Page 19 - Sonoma County Gazette July 2017

The sharing of a veterinarian’s experience cannot be complete without
a recounting of the time spent in veterinary school, and most particularly requires an introduction to the extraordinary group of people with whom we have shared that experience. I have recently returned from the 35th reunion with my veterinary class and find myself awestruck by this singular collection of human beings.
The Seventies were the Herriot Years. “All Creatures Great and Small” (1972) was the first in a series of bestsellers written by a British veterinarian under the pen name Dr. James Herriot. The heart warming and sometimes heart wrenching stories of Herriot’s early practice in pre-war rural Yorkshire captured the imagination of millions of readers and prompted immense interest in veterinary careers in the United States.
The nation had far fewer veterinary schools in those days, and by the
time I applied for admission to U.C. Davis in 1977, there were roughly 1,750 applicants for the 120 or so freshman class openings. The states far-sighted enough to have established their own veterinary colleges tended to treat them like private resources, and it was nearly impossible for out of state applicants to gain admission. In California, it was U.C. Davis, or nothing. Competition for admission was fierce, and it was not uncommon for people to make three or more attempts before either being accepted or giving up. Every applicant had straight-A grades, stratospheric test scores, and thousands of hours of work experience. Many of us had Masters & other advanced degrees.
And suddenly, there we were in a room together. We were welcomed, given a tour and a printed schedule, and issued keys so that we could enter and utilized classrooms, laboratories, and our own private study center at any hour of the day or night. I remember looking at my 28-unit class schedule and being shocked at the immense academic workload — until I realized
that it also included five laboratory classes. I was booked to be in a lecture or laboratory from 8 AM until 5 PM, Monday through Friday (we DID get an hour off for lunch). In practice, we would usually head home for an hour of so at suppertime before returning to a laboratory or the Learning Resource Center for additional study until 11 PM or so.
And strangely, we were always together. The 123 of us (then 124, then 125...) took all of our lectures together and were divided into two sections only for “wet” labs like Anatomy or Microbiology. Lectures consisted of
the entire class crowding into a dark theater to listen as one professor after another entered and presented a series of slides and lectures on Neurology, Immunology, Cell Biology, Pharmacology... To this day, I can still recognize the voice of any of those 125 members of the Class of 1982 — in the dark.
Ours was a fun group. It was just our nature. We laughed and told jokes. We wrote silly songs and sang then before final exams:
“Skin! All you really need is skin!
Skin’s the thing that when you’ve got it outside,
it helps to keep your insides in!
You gotta have skin.”
We would dress up in costume before other finals, or have the mysterious
Joe VetStudent submit gag exam answers for the amusement of our professors. We wrote prolifically for the “Bullsheet,” a comedic veterinary school student newspaper, and always had a skit or three ready to perform at the “Smoker,” the senior class’ dance / floor show traditionally presented to celebrate their passage of the National Board Examination.
We worked extremely hard, but we kept our spirits light and we never, ever, took our-selves too seriously. We learned a lot of unexpected lessons along the way. After years of fighting to get in to veterinary school, we learned that the point had NEVER been to get IN, but to get OUT. After years of being at the top of our classes, we found ourselves in a group where EVERYONE had always been at the top of their classes, so being at the top was not only impossible, it was immaterial. What we needed was not to be at the top of the class, but to become effective, knowledgeable, and capable veterinarians. We learned that there was a name for the person who graduated from veterinary school with the low-est GPA, and that name is “Doctor.”
35 years after graduation day (June 12th, 1982), when these 125 exceptional people scattered on the four winds, I find myself again in their company, and nothing has changed. I still recognize their voices in the dark. If anything, the years have increased our immense shared experience. These are the people who have shared my dreams and my hardships, who have lived my life, and
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from me not time nor distance will ever separate. The Class of 1982 still Rules!