Interview

      For my interview, I called our hometown veterinarian, Dr. English. He has owned and operated his own business for over 30 years. I started out asking him the main question,
     "What do you write?"
     "Well, I write out prescriptions and sometimes instructions for the owners."
     "What about when you went to school, how did you write your personal statement and such?"
     "Well, I wrote what was in my heart," he told me, "I focused on the emotion in my paper and how I was going to get that through to the board members."
That was predictable, giving that this career doesn't require a lot of papers and such. So I inquired on his means of communication.
     "How would you say you communicate with other veterinarians?"
     "Well, we have annual or semi-annual conferences we go to and either talk about the new breakthroughs in surgery or a new treatment we should try. Plus, it's a good way to network."
     So, my interview was pretty short, there was more to it but it wasn't relevent to this blog. I just learned that once you get out of school and have a job, the most I'll need to write is what pill to give your dog and when.

Open Blog Post

       My open blog post for this week is about the education you must have to even get into the veterinarian program at Michigan State or anywhere actually. When I first started to research colleges and what I needed beforehand, I figured you need excellent grades and no nonsense attitude when it comes to school. So when I started here as a freshmen and realized how hard some of my classes were and I wasn't making all 4.0's like I thought I needed, I was very disappointed in myself and thought maybe this field isn't for me. Then I went on a tour of the vet clinic here on campus and talked to some third and fourth year vet students. What they said was inspirational. Quite a few of them had even failed an undergrad class but they assured me that as long as you were determined and kept striving to succeed, then you would make it.
      On a more academic note, you need to have organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, microbiology, cellular biology, pysics, etc. Then once you get into the grad program that's another 4 years of school. The first two are composed of classes then once you're a third or fourth year you can start clinicals.

Delivery and Style

      The blog I read, http://vetsbehavingbadly.blogspot.com/ is written by a veterinarian but instead of talking about how surgeries went or other seemingly normal veterinarian things, he talks, well more or less rants, about the clients and what he goes through on a daily basis to be a good vet. The style and delivery are not medically accurate most of the time. Basically anybody could read this blog and understand it. A bank teller could read it and be easily entertained because that's how he wants it to be. Furthermore, a fellow vet could read it and easily relate to it, well anybody with rude clientel could.
      The scholarly article I chose to compare http://scopemed.org/?mno=21483 is written in a way that if you don't know medical terms, you will be completely lost. Its research on dilated cardiomyopathy in cats. I could only link the abstract form if you want to look, but the real thing is a long, drawn out paper about how it effects the cats and if they can be treated or not, but in a completely different style than the blog.

Open Blog Post

         This week I chose to write about veterinarians in the industrious field. While reading, I found out that veterinarians are responsible for a lot more than just setting your pet's broken leg. Did you know that it is usually a veterinarian that discovers foodborne illnesses. That's what they're trained to do! They also help in the industrial medicine field with pharmaceutical reasearch to develop drugs such as new antibiotics and vaccines for human and animals use.
        Veterinarians are also responsible for the supervision of the production of pet food. Also, vets who choose the research and industrial side of the career make, on average, 40,000 more a year than a vet who works at a clinic.