I Was Going To Be A Vet…

The Importance Of An Alternative study

In Curaçao in my time a study was chosen from a booklet. I was lucky to see the profession that belongs to the study I wanted to do in action. I worked at a vet during the holidays, so was lucky enough to get a taste of the profession. I especially liked assisting with operations! For me no doubt to look at other studies. Because it is a draw study, I had to give up a second study. Still quite complicated to find a second study that interests me. The tests showed that I was interested in everything but languages. I already knew the latter from my grades and my great difficulty in learning words. It was always a battle with the words. Grammar and listening test usually went well. So I didn't make much progress with the tests. (UPDATE: Sept 2024: student debt €0 euro).

Draw

Coming back to the draw, I had drawn a very bad number, but luckily there were still 11 ministerial places for all draw studies combined that year. I was lucky, I was assigned 1 of those ministerial positions.

Groningen Was To Far

Later when I gave up Veterinary Medicine, I felt guilty for a long time about using a ministerial position and not finishing that study. For a long time I thought shit someone else might had need that place badly. But over the years I confirmed that Veterinary Medicine was not really the field for me in terms of pharmacology and biochemistry. Dealing with animals is, I passed those subjects in one go. I considered doing Animal Management in Groningen, but at the time I thought Groningen was too far.

What If…

I still think what if… Would I have had a job abroad, for example studying monkeys in the Amazon in South America or in an animal park in Africa.

I had to think about it again when I ran into the Livestock Museum during the *4 Daagse van Nijmegen (The walk of the World) in Cuijk were I for the first time watch the walk, I participated in 2009 and after that had never been back to the walk. Curiously, I walked into the museum and chatted with two vets there. I had been taught by one. They got my grades and asked me why I stopped. They offered me a tour, my private college. And for a while I got the feeling that I should finish the study now…….

*I walked the Nijmegen 4Daagse Marches in 2009. And in 2016 I saw the walkers walking through Cuijk, after I hiked the Camino Portugues and before I moved to Arnhem. I have never been to the 4Daagse feesten and I will not visit the 4Daagse feesten in the future. Never been a party animal and never will be.