Dr Ferox’s academic record
Anonymous said to @ask-drferox: What subjects(large animal, small animal, genetics, etc) and organ systems(cardiology, repro, etc) did you excel and do poorly at in vet school?
You just gonna come for me and my entire academic record, huh?
Just want me to lay bare all my academic and educational weaknesses, struggles and failings for you and thousands of others to see and pick over.
Not a problem folks. Here we go.
I did really excellently in genetics in my first year of uni. I even got a letter saying they hoped I’d continue to have an excellent and promising career in genetics, which I promptly ignored and went to vet school. Repro was my jam too, but repro is such a small part of the whole course it barely makes a blip. I was the repro and fish gal.
I know these results will look a little different to what US folks are expecting. In Australia, 50% was the pass mark, and 80% is a high distinction, which is the top teir. 80% is very, very difficult to get for that course. It’s not like a USA school where 80% is the pass mark. The 50% here is like an 80% there.
I needed an 80% average in my first year to transfer into vet school. I managed. I dropped down from advanced chemistry to standard to inflate my mark, and had to explain that 74% in ‘The Good Life, Science and Nature’ because that was a humanities elective and I’m not well suited to waffling on like humanities wants. But I got in.
And then, because vet school is hard, you can see my average marks go steadily down.
And nobody will be surprised to see my exactly passing grade in Horses 1. Exactly 50%.
The marks are not reflective of how interested I was in a subject, either. Vet school was hard. It was deliberately hard. I was academically challenged for the first time in my life.
And I struggled a bit. All of us did to some extent. I was not the smartest or best vet student, though the way I could talk about subjects convinced some other students with better academic records than me that I was. Ten years after graduation and it doesn’t matter any more.
I passed. I realized early on that I didn’t have to be the best at everything, I just had to make it to the end. \
And some of those fellow students who were better, smarter, cleverer than me also graduated, but aren’t practicing as vets any more. They moved on.
And I’m still here. I’m a pretty typical and average vet, but I’m still here.
I didn’t post this for bragging rights. Goodness knows that’s not an academic record for bragging rights. I posted it because you asked, and because there is so much pressure to be ‘perfect’ that’s just needless and damaging. You learn and consolidate a lot more in those early years on the job than you did through university anyway.
It’s okay to be academically average, to just pass, and stay sane.
You wouldn’t be doing any worse than I am.