Not this fall

[cjsmith]

I will not be applying to UCDavis veterinary school this fall. Biochem (of which I must take at least two quarters) requires previous completion of o-chem (a full year), which in turn requires completion of the chem I'm in during the spring. And no, I can't start o-chem in the summer. It's not offered.

All of this fussing around about fitting the courses in, and it turns out it never would have been possible to do them all in two years. Three = minimum.

This does kind of put the pressure on to get in on my first try. I simply don't have the financial wherewithal to go *four* years before entering vet school.

Good points:
- No GRE this spring!
- May be able to drop physics this spring (and get better grades in what's left).
- More time to gain a variety of animal experience - wildlife, etc. This is huge.
- More time to get to know veterinarians at all these places = potentially better letters of recommendation.
- Opportunity to take some really cool courses I don't specifically need. Micro! Human anatomy!
- Opportunity to beef up the transcript in the humanities.

Bad points:
- Money.

Comments

[leback.livejournal.com]

This sounds both frustrating and relieving. Good luck!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I do feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. (It will probably take a few days for the financial reality to sink in, at which point the weight will come back!)

[ambar.livejournal.com]

Yes, O-chem starts in fall or in winter. Best to start in fall, because a winter start means your last quarter is in summer, and besides all the *expected* suck of doing o-chem in an abbreviated term, you can add the possible suck of getting dumped on an adjunct who has never taught in his life.

Why, yes, this did happen to me, why do you ask?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh ugh. Yes indeedy, that would be the city-block-sized Hoover of educational experiences.

[ambar.livejournal.com]

Also, while you're taking advantage of my experience, do not schedule anything intellectually or time-demanding during o-chem season. Just don't. You'll need that time to work on your lab notebook, your flash cards, your distillations, and pulling your hair out in fistfuls.

[apparentparadox]

Is your goal of being a vet related to wanting to take care of living animals?

A different kind of job would be to work at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab in Ashland, OR (currently the only lab in the world dedicated to crimes against wildlife).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh WOW. Wouldn't that be a great place to do a summer internship?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*nod* This is not the first time I've heard that advice, even. Maybe, if I'm truly feeling sneaky, I could fill up the rest of my "full-time-student" status with... oh, say, beginning French!

[apparentparadox]

They apparently have a colony of flesh-eating beetles that they use to clean bones so that they can identify them. How much cooler can a job get?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I bet the smells are incredible.

[apparentparadox]

They don't allow tours, because they don't want to compromise any of the results (they do testify in courts all over the world). We just heard a talk about them.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

You guys have a room I could rent, right? :)

[apparentparadox]

Yep, although a better answer would be if some friends of ours had their in-law unit open.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Especially if I were to take my work home with me. ;-)

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Are you certain an off-shore vet school isn't totally out of the question?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Quite the opposite; I'm certain it is out of the question -- at least if I want to stay with Rob.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Oh. Whoops. Sorry. Never mind.

[ambar.livejournal.com]

And pushing electrons! How could I forget about pushing electrons? Trust me, the damned things won't push themselves. (wanders into the distance, babbling incomprehensibly.)

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

The 'fussing around about courses' thing is something that amazes me in the US system. In the UK, you sign up for a degree course (no concept of major and minor there) and are handed a schedule. The University looks after fitting everyone into the right classes, and you get your degree in three years, whether you like it or not, dammit! Of course this means your days are not your own, and fitting a job into that would probably be very difficult. I was scheduled by the University 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, with Weds afternoons off - no options. It was like they made education into a real job.

Working at a US University, I watch every semester the frustration of people who can't register for this or that until next week, or can't get a specific course they need, or can't work the courses around their job - I'm impressed that they ever get through a degree course.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

To be fair, in many US universities, it's not as bad as what I'm seeing right now. At MIT, there may be some fussing about which year or which semester you'll take a certain course, but there's no question that you can get what you need within the four years you've got. (Some students take longer, but availability of courses does not stop anyone from graduating in the "standard" amount of time.) Some of this may be a difference between private institutions and state-funded schools. Also, what I'm doing here is in many ways outside the system, changing careers like this and going back for undergraduate work when I already have a bachelor's degree.

Still, the UK system sounds very different to me. No major? Does the degree program not have a specialization in one subject or course of study? And I'm sure it would be quite helpful to focus on class work rather than on what is available next semester and the dependency chains of prerequisites.

Making education into a real job might have its benefits in terms of guiding students' attitudes about whether or not showing up is important. Do you see a difference there?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Eh well. Me, I'd probably have loved New Zealand. C'est la vie!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Hee! Good point: something like physics/electromagnetism would be another nice sleeper. (Sadly, the obvious -- computer science -- is all on my transcript already, so that would be a little too unsubtle.)

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

Well of course my experience of the UK system is now (gasp!) 32 years out of date! They did away with automatic grants for undergrads, and students have to take out loans as they do here. (I didn't pay anything for my degree - tuition, books, accommodation and food were all covered by the government.)

Yes, specialization and electives did occur, but within a narrow band; so you were able make those choices ahead of time, and then scheduling happened automatically. They just don't have the concept of something like a major in nuclear physics with a minor in quilt-making (which is the kind of choice students here seem to make!) And there is no concept of University College, where you sign up to do an indeterminate degree program at some point in the future.

The system certainly focused students on the academic side of things; and yes, if you failed to attend you got dropped, so it was very work-structured. It was probably more of a useful discipline in that it prepared students for the job market. But I've no idea if the system was really more effective in terms of education. I'm just glad I never had to worry about what course I needed to do next, or whether it would be open in a particular semester.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

Ouch, that's very frustrating. But you seem to be handling the news well, and all you can do is try to make it into a good thing. It definitely sounds less stressful and the ability to take courses because they are interesting rather than required sounds cool, although ridiculously unusual in colleges I have been at. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I think taking courses because they are interesting is possible only for people who have no deadlines, which is insanely rare at schools that cost money. Tuition at De Anza is ludicrously low, most folk there are living with their parents, and, as best I can tell, many also have no particular educational goals. (Why should they? Right now they've got the cushiest life they'll ever have.) Even among the academically excellent, very few seem to have the feeling that they need to finish a four-year degree in four years. Community college insulates people from a lot.

Me, I've got a goal and a big sense of urgency, but with this dependency chain in the prerequisites, suddenly I may as well take the fun stuff too. Well, unless I need to find a paying job. That's my big worry now.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

Colleges are kind of out of control. Back in the day, I did the traditional four year thing and it didn't seem to bad. I was the minority among my friends, graduating in four years, but it was doable. And I even found time to take two courses a year that I didn't exactly NEED. I don't know how unusual my experience was, but it seemed like that could be done if you buckled down, back then.

Compared to going to a expensive four year school (and especially compared to going to an expensive four year school before you really know what you want to do), I think community colleges are a wonderful opportunity for most people. But the four year schools, in my admittedly limited experience, are handling the loss of control very poorly.

Kim decided a few years ago to go to school and pursue a degree in accounting. She is just finishing up her second year at community college (will finish the Spring, plus two classes in the Summer) and has been accepted to UMKC in the fall. But the last two years have been pretty stressful. When we first saw the list of what UMKC required to approve a transfer, it was ridiculous. To do it in two years meant taking 17-18 credits every semester, plus two course each summer. No dropped classes, no repeats, no fun classes, nothing. That was just the classes that UMKC required her to have before considering the application.

Half the time, the classes barely make sense. She needed to take two classes on computer applications. Eight credits to verify you know how to use Word and Excel? Seriously? When I first got to Temple, it was assumed you would just go to the computer lab and learn that on your own. By the time I left Temple, it was a required class, but it was a one credit Freshman seminar. But now they want you to invest a few hundred hours of your life in it before they will check it off the list. Craziness.

[wordripples.livejournal.com]

Well, frustrating, but I'm sure it's possible, and as long as it's possible, you'll commit yourself to it and it'll happen!

[steph-2012.livejournal.com]

As to the question of private vs public schools in the US, I got through all of my upper division (plus two lower division I couldn't get at De Anza) in two years. It wasn't till my last semester that I heard that most CS students take 3 years to do their upper division. (But then, I had worked out the two years with flow charts, spreadsheets, and a two-years-and-out budget.)

The real answer for public schools is to learn ALL the rules and options up front, make a plan (with alternatives for the class you can't get this term), and be prepared to do some serious ass-kissing to get into that class you HAVE to have this term. :-)

[steph-2012.livejournal.com]

Tip: *some* profs at DA will let you take some pre-reqs concurrently. You just have to ask and be prepared to make some sort of personal oath up front. Being a "grup" (especially one with a technical degree) usually carries a lot of weight with them. You can also petition to take pre-reqs concurrently.

Good luck!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! This one's not going to fly quite so easily, as biochem is an upper-division course not offered at De Anza. I'll need to use my wheedling to convince (say) Santa Clara U that De Anza's o-chem is good enough. (Handy dandy fact: my chem prof this quarter is also Santa Clara U's biochem prof!)

It sure did work out well, though, when I got to take first quarter bio and first quarter chem at the same time. I did what you suggested: ask, and promise to be the best little squeaky clean student they'd ever seen. That time it worked. I'd be in deep doo-doo if I hadn't been able to start both of those in the fall.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm feeling like my commitment is being tested daily. At this point I wonder how much of my gumption is pure stubbornness. ;-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Also, for public schools, at least in California right now: do whatever it takes to be able to register for classes before everyone else does. The budget situation at the schools is so severe at the moment that the wait lists for science lab courses are twice as large as the courses are. Claim you have no income, claim you're missing both arms and one leg, lie like a rug -- whatever it takes. Otherwise you have to putz around taking useless courses for several quarters before you're high enough on the priority list to get anything you really need. I was VERY FORTUNATE to get my first quarter of each of those before the budget hit. For someone like me, putzing around for a year is financially devastating.

This may not apply to people going for degrees. Me, I already have all the fluff like English Writing 1 (where there are more courses than students); I need only the science lab courses. I'd have changed religions if I'd had to to get early registration.

(By now I may count as having no income, but that bucket is already full and they're not taking any more. Too bad. I had to get early reg with the honors program instead, which means an extra useless course every quarter. That doesn't do great things to the time schedule.)