology building.”
Wrong.
“Whoa, you’re on the wrong side of campus buddy. You’ve gotta go back near the rec center.”
Not even close.
“We have a vet school?”
Oh forget it.
After consulting an actual map, I found the College of Veterinary Medicine’s building located on the northwest side of campus. Fortunately, I had left my apartment a full hour before my scheduled interview, so I was a full five minutes early. So much for looking around before hand.
The department head had been kind enough to tell me beforehand that the GI lab was in the basement of the building, otherwise I probably would have spent another hour trying to find it. Stepping out of the elevator, I was surprised to see actual directional arrows pointing me towards the office number I had been given. The door was open, but I knocked on the side anyway.
“Yah, come in.”
I had detected a hint of german on the phone, and it was far more apparent in person.
“Hi, I’m Marc Anderson. I’m here for the job interview.”
“Yah, yah, sit down, sit down! I’m so happy to meet you!”
And he really did sound happy to meet me. It was a little disconcerting.
“Your resume is fabulous! So tell me, what brings you to A&M?”
I launched into my spiel about how I was in grad school, and really like working with lab animals, so I thought that I would be better suited in vet school, and here I am looking for a job that I can gain more ‘animal experience’ from to help me get into the veterinary program.
“Great! Sounds perfect. Lot’s of opportunity to work with animals here. Let me introduce to the lab coordinator, and he’ll take it take it from there.”
Wait, what? Aren’t you going to ask me how to treat bovine viral diarrhea? Maybe tapeworm in cats? Anything?
The department head introduced me to the lab coordinator and headed off.
“So, how are you at protein purification?”
“I’ve actually done quite a bit of it when I was in graduate school.”
“Oh really? That’s great, because what we’re looking for is someone with a background in biochemistry. How are you at gel electrophoresis and PCR?”
“I did both of those routinely, and I can also do southern or western blot analysis.”
He proceeded to test by knowledge of various aspects of fairly standard biochemical lab techniques. Nothing I wasn’t familiar with, but nothing to do with an actual live animal. I decided to ask about it obliquely.
“So I read on the department’s website that GI lab does a lot of diagnostic tests. Do the animals come here or...”
“No, no. We don’t actually see any animals. We just get sent fecal samples and make the diagnosis from those.”
Crap. Literally.
“But after the diagnosis don’t you have to...”
“No, the referring vet takes it from there. Besides, you aren’t going to be running the diagnostic tests anyway. We need you to isolate the isolate the proteins we use for the test. Mainly, you’ll be working with dog and cat pancreases.”
He should have said “pancreata,” but I didn’t say anything.
“So, I’ll need to remove them from the animals?”
Please, let me get to do surgeries, please.
“Not anytime soon. We’ve got a whole bunch of them in cold storage.”
Fantastic. Frozen pet parts. The closest I was going to get to a live animal was an organ popsicle.
“But we’ll see. We might need you to get some other tissue samples from a dog or something.”
Blinded by the possibility, I chose to interpret his last statement as a promise.
At the end of it all, I got the job and told them that I could start the next day. It wasn’t exactly ideal, but at least I had my foot in the door. At least now I could show them how dedicated I was to animal medicine. But I soon realized that being seen was a lot more difficult than I ever imagined, and it didn’t have anything to do with working in a basement.
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