I failed my final vet practical exam.
I’ll get that bit out of the way.
I passed everything else and am on track to qualifying in September rather than July now.
Results day was torture. It felt like I was being ripped apart. When you have looked forward to that day for over 6 years, and beyond that, well before university started it’s hard not to. I cried and I cried and I double-checked and I cried and I tried to find answers and I tried to find solutions.
Part of me didn’t mind. Part of me knew the feeling would pass, I would start working in my own time, I would become a vet just a month later than I had planned to. But that lack of choice, the lack of weight off your shoulders, the lack of celebration hurt, because I deserved to celebrate, deserved it all as much as any other student.
The overriding emotion for me was judgement which surprised me. I knew how people would react whether sympathetically or not, with good intentions or not and I didn’t want any of that. I felt well out of control.
People seem to judge a situation based on their opinions/views. I felt more upset because I could feel some of the other students so desperate to start work, to get a mortgage, to progress, to get as much money as possible and settle down would look down at me and my inability to get going, to do what they want to do. I could feel people counting the months I’d have to wait until my first piece of income, my first surgery, my first consult. That upset me most. Fed up of people looking down on me I suppose, not thinking I’m good enough, laughing at my ideas and suggestions. In my head everyone was saying they expected me to fail, the poor gay girl from a shit background and family who went to state school and got crap a-levels. No wonder she failed. It isn’t quite a rife as that at university but there’s an undercurrent of it. And I’m not of minority race/ethnicity who do have a more visibly difficult time and I had/have to deal with that shit. There’s worse out there than I have had to deal with.
I felt resentful to all those who put me through the grief of telling me how worried they were that they would fail, telling how sick and anxious they felt and I who tried to calm them down and help and ended up absorbing some of their fear as well as my own was in fact the one that didn’t pass.
I went on Facebook for less than a minute. I only had about ten vet school friends all of whom passed and how they were celebrating. It made me choke and I started crying again. Not that I wasn’t happy for them, but I felt I should have been there with them. Maybe not being quite as boasty online but who knows, I’d like to think I woudn’t have lol.
I’ve spent this afternoon thinking about what I’d like, what I’d really really like;
I don’t want a mortgage, I don’t want to settle down. I don’t want to aim for another persons perception of success.
I’d like to be useful and I’d like to help. I’d like to live with Rosie and I’d like us to fumble through life happy but simply. I’d like to save so that we can do things, have some retirement money. I don’t care about things or houses or cars or clothes. I’d like to live the life I should have been living for the past six years but haven’t because of university. I’d like to enjoy the weekends, properly. I’d like to volunteer again, I’d like to meet people, I’d like to travel,I’d like to donate my time, not just money, I’d like to go for walks, I’d like to paint and I’d like to dance, I’d like to have my half finished paintings around our home, I’d like to write I’d like to smell the our fresh baking, I’d like the sound of having friends around for dinner.
I’d like to feel satisfied and happy and comfortable and excited about life again.
I’d like to help others to feel that too.
And I think the main thing I have taken from this is that It doesn’t matter that I didn’t pass in June. It wont matter if I don’t pass in September. There are so many other things I can do.
I’m not quite back to myself yet. It’s only been a couple of days after all. I still get irritated by little things and am still defensive and annoyed at my university. But that’s another story.
We all have a hunger. Each hunger is for something different. There are too many people in this world that are actually hungry.
I began writing the ‘I’d like’ as ‘I want’, but how greedy does it sound for someone in a privileged position saying they don’t want materialistic things, just happiness? Ha. I will always be privileged even if not as privileged as others. I’ve always had some kind of opportunity.
I’m scared of losing myself. Of becoming someone different. I need a regular reminder of what I actually value and what I feel is success because it isn’t what society thinks and it isn’t what my friends think. I’m easily and subtley led astray by social media especially. For all it’s good points, it has a lot of negative. But I have a little buzzy feeling that once It all falls into place they will see how truly successful we have been, those that don’t stick to what we have been taught success is.
Stay positive,
Rebecca xx