Career Day at Fowler Middle School

It’s that time of year again!!! The temperatures are FINALLY falling, football season is well under way and career day season has begun in earnest.

This past Tuesday I spent an amazing day at Fowler Middle School. As always, both faculty and students were more than welcoming to Katydid; they were even nice to me! (Just kidding!!!)  Fowler is one of my favorite stops; what a great place to start!!!

Ms. Williams expertly manages to field all participants’ requests and somehow manages to check in several times on each of us throughout the day. She is a treasure, and Fowler is lucky to have such a committed and talented counselor at their school.

 

So what exactly is career day’s purpose? I get asked that a lot. Is it an opportunity to sneak away from work to have a “free” lunch, and sometimes even a bonus breakfast, too? Is it a chance for students to slack off from the daily grind of reading, writing and arithmetic?

To me, it is an opportunity to share with youth, their instructors and potentially their family members, if you make a powerful enough impact, what it is that you do and why you do it.

 

What are you personally passionate about? Your task in the brief period given, typically 35 to 45 minutes at most per session, is to provide your audience a window into your day. They’re not out there with you, but you get the remarkable opportunity to show them what you do through your eyes and through the telling of your stories what it is that you do, how you make decisions, and all from your perspective. (Trust me, it’s often different from others’ outside your profession). You get to walk them through how and why you are doing certain things.

 

For me personally, career day is the chance for me to share what my vocation is. I use that term specifically because that’s what it is to me, a calling, if you will. Veterinary medicine is not just a career and not just a job. Anyone can have a job.   I live it, breathe it, sleep it, dream it, and I love it. Now, I have other things in my life that I love as well and feel just as passionate about, but I knowingly  chose  a service profession. No one gets up in the morning looking forward to getting kicked, bit, pooped or peed on without loving it, and I tell this frankly to my students. I am out there providing a service to society, to them, not to get rich, but to earn enough to feed and to care for my family and to make enough to keep on doing what it is that I love to do: serving the needs of my patients and clients, my friends, my family and my neighbors.

 

Career Day is an opportunity to share my own personal experiences, to provide others the knowledge and exposure to a field of study they may never have considered for themselves, or possibly never even knew existed.

 

Career Day is a brief exposure to an alternative way of life, a chance to show people who may have never considered veterinary medicine or working with animals in any animal related field that it is out there and that it can be applicable to them.

 

For example, I make a point of telling people my background and where I grew up in the City. I grew up in the heart of the District of Columbia. I was a genuine “city slicker.” (I prefer Washingtonian, personally.) My parents are both educators. There is a family background in agriculture, as with most American families, if you go back far enough. But at the time and where I grew up, we were pretty far removed from the farm. However, my father thought it was important, actually found it of value, to ensure his children knew where their food came from. It was important that we knew that milk came from cows and what chickens looked and acted like before they were processed and packaged. My father showed me that caring for animals, specifically large animals, was applicable to me.

 

As a veterinarian whose profession originated with the care of hoofed stock, I believe every student, every person should understand and know where their food comes from and how it’s harvested.  All of us need to be aware of the care and the love and the hard work and the patience that goes into feeding this great Nation of ours, and not to just assume things based upon what others have said. All of us need some first-hand knowledge.

 

At Career Day, that’s my job, to try to provide some of my experience, to share some of that first-hand knowledge to my audience as well as to demonstrate that anybody can achieve what I have if they I love it, dream it, believe it and strive hard to accomplish it, whatever the “it” may be. Possibly some attendees signed up for the veterinary medical section, great; they may have gotten stuck with it. But I am passionate about my job. I’m passionate about my practice. I’m passionate about my patients. And I’m passionate about the people I work with, and that’s important. If my presentation gets a few folks headed down the path to further exploring the myriad of possibilities available to them by studying veterinary medicine, then bonus.  If it doesn’t but instead gets people interested in learning more about the things they can do in areas they never even considered before for themselves, possibly never even knew existed, well  that’s exactly what career day is all about, and I have done my job.