Thursday 14 June 2012

Graduation Day

In a couple hours I will be receiving my diploma as a graduated Animal Health Technologist. Very exciting! I am not a fan of ceremony etc. but am looking forward to the last dinner with all my classmates.

Brita came home from Dr. Mann's house yesterday. At the end of the month we will be moving to Prince Rupert as I will be starting work as an AHT, or "Veterinary Technitian/Technologist" at Pacific Coast Veterinary Hospital. Brita and I, along with Thor, our new cat, have a very nice two bedroom apartment where they are even ALLOWED - so I don't have to go to the trouble of sneaking them in and hiding them from the landlord which is a bonus. Once we are settled I plan to continue working with Brita on her training videos.

While working on my slide show of the grads for tonight, I was browsing through some old photos of the quail project back when they first hatched and wanted to re-touch on something I find amazing. Nature and its miracles are such a powerful learning tool. Whether it be baby quail hatching, birdwatching, caterpillars turning into butterflies, migrating salmon... people all over the world in every culture are awed by nature. As a class of Animal Health Technologists, we work with animals every single day. One might think that the novelty would wear off after a while, but there is always something new to inspire us.

When I hatched these quail in our classroom, the people in our two classes were between the ages of 18 and 40. I watched them turn back into little kids again, smiling and giggling and squealing with delight at these little creatures. If I had one wish it would be that every kid in public school gets the opportunity to watch some birds hatch and raise them in the classroom. Quail are a hit because they are so infinetly tiny and they mature so fast, and can even be kept in the classroom until adulthood. When I was in grade three our class hatched chickens and it was very special.

I put together a little montage of smiling faces from our class back in November...