Just wondering...

[Backwoods Boy]

Hi everyone, I was just wondering why type of community you are from? I, myself am from a very, very rural community. Farms all around the place. I actually live about 5 miles outside of the nearest town (of 450)... So where are you from? Also, how if at all, did that community influence you to choose to pursue a DVM?

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[rugbychick16]

What influenced me is....


The fact that you have to drive an hour just to get to a veterinarian, and if they're out for the day, drive another hour to the next one! Few and far between!

 

[Backwoods Boy]

What influenced me is....


The fact that you have to drive an hour just to get to a veterinarian, and if they're out for the day, drive another hour to the next one! Few and far between!

Sounds about right. Thankfully we have a couple vets in the area but they mainly focus on cattle and equine in this area.

 

[StayingHopeful]

I am from a city, but my grandparents live on a ranch in the countryside and we visit them and stay there a fair amount (especially when I was young) since they are only about an hour away. I always liked being able to be a city kid but also very outdoorsy. I think that without my rural experiences I probably would have gone into human medicine, but who knows?

 

[ImaJerseyGirl]

,

 

[svendenhowser]

Rural here is thousands of km's to the nearest property let alone town But I'm from a smallish town, not in town, but I certainly wouldn't call it rural (20km to nearest small town?). We had a free-range poultry set up and what drove me into vet school was the lack of avian veterinarians within Australia. There are only 2 in my capital city!

Since starting vet school (3rd year now) I've found that even most of my fellow students are scared of birds! Even your innocent little chook! So it keeps driving me on

 

[cuitlamiztli]

I grew up in a smaller city (~55,000 or so) but have lived outside of a small town (~1,500) for the past 4 years. It's small enough to where there's one major road, no stoplights, and it pretty much shuts down at 6:00.

As far as community influence... I'd say that it was fairly minimal, but growing up a hop, skip, and a jump from the Henry Doorly Zoo certainly fueled my interest in zoo/wildlife/conservation medicine!

 

[sumstorm]

Rural here, but I don't include small towns as rural.

I had over an hour bus ride to and from school each day, and we were rural enough that we had breaks planned in for helping with harvest and planting (but classes were longer into the summer and started early. Most of us lived at the fair grounds a few weeks each year as well. The town kids went to a different school than we did....townies were something to be both jealous and scofful of; they didn't have to work the crops or care for stock or have heavy daily chores, but they also couldn't keep up when they hit 16-18 and wanted to work the fields because it made decent money. However, I much prefer Australia's version of rural. Loved that.

Having said that, since growing up on the farm, I have also lived in small towns, small cities, and large cities. Now I live in a ag-residential area (kind of a buffer between subburbs and farms.) Nice enough.

 

[Backwoods Boy]

It's pretty interesting to see the broad range that we have here.

 

[shortnsweet]

I technically live in Baltimore city, but I take every chance I can get to get out of the city and go to horse country I chose a college in a TINY rural town, and it has been perfect for me I've now been riding with my equine vet since senior year in high school, and loooove it!

 

[cozycleo]

I was a military brat. Originally born in rural Iowa, grew up in western South Dakota and a couple years in the UP of Michigan. Now I live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. Definitely a change of pace!

I used to love going trail riding in the summer and watching the military dog demonstrations. Then I was always crazy to go to this marine place we had for several years. I couldn't get enough of the dolphins and sharks and sea lions that they kept.

I've never even seen an ocean, but for the longest time I wanted to be a marine biologist. Some of my other dream jobs as a kid were things like working with police dogs and training dolphins. I had a thing for marine mammals. Now as I've gotten older my interests have changed a bit, but I am currently volunteering for a local zoo in the aquatics center. I get to prep food for sea lions and different types of seabirds once a week. It's kinda neat how that stuff can stay with you even as you get older.

Anyway, my grandparents were farmers and my uncle currently runs the old family farm. Lots of memories out there, but didn't really spend a lot of time with the cows they had. Now my uncle raises hogs. I'm still undecided in my ultimate vet goal, but the variety of experience growing up has definitely affected me.

 

[VeganSoprano]

I'm originally from a rural area - a town with about 3000 people and only one traffic light. Now I live in a very large city.

I'm a city girl at heart.

 

[kakurubird]

I answered large city because the metropolitan area (which is technically where I'm from, not in the city, but a mile or two outside) is around 5 million, though the city itself is about a tenth of that.
Right now, though, I'm in a town of about 25,000 for school that I absolutely adore and am trying to do everything to stay here for the summer despite the massive increase in price for summer rentals. I'll admit though that much of my love for the town is because of all the horses. There's a wonderful equine vet here that I would love love love to at least extern with during vet school just so that I have an excuse to be back here.

 

[aspiringDVM]

I grew up about ten minutes from the second largest city in my state (still a "medium city" though). I think I would have gone pre-vet regardless, but living on a small farm and raising dairy goats, chickens, dogs, and cats was the best childhood I can imagine and helped me realize how much I really love vet med. Ironically, even though I live in the "horse capital of the world," I didn't get into equine medicine til I was eighteen, then I was totally hooked . I'm just now beginning to realize how lucky I was to be born here and to have so many amazing opportunities literally at my doorstep.