The House is Open
The weekend before last was one of the most stressful experiences, besides actually arriving in the States (see my blog post on that for more details) due to the Centre of Veterinary Medicine’s Annual Open House. As is the want of past Kim, I volunteered to help out on the Saturday and operate the Global Health booth. It felt like sweet irony as the course that wasn’t being run yet was being sold to the everyday person by a bunch of internationals who are only in the US for a year or less.
Of course, I volunteered thinking that it would be a good experience and that I would enjoy spending an entire Saturday talking to children and their parents about what Global Health means and how as a lab we are achieving this goal. I see now that past Kim was very, very stupid and future Kim confirms that I was very, very wrong.
The lead up to this experience wasn’t even that fulfilling; besides the fact I used this experience on a job application as a team leader. It started with a brainstorming session where we decided on what we were going to do for the stall. We ended up deciding on a poster, a handout and a game. The poster would be my responsibility; another 2 women would handle the game and the final member of our group would handle the handout.
I got my poster done pretty quickly as it needed to be printed and I wanted to get it out of the way. What I didn’t realise was that this would open me up to having to ‘assist’ the others in their assigned tasks. Funnily enough (like I am surprised) I ended up constructing the shell of the game and covering it in paper to give it a more finished look and I also came up with the general plan of what the game would look like on the inside, how we are making the world map and the borders etc. That’s not to say I did all the work but, I was the driving force between all the components sitting in our office and actually getting the game in a useable state. Finally, with two weeks to go the other team member came to me and asked how the handout should look and how the information should be written, so I also designed the handout. At this point I had been elected team leader, which I definitely hadn’t nominated myself for. Fortunately, I made sure everything was finished before the day.
The actual day started with me arriving at the Research Building and helping get all the last minute touches completed at 8:15am(!). This included going up and down in the lift at least twice since all our supplies are housed on the fourth floor. So, already I was done with the experience. The poster was printed and the game fully constructed. The handout was printed and stacked on the table with other supplies on the table from the lab, demonstrating what we do to support Global Health in our lab.
As people began to arrive there were plenty of families and students who were interested in Global Health and of course we ambassadors were left to our own devices, coming up with whatever we thought would be the most interesting and concise way of saying: people and animals get sick all over the world and it is our responsibility as a developed nation to help support and research diseases as they could arrive in the US or originate in the US. The day was long and I took a break in the middle to explore the rest of the open house.
There were a lot of animals from adoption agencies and the police also had a riding unit with 4 huge horses. The vet school itself had all sorts of equipment set up for demonstrations and there were dog shows out front demonstrating agility and police dog training. As the day was so nice I explored the dairy unit where they milked the cows by hand and I also saw the large animal area where they brought in horses for appointments. It was a lot of fun but not as busy as I anticipated. There were cats and horses and snakes all available for petting and that’s all that really mattered.
Overall, it was one hell of a day. I managed to get out of there by 4pm and home for a nap. I had a sore throat and a party to get to later and I was fully ready to put my leadership stint behind me. Until I get an email asking me to organise a thank you lunch for us volunteers. Funny how people seem to think I’m responsible or something.
