A Shot at Vet School, Part 2: A foot in the door.

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.

A Shot at Vet School, Part 1: Welcome to Aggieland.

Somewhere between sleeping on the floor of the lab for the third night in a row and being pulled over by the police while riding my bike home, I realized that I wasn’t ever going to fit in at Texas A&M. Aggies have some sort of radar that can detect an outsider, and I was the proverbial stranger in a strange land. Sure, I was used to feeling isolated, but actually being flat-out rejected by people? That was a new one for me.

I moved to College Station under the naive assumption that getting into vet school was somehow a guarantee. I had degrees in both Biology and Biochemistry with the top-notch grades and test scores. Plus, my letters of recommendation made it sound like I walked on water. How could they not accept me?

Unfortunately, I had missed the Fall application deadline, but I figured that I could use the year to make some money and gain the “animal experience” that vet schools put such a premium on. Under that theory, I rented a U-Haul and trucked myself from Houston to Aggieland. And entered one of the largest cults on the planet.

The job hunt was the first hint of the difficulties I would face. First, I went on A&M’s jobsite, and applied for every available position in the college of veterinary medicine. But as a state entity, A&M had to keep the applications open for some set amount of time, so I wasn’t counting on hearing from them anytime soon. I next applied to every vet clinic, pet store, and dog groomer in town, which was on the order of twenty or so different places. I received exactly two responses.

The first was from one of the Banfield Clinics, the type you find in Petsmart stores. They were looking to hire a receptionist/occasional vet assistant. No sweat, I could answer phones and handle dogs and cats.

“What was your degree in now?”

“I have two: Biology and Biochemistry. I know its kind of redundant but...”

“But not animal science?”

“No, UH didn’t offer that as a degree.”

“UH?”

“The University of Houston.”

“So you didn’t go to A&M?”

“No, but I applied to vet school and hope to start next year.”

“Why do want to go to vet school?”

And the interview just spiraled down from there. Next.

The other response was from a laser surgical center for pets. Now they would better appreciate my science degrees.

“We looked over your resume and think you’ll be a useful addition to our team. But before we go any further, you’re going to need to take our applicant test. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

Applicant test? I’m handed test packet that’s at least 10 pages.

“Oh, almost forgot. Here’s a calculator for when you need it.”

Crap.

Question 1: A German Shepard, weighing 75 pounds, requires arthroscopic surgery. If the surgery is scheduled to last 3 hours, what type and how much pain medication should be administered pre-surgery.

It was worse than high school latin. At least there I had the excuse of not knowing the language beforehand.

An hour and a half later, I brought the test I had “taken” up to the front desk.

“We’ll look over it, and give you a call when you can come in for an interview.”

Guess what? I never got that call.  

Getting desperate, I started applying for every job opening I could find. But this was a college town that took care of its own. In competition with a couple of thousand local co-eds, I always came in last.

After two months of trying, I finally landed a job. I was an early morning stocker for Target, part-time of course. And by early, I mean 4 to 8 AM. It’s okay, I’m a morning person; I just need to go to bed a little earlier.

I wanted to quit after the first day.

Do you know what kind of people work the early morning shift at Target? These are the people that take sleaze to a whole new level. I heard more penis jokes in one shift than I ever had or have had since. Yet these same people were among the most homophobic bigots imaginable. I’m not gay, but I felt like I needed carry around an issue of Playboy just so they wouldn’t get any ideas to the contrary.
Fortunately, I only had to do this a week, because that Thursday I got a call from A&M. It was the head of the veterinary gastrointestinal lab, and they wanted to interview me on Monday. Throwing caution into the wind, I quit working at Target on Friday.

“I’m really sorry, but I’ve been waiting to hear if I got this job at A&M and they finally called back and said I was hired. See, I applied to vet school and this is really going to help my chances of getting in. Thanks so much for giving me a chance though. It was great working here.”

I'd never had an easier time lying before in my life.

Reflections in the mirror.

Jane’s vision was fine. When she looked in the mirror she saw herself the same way others did: a waif of a girl who would have been cute if her face didn’t look so hallowed and worn. To everyone else her wearied appearance was just an indication of exaggerated teen stress, but Jane knew it for what it truly was. It was a sign of her success, that she was dissolving away her body and with it her pain.

She ran the bathtub to mask the sound of her retching. If her parents wondered why Jane needed to take a shower after every meal, they never said anything. She would just slip off quietly to the bathroom, lock the door, and commence her penance. She felt that she had sinned, and there was a price to be paid.

For Jane, her ritual always began with the mirror. Stripped naked before it, she would examine every inch of her frail body. The less of her there was, the better. She would suck in her breath, and could easily feel her stomach as the bloated, disgusting mass that it was. It infected her with a such a penetrating self-loathing, that her mind could not rest until it was emptied. So she brought back up the failure she had swallowed. It sometimes took the form of half a turkey sandwich and maybe a few orange slices. Other times it was nothing more than a glass of milk and few bites of broccoli. Whatever its form, when it left her body it took with it the additional weight of guilt.

Jane had to be thorough, and she could easily spend 15 or twenty minutes in the bathroom. Knowing the truth but never stating as much, her mother would occasionally knock on the door. “Janey, honey? Everything alright?”

“Janey.” She hated that. “Janey.” Like she was 7 years old, not 14.

“What is it, MUH-THER?” She emphasized “mother” to show her annoyance at being disturbed, and the unspoken accusations that were implied.

I’m not doing anything. Just leave me alone. Why can’t you just leave me alone?

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

She’d run her head under the faucet to wet her hair, and put her clothes back on. Before unlocking the door, she would suck in her breath one last time, just to be sure. Empty. There was contentment in that emptiness, her feelings of failure momentarily abated.

Jane could then face the world again, and in it, the people that loved her but closed their eyes to the truth. Because the truth was unsettling, or made them uncomfortable, or was simply too difficult to accept. Because when the truth is a problem, it’s easy to believe lies.

Reversal. Stay with it until the end.

Now, caught in the middle of it, I can attempt to describe the extent that this darkness haunts me. It is a mixed metaphor, both dark and of fire. Perhaps an inferno in the darkness describes it best. The flames start small. Mundane thoughts bend towards the morose, then break into despair. Everything shifts to the negative, and I feel both anger and pain from how utterly alone I am. This isolation, this goddamn isolation. At once my voice can reach all corners of the world and echo off the walls of an empty room. I am hopeless with knowledge that I will die as I have lived: alone, always alone. You may say otherwise, that I there are people who care. I know this as truth. But it’s a distant truth, one kept at arms length, so that I can shield others from this infectious pain. The protective act is a farce, of course. I hurt others with the words I write; they are helpless as they watch a man describe his own descent into hell. If they remain however, they see the same man ascend from darkness, to a world that is not so  bleak. This is what is so maddening: the extremes. The conflagration has run its course; the dark veil is lifted. To say that everything is fine would be a lie, but I can ready myself for the next time. Always a next time. This is my life, and I will endure.

Retribution

It was as if the planet made the conscious decision to take its own life rather than waiting to be slowly poisoned to death. After millennia of dormancy, the deep, mid-oceanic ridges of volcanoes awoke with a vengeance. The shocked abyssal surroundings quickly warmed, dissolving the crystalline cages that had imprisoned billions of tons of noxious methane. The event came to be known as “Earth’s dying breath,” but it simply marked the beginning of mankind’s own death throes.

When it emerged from the seas, the methane was laden with moisture, making it a dense concoction that hugged the world’ coastal plains. Many were immediately overcome by the deadly vapor, but the true catastrophe arose when the mixture’s water content was displaced by oxygen. The air itself became explosive, and millions were consumed as a hellish firestorm swept much of the planet.

As the cities burned, smoke and filth were carried high into the atmosphere. Unconsumed methane and carbon dioxide came to dominate, robbing the survivors of their precious oxygen. Those that had not escaped into sealed bunkers or hastily constructed domed villages felt the agony of slow suffocation before slipping into terminal darkness. But even those spared simply forestalled their demise; humanity was simply unprepared for nature’s Armageddon  As their supplies dwindled, and their hope for survival faded, they saw at last how impotent they really were. Defeated, humanity died on its knees.

The rest of the terrestrial life fared no better. Deprived of light, all plant-life withered, and thunderous sounds echoed across the land as the mighty forests fell to Earth. Adapted for an environment that no longer existed, the fate of the animals was sealed in the relentless inferno the world had become. Though the planet had not known the cold in years, as the last remnants of life burned, the ashes looked like snow.

The oceans that birthed this chaos were themselves destroyed. Acidified and anoxic, the Earth’s seas became like cesspools, sparing few marine creatures from death and decay. The skeletal remains of bleached coral haunted the shallows for a time, before crumbling into silt from which they first arose.

Yet the simplest forms of life possessed a tenacity that saw them through this hell. As centuries past, and the air slowly cleared, single celled organisms once again proliferated and diversified. The barren earth was theirs to reclaim, and they did so at a prodigious rate. Over the course of eons, new species originated to construct incredible ecosystems far more robust than those they replaced.

There was no memory of the world of man. When intelligence again emerged, it claimed ownership of the planet, just as humans had so arrogantly done. These proud creatures released their poisons with a familiar abandon, never once considering the consequences. But the Earth kept its guard and watched these beings with suspicion. Their time of reckoning would come. It always did.

Leave a message...

This was my entry for NPR's most recent round of 3 minute fiction. The rules: 600 words or less, must be able to be read on the radio, and it needs to be in the form of a voicemail message. It kind of an odd limitation, as a voicemail message is essentially a monologue, but I tried to have a strong story-line. Yes, it's dark, but what did you expect? It's called "Blame."

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“Father, I couldn't do it Father. I couldn't bear the thought of him suffering any longer. When they asked, I told them not to try, and when his heart stopped… his heart stopped, they let him go.

I know the doctors meant well, but really, what was the point? To pull through only to spend the rest of his life fed through a tube, hooked up to machines, cut off from the world? You said that every life is precious, but that’s not life. It wouldn't have been fair. None of this is fair.

Why did He let this happen, Father? What kind of a God allows innocence to die like that? I prayed, He knows that I prayed, but it was all for nothing. Now I've got nothing. He’s taken everything from me.

Forgive me Father. I know that I shouldn't blame Him or question His will, but how can His intentions be good? What lessons are there to learn in having your only son taken from you? I understand what you meant when you said to look to the cross. I see that He suffered the same and knows my sorrow. But He still allowed this to happen. It’s the cruelty of it all that I don’t understand.

Kate won’t even look at me anymore, and I don't blame her. But why didn't she lock the stupid door? She knows that Josh is tall enough to reach the doorknob. She said she was distracted, that she forgot. She usually doesn't forget things like that. Why this time? Why the one time when it mattered?

I don’t know what’s going to happen between us. She left for her parents right after… right after. Kate’s strong, but can we survive this together? For all we've been through, with her cancer and everything else, I thought that we could handle anything. But I guess even love has its limits. If she just locked the door…

He loved that tricycle so much. He took it so seriously too. The way he’d make a big production over putting on his helmet and adjusting those little side view mirrors. I got him a pair of those leather biking gloves, you know, the kind with the fingers cut off. They were too big for him, but he wore them anyway. ‘Drive fast.’ That’s what he’d always say. ‘I’m gonna drive fast.’ You should have seen him Father, the way he’d tear down the driveway, with that determined look on his face.

But Josh knows better, he knew better than to play in street. I told him a thousand times.
He shouldn't have been out there.

How was I supposed to know?

Why didn't I turn my head? I know that car has blind spots. I didn't check, Father. Why didn't I check?

Father, can He ever forgive me? How can anyone forgive me?

I’m sorry Father, for everything. I’m so sorry.

Would you talk to Kate and tell her that? Tell her that I’m sorry, just so she knows.”

A Racket Revealed

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article detailing how some law schools are now opening up in-house law firms to place graduates that otherwise would be unemployed (link to NY Times article). Due to the fact that law schools have been churning out graduates at numbers that surpass available jobs, the schools have taken it upon themselves to create a continued "need" for more lawyers. In actuality, they have exposed themselves for the money-hunger enterprises they are. Instead of curtailing enrollment until the job market can absorb the existing number of law graduates, the schools stubbornly refused to kill their cash-cow, i.e. student enrollment. In order to avoid outrage from an increasing number of unemployed graduates, law schools have invented a convenient dumping ground for would be lawyers. The graduates are thus doubly wounded. While the salaries they are offered in these contrivances are far below those of the free market, at the same time they have to begin paying off their massive amount of student loan debt. Once again, the students are bled dry while the schools feast.

This sets a dangerous precedent, as universities may see this as an avenue for continuing to increase student enrollment beyond what is necessary or warranted. For example, say a major university is graduating an excess number of people with liberal arts degrees. The school could invent "creativity centers" where graduates could churn out meaningless pabulum while earning a pittance salary. Naive students would continue to enroll in droves under the notion that there will always be a job waiting for them, regardless of the fact that the job is essentially  an artifice.

Schools validate their importance by promoting the fallacy that everyone needs a college education; not everyone does. But employers have been brainwashed into thinking that only college graduates are capable of doing even the most menial of jobs. Another Times article (link to article), titled "It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk," describes how such degree inflation has run amok. In one instance, an employer required a college degree for a $10 per hour job carrying legal papers between adjacent buildings. This is insulting to the very intelligence of the job applicants. Furthermore, with students incurring an average debt of nearly $25,000 dollars for a bachelor's degree alone, this level of compensation ensures that graduates are saddled with debt for an even greater portion of their adult lives.

There needs to be a public rebuke of the way universities have been corrupted from institutions of learning into financial corporations. Otherwise universities may continue their deceptive practices in order to ensnare more money and enslave more graduates with crushing debt and unfulfilled dreams.