Honors Link

Practicing veterinary medicine has been my desire since before I began to understand the implications and the determination I would need to achieve that goal. My passion for medicine started young, and its roots are deep. My stuffed animals received a plethora of veterinary assistance from tiny hands, which used toy syringes of make-believe medicine, auscultated imaginary stitched hearts, and wrapped sewn limbs with real ace bandages taken from the hall medicine cabinet. My fascination with animals and medicine grew as I gained experience in the real world. I had my first veterinary internship at the age of ten, and for those eight weeks, I soaked up all that was available to me. Cat leg amputation, routine vaccination, determining the extent of internal abscessation — everything was new and exciting and worth learning. I couldn’t believe my luck that this field existed and that I loved it so much.

And my luck continued to hold when I was accepted into the Oregon State University Honors College and the Pre-Veterinary Scholars Program. Through the Pre-Veterinary Scholars Program, I met my mentor, Dr. Christopher Cebra, and doors started to fly open. I interned in OSU’s Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital, met incredible faculty, observed procedures reserved for the highest-qualified hands, participated in research projects, started a research project of my own, and made connections.

Come the summer of 2013, I knew I wanted to travel, and I thought if I could combine travel and an internship, it’d be that much better. I applied for and received an Honors Experience Scholarship, and armed with the scholarship to cover flights and expenses, I only had to find a veterinarian to host me in a clinic. When I told Dr. Cebra of my plans, he offered up a colleague of his who practices in western Ireland. After a string of emails and date swapping that spanned a few weeks, I bought my plane ticket to Ireland and then danced around the house.

Arriving in Ireland was hectic and serene at the same time. Three connections, twenty-two hours of travel time, and eight time zones after leaving Oregon, I arrived in Shannon airport in the morning. There were a few brief minutes of looking for Dr. Connolly’s face in the crowd, but then he found me and gave me an unexpected hug. “Welcome to Ireland,” he said, and I felt welcomed indeed.

Dr. Connolly put me up in a vacant apartment he owned in the middle of town, and when I entered for the first time, I found it full of fresh-cut flowers, and the cupboards were spilling over with food from the local markets. I started my internship the next day and met a handful of farmers I couldn’t understand, only to find out later that they had been speaking Irish Gaelic, which sounds quite similar to heavily-accented English. I bled cows from tail veins, moved many-a-cow while walking through many-a-field in the pouring rain, and I ate my weight in black pudding, white pudding, eggs, sausage, potatoes, rashers, beans, and brown bread. I was also offered whiskey at 9:00 a.m. by a happy farmer but had to decline due to the ungodly hour.

In addition to interning with Dr. Connolly, I was able to see practice in many other clinics.

We worked in abattoirs doing pre- and post-mortem examinations, tested cattle herd after cattle herd for tuberculosis, spayed cats, and met dogs that walked on the old stone walls. We replaced a cow’s prolapsed uterus in the pouring rain while the farmer’s wife ran between the house and the barn with the latest score from the All-Ireland semifinal hurling match (Cork won). I spent more than a few nights in the pubs, sometimes with a cold cider between my hands, sometimes with just a glass of soda, to listen to the late-night jigs and reels and to witness spur-of-the-moment broom dances. I was only lost in the accent for a few days, and I brought one with me when I came home. I learned the tin whistle, met nearly everyone in the town of Gort, and when it was all said and done, I was incredibly sad to leave.

I was in Ireland for a total of six weeks between my junior and senior years, and it was life-changing — it was everything I had hoped it would be and more. I am so thankful to have been granted the Honors Experience Scholarship. Without it, I never would have been able to leave the United States. The experience of meeting people from somewhere entirely new, of seeing a whole way of life that previously existed beyond the realm of my understanding, and of seeing veterinary practice in a country at once so similar and dissimilar to my own all completely changed my paradigm and way of thinking. I am a changed person, and I know it is only a matter of time before I find my way back to the Emerald Isle.