MEGALODON

My Story

As a kid growing up, I had a pet that became very ill. His name was Snow. He was extremely lethargic, inappetent and had hives throughout his entire body (at that time I didn’t know what hives were). I lived in a single – parent home and my mother was an office assistant so we didn’t have the finances to cover a veterinary bill for my ill pet. Therefore, my mother gave the pet to someone else who could afford the care that my pet desperately needed. This inspired me to learn about veterinary medicine.

However, around the same time, I was an athlete for three different sports, baseball, basketball, and football so my main focus was to become a professional athlete. As a sophomore in high-school, I suffered a brutal shoulder and knee injury. I tore my MCL in my right knee and tore the labrum of both of my shoulders. Despite these injuries, I still aspired to be a professional athlete and pursued treatment for my knee but not my shoulders. During my junior and senior year, sports didn’t work out as I had hoped. I had to consider other options. I began to take career quizzes. The results suggested that I become an accountant or real estate agent. I thought to myself, these don’t sound interesting or fitting for me. A few weeks later it was time to sign up for senior classes. As an elective, I decided to take both Animal Science I and II. This class caught my interest tremendously. I learned that veterinary medicine wasn’t only about dogs and cats but about cows, pigs, horses and other animals or no animals at all. This teacher convinced me to major in Animal Science at North Carolina A&T State University. My experience in undergrad from learning about small animals to performing poultry research and the eagerness to find out the diagnosis of Snow, inspired me to pursue a career in the veterinary profession.

My Struggles

I was accepted to veterinary school during my sophomore year in undergrad. This involved very strict requirements to maintain my seat in a veterinary class of only 84 students, including maintaining a GPA of above 3.5 or above. I did not want to lose my seat and I also had not taken the most difficult courses of the Animal Science degree such as Physiology, Organic Chemistry I and II. As a veterinary student, I failed three courses my first year which is an automatic withdrawal from the program. Fortunately, I was able to re-apply and enter the program with the next class. This was one of my biggest struggles as I had to figure out how to pass such challenging courses and adjust to a being in a new class.