Things I Learned From Vet: Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard
Surviving vet school required developing some skills I'd previously lacked. In undergrad, I never really needed to study--go over the notes once or twice before an exam, and I'd be all set. In vet school, on the other hand, they piled knowledge into your brain, and when that was full, they started stuffing it into your ears and your nose and your throat too. You physically run out of time in the day. For instance, reviewing my notes from small animal medicine--reading through each lecture once--took a full 12 hour day before the exam.
To compensate, I had to make myself study, properly. Third and fourth year involved many 8-hour days of lectures (all new material) interspersed with 8-hour days of labs. If you didn't keep up, you'd get buried under an ocean of notes at the end of the week/month/semester. So I forced myself to keep up. I'd sit in the library before going home and read over the notes from every lecture each day. Every lecture. Every day. I'd take the bus in early and read before class. I'd read in between class. I'd sit at home and get it done before bed.
In fifth year, we were on rotation. I had to keep doing that, plus do everything for rotation, plus do the year-long written assignments. That meant generally a weekly powerpoint presentation, research for my cases, general notes and study for boards at the end of the year, and 11 papers and case reports due by the end of the year. If I wasn't reading notes, I was typing assignments.
General practice is cruisy by comparison. But it was an important lesson: when push comes to shove, I can sit myself down for twelve hours straight and chunk through medicine lectures one after another. If I have a week off and five assignments left to write, I can sit and type them up until I'm finished.
When it comes to fiction writing, this is a valuable skill to have. I'm so done with the misery of forcing myself to work all hours of the day (though the guilt from taking time to relax doesn't go away), but I can set up at the library on my day off and work through edits like a solid workday. I can come home and spend an hour editing before dinner, and another hour after. It's like those damn assignments, just way more pleasant. Diligence and perseverance is what it takes, everyone says. Write a few hundred words every day and eventually you'll finish that draft.
The Writing Excuses podcast has an episode on exactly this topic (whose title I borrowed), focused around dealing with writer's block. Their main message is basically to push through it. Butt in chair, hands on keyboard applies there. It also applies to when you know what to do, but lack motivation or energy. Or if you're wishy washy with a writing schedule so it takes forever to get things done. It's just plain useful for progress.
Exam time in vet school was 1 week of study and 2-3 weeks of near-daily exams. That's 3-4 weeks of pure, nonstop, 10-12 hour days of solid work. Reading, writing, reviewing. I can do that. I did it repeatedly. So if I need to do it for novels, I can, and it's going to be a lot less miserable than anything in vet school ever was. Like they say for any discipline: that persistence is 9/10 of what gets you there in the end.
To compensate, I had to make myself study, properly. Third and fourth year involved many 8-hour days of lectures (all new material) interspersed with 8-hour days of labs. If you didn't keep up, you'd get buried under an ocean of notes at the end of the week/month/semester. So I forced myself to keep up. I'd sit in the library before going home and read over the notes from every lecture each day. Every lecture. Every day. I'd take the bus in early and read before class. I'd read in between class. I'd sit at home and get it done before bed.
In fifth year, we were on rotation. I had to keep doing that, plus do everything for rotation, plus do the year-long written assignments. That meant generally a weekly powerpoint presentation, research for my cases, general notes and study for boards at the end of the year, and 11 papers and case reports due by the end of the year. If I wasn't reading notes, I was typing assignments.
General practice is cruisy by comparison. But it was an important lesson: when push comes to shove, I can sit myself down for twelve hours straight and chunk through medicine lectures one after another. If I have a week off and five assignments left to write, I can sit and type them up until I'm finished.
When it comes to fiction writing, this is a valuable skill to have. I'm so done with the misery of forcing myself to work all hours of the day (though the guilt from taking time to relax doesn't go away), but I can set up at the library on my day off and work through edits like a solid workday. I can come home and spend an hour editing before dinner, and another hour after. It's like those damn assignments, just way more pleasant. Diligence and perseverance is what it takes, everyone says. Write a few hundred words every day and eventually you'll finish that draft.
The Writing Excuses podcast has an episode on exactly this topic (whose title I borrowed), focused around dealing with writer's block. Their main message is basically to push through it. Butt in chair, hands on keyboard applies there. It also applies to when you know what to do, but lack motivation or energy. Or if you're wishy washy with a writing schedule so it takes forever to get things done. It's just plain useful for progress.
Exam time in vet school was 1 week of study and 2-3 weeks of near-daily exams. That's 3-4 weeks of pure, nonstop, 10-12 hour days of solid work. Reading, writing, reviewing. I can do that. I did it repeatedly. So if I need to do it for novels, I can, and it's going to be a lot less miserable than anything in vet school ever was. Like they say for any discipline: that persistence is 9/10 of what gets you there in the end.
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