How I Got Away With Vet School, or The End Of This Book.

 Hello Dear Readers, 

I decided that today I would write a true close to my blog on how to survive island school turned emotional release platform, turned very rarely updated blog about my life. Unfortunately looking back though this grammatical nightmare there is probably very little someone starting vet school at SGU might find helpful, outside of the fact that it is indeed very hard, but most people don't become vets because it is an easy thing to do, no we do it because it is the ONLY thing we can do! 

Okay so allow me to try and set things right on the front of help advise, which I will do though a anecdote on my meany failures, I failed to become a rich Baseball player for the New York Yankees (the then highest payed team in the sport), I failed to care about school as much as I should have (hind sight and all), I failed to win any of the several Tennessee 4-H officer positions I ran for, I failed to hold on to my amazing friends from my high school days, I failed to prep for the ACT which I took 3 times I believe (thank goodness for super-scores), I spent a year at community collage, before spending a year at UTK, where I tanked my GPA and made a lot of D's in very important classes, so I spent another year at community collage retaking several classes I failed to ever get my associate's degree, I went to Austin Peay to finish undergrad, after failing biochem I failed to find any other job to aspire to other then Vet, I failed to hold onto my amazing friends from collage, I failed to get into any state vet schools that I applied for, after being accepted to St. Georges University's spring 2017 class I was on track to fail four classes, I deceled three classes and made a D in the fourth, I moved into the new fall 2017 class I failed to meet and get to know new people, I struggled my way though the rest of vet school but failed to really become a part of the class, along the way I failed to kill or save the Improv comedy club, by the time we got to choose clinical year schools my GPA had started to recover but it was to little to late and I went into my meeting telling them that I just wanted to go some place that had the best food animal program that I could (read whats the lest bad place I can end up), after moving to Stillwater Oklahoma I failed to keep in contact with my vet school family, I also failed to keep good communication with my family, I failed not to fall for my roommate/classmate/beautiful woman, I failed anesthesia, I failed myself more times then I count. But I never fail to keep pushing towards my goal, sometimes the only thing that kept me going was the fact that I hadn't been kicked out yet.

Today at about 12:30pm I was given the title of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, along with all of my classmates including those from the spring 2017 term. the commencement was done online which still hurts because I honestly would have loved for the ceremony to have just been all us students seating in our old VSL class room hanging out and talking like old times before slowly meanding to our seats as all of are amazing professors made there way in to start hooding us before we all left to go hangout and party till we all had to go are separate ways... 

So if you have happened to stumble upon this blog take my advise, vet school is a very individual thing everyone has a different experience, so savor yours and share it with others, Laugh till you cry, Cry till you laugh, cram for a test, study for the rest, sleep in class but don't get caught, hangout with great people, learn, learn how to learn, live, make mistakes, make the grade, whatever grade gets you though, Re...lax..., panic! go see an improv show (it's only 5ec at the door), pray, pray, pray, work out, sleep in a hammock all day, eat whats bad for you. Close your eyes and take three deep breaths and then begin. Do all this and you too can Get Away with Vet School you can trust me on that I'm a doctor. TTFN

The End Or The Pandemic

Hello dear reader
At 8:04pm last night March 11, 2020. SGU sent out an email that I believe could have been thought out more and worded more clearly, the gist of the this email is that SGU is advising students to leave the island, do to the risk of COVID-19, which has been moving through the Caribbean. This has lead to a panic to leave, mostly in med school (there are just so many of them), most of the vet school is still in midterms, and while we in term 6 finished are midterms Monday, however we also have rotations that for some of us started on Monday afternoon, on top of this there was no wind up to this email, unless you count the email that we received around noon yesterday that informed us that nothing was mandatory anymore. now (7:25pm) we have been told that everything will be done online and no in person classes will be offered, Once I leave Grenada I am gone for good.
This morning I woke up feeling tired and stressed (normal), i got the bus to campus (it was almost empty, not normal), went to class where 3 lectures happened and a Q & A to try and dispel fears (we know what you know and we are trying to get you more information), even though this was handled by the overall university poorly, SGA and SVM are doing an amazing job handling concerns and panic. The small animal clinic opened its doors and is doing everything they can to get all the animals that are leaving Health certificates on short notch, the vet student community also staying on task as much as we can. I am going into surgery this afternoon.(it went well)

I started this blog in 2017 it was meant to help people decide if it was the right school for them, later that 1st term, I was really struggling with classes and ultimately deceled, that is when this blog became a therapeutic outlet for me to talk about the times that I fell and how I was able to get back up. that lasted for several terms, I would write whatever I was feeling sharing more then I would have had I been in person, I always tried to write as if I was talking to one person because I wanted everyone to read it to know that it is okay to struggle but it is not okay to give up. 

Currently everything is fine we where all hit hard, and we are all now leaving the Island, we are sad about the sudden end to our island life and leaving this big crazy dysfunctional family that we have come to love over the years of hard work together. I love all of my SGU SVM family/ Improv family I am so happy that I have had the opportunity to get to know you over the last 3.5 years and I wish we had a bit more time to have fun and learn together, and I know you will all be amazing, and we will all see each other again so this is not goodbye, it's just

Ta Ta for Now...

Sincerely, the soon to get away from vet school student.
Aaron Helms
Thanks Grenada its been fun. 

Term 4 Or, The Ocean is like a Big River

Hello, Dear Readers
another term started last week for me, and the craziest thing is that I am not super stressed Yet. I am sure that before long I will be back to normal (read extremely high) levels of stress will be back, but for now things are going smooth. I have settled in to my new apartment, I am still getting back into the swing of early morning classes/writing, so this will be a short post.
Now as I sit in my hammock looking out at a inlet of a bay, it reminds me of the porch I would sit on in undergrad only then it was the Cumberland river and barges, now its the Caribbean Sea and sailboats/ships. Its amazing that my mind made a 2,324.62 mi connection (I looked it up) but I am sure that if I asked around almost everyone would have something that reminded them of a simpler time in there life. but then again I might just be a bit odd, but I can't be the only person who sits on their porch and listens to sad bluegrass and folk music but maybe that's just the Tennessee in me...
TTFN
P.S. for all the people who read this in the states it's 80 degrees F as I write this.

 

The Tingler Or, My Tell Tale Heart.

Hello Dear Readers,
It's been longer then I would have liked it to have been, however I felt like I needed to focus on my schooling for midterms but now that is over with and I can finally talk (again) about my love of Fall, and Halloween time especially. You see it's got the best movies and music and it's just the right mix of spooky and fun, The Tingler is a perfect example of a "scary" campy 1959 Vincent Price movie that if you have watched, makes a perfect segue to what I really want to talk about (if you haven't seen it then now is probably the best time ever to go and watch it... No really go watch it and then you will know what this weeks post is about... the words will still be here waiting for when you get back...). Okay so now that you have seen The Tingler you know that I am talking about Fear this week, because last week I was terrified and if I am honest I have been terrified since starting vet school, it's not a constant fear thank God I would be dead by now (spoiler) just like the people in The Tingler who could not scream I would be have died of My fear.
You see My fear all starts with that little voice of doubt whispering though the wind that I am going to mess up, that no matter how long and hard I study, no matter how meany times I talk to people about better ways to learn, or how meany people come up to me and say that "you've got this" That in the end I will fail. (It's here that I feel based on previous responses to my posts that I know that I am not stupid and that I am more then likely Not destined to fail, and I remind myself about this fact almost every day) My fear is two fold, I want to be a good Vet (or if I do fail I want to be good at whatever I end up doing) and I am afraid that I won't be good, pretty straight forward right. The 2nd thing I am afraid of any kind of failure at all, and I know those are the same... maybe but for me they are different. So taking test has been necrotic to my Nerves, I used to be a mostly calm test taker who only got nervous about the big stuff, well now everything is big and the pressure is getting to me.
I mean anytime I am in a high pressure situation I get nervous which is not a bad thing on its own, I even get nervous when I am about to go racing after I have been away from it for any meaningful amount of time, but that is more of a excited man I hope I can still drive fast kind of nervous. however Tests which used to lead to a healthy amount of nerves, now only lead to Fear, 
I am afraid, and if it wasn't for God, friends and family, then I would probably would have no hope moving forward as happy and as confident as I am, I just want everyone to know that when you see me standing around before or after a test happy as can be, It's not that I am full of confidantes in my self, It's mostly Doubt, It's not at I am not scared, because I am Terrified. The Reason I can look so calm on the outside is because I know for a fact that no matter the twist and turns my life may take it's all going to be alright in the end...TTFN 

(P.S. Sorry that this post seems so scatted I just finished my last midterm) 

 

Term 3 Or The Hardest Way To Fall

Well Hello there, Dear Readers

It's been a while but I am Some how back and I yet again writing in this, honestly fairly depressing blog. You might have noticed that I decided to spruce up the place so it would better match what actually gets written here, that is to say trashy despair with the odd ray of hope and some random stuff thrown in. And since I am talking about me blog I might as well remind you all that I have decided to move to a biweekly posting schedule, this is to try and cut out some of the straight up garbage random post that I was making far to often last term, this was mostly do to a lack of time to devote to the blog every week, moving forward I will be trying to right a mildly high quality of content (grammar however will probably remain at it's current low standards).
             It is also so that I can open the floor to you my Dear Readers to write your own posts for this blog, since I know that at lest some of you will have read one of my post and thought I can do better, now is your chance without having to go though all the crap of starting a blog, writing a weekly/biweekly post, and posting it to social media so that everyone can judge you on how bad you are at writing. No all you would have to do Is email me your post in a Word Doc to GetAwayWithVetSchool@gmail.com, but don't get crazy about it if i don't have a guest post to post then there just won't be a post between my post's which again will be biweekly. (P.S. if you look at the side bar I added this email so you won't have to dig for this post later)

Okay so now that the house keeping is all out of the way we can get to the heart of this post, I did have a resit at the start of this term which I passed, however the fact that I had this scary scary test looming all summer didn't do wonders for my nerves. This whole week (This was the first week of classes and the resit was on Monday morning) has been a wired mix of relief, exhaustion, and getting stressed about Term 3, which is widely held as the worst term of vet school at SGU, manly do to it's poor schedule, and high concentration of "difficult" course's. Honestly though I am so Happy to be in term 3 since that means that I am not the total failure that I felt like this summer, I went so far as to try and avoid people that know me because I was afraid that they would ask how vet school was going, and while in my heart I know that they don't care what I do and actually just care about me, my brain is absolutely certain that if people knew how much I struggle with school, and with myself, that they would look down at me like a worm on the hot concrete, with petty and disgust in their eyes as they step over my rapidly drying carcass. Obviously this is just my internal conflict, since I don't think I will ever fill like I deserve any kind of praise, let alone peoples respect, but before you start thinking bla bla bla we have herd this same thing from you ever term, which you have I went back and checked the archives, although I have never stated it so plainly before (side note, Please don't go back and read old post, I promise that they are all worse then even I thought they where when I wrote them), very long story short (no really I cut about 500+ words from this post) that is how I was feeling this summer, It's not like I didn't do all kinds of fun things this summer, I raced, went to LBL, hung out with my family and animals, but I always had the stress of school right there in the back of my mind no matter how long I studied it was never enough to satisfy my own sense of un-accomplishment. That's okay though because I have Family and Friends, and Friends that are Family, and they all accept the facts of who I am, and what I am trying to do with my life, and while most of the people I know back home only know the strong, confident, compassionate, outgoing, well put together me, and nothing of the stressed and struggling me, I know that they would understand and empathize with me, Just like you do. Thanks If it wasn't for you all and the grace of God I don't think I would be capable of tackling what is shaping up to be my hardest Fall ever. Well I suppose I will talk to you again on the 10th of September, Till thin

 TTFN

Easter a Time to Remember Or, Always Check the Mouth of a Gift Horse

Hello Dear Readers, firstly sorry I am a day late yesterday was still a "day off" which I spent studying and feeling kinda off so I just decided to wait till today to write. So Easter is a great time of year first and foremost because of what it represents Jesus dying and rising from the dead 3 days later, 2ndly because here at SGU we get a four day weekend, which I spent trying to relax and have some fun but also studying for 3 upcoming exams.
So in my sad sad attempt to relax which only succeed in making me feel like the lazy, good for nothing, procrastinator that I am. I also found myself reminiscing, which seem to be happening more and more to me, if it happens with anymore frequency I be seeing my life flashing before my eyes, so I suppose I could be dying, or it could just be the hardcore sleep depredation. Ether way it is slightly interesting to see what things I look back on with such fondness and longing to go back to that time just for a visit, and the things that I kinda don't care about or almost wish had never happened. Now I am not going to get into any specific memories, but I will say that I am surprised by the number of specific exact moments that have shaped my life.

 Moving on to a slightly more lighthearted look at what happens on a long weekend in vet school, and the answer to that is very easy nothing happens, ether you chill hangout with friends and you get no studying done, or you study everyday and you have no fun and you relax 0%, or you try to both have some fun and get some studying done. Which ends with nothing happening since your fun is spooled by think that you should be studying and your study suffers because you just want to be done so you can have fun, it's lose lose but since this is vet school nothing can be easy so we had/have two of the hardest quiz's this week and then Monday we have a final, A Final! just writing this I could feel my stress levels rising.
So whats the take away here, Days off are a form of mental warfare designed to break students who are already losing it. and thank God because without him I would never have a shot at make it though this mine field. TTFN

P.S. Photo is a bit of reminiscing