Reflection...

It's A Level results week so I've seen lots of anxious, upset and elated posts on Twitter and Facebook with people heading off to Uni in September or some who didn't get the results they expected, wanted or thought they deserved and it got me thinking about where I was 5 years ago.

My friend George asked earlier in the week if doing these work experience placements before I head off have helped confirm I still want to be a vet and I guess they have. Obviously its something I've always wanted to do and I wouldn't have come this far if I wasn't sure, but I could have decided after seeing practice to become a Vet Nurse, Practice Manager, RSPCA Inspector etc.
I know I can do the physical job, its just the exams which might hold me back!

I've always loved the practical side of working with animals and started this blog 7 years ago, when I was 15, but have never been a high achiever academically so think I'm going to have to put some work in once I get to Kosice to make it work for the 4 years...

At school I cruised along putting the minimal amount of work in and got decent GCSE's with not much work but then A Levels came along and not putting the work in really showed!
Looking back at it I chose completely the wrong subjects - Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths and General Studies - because I wanted to get into Vet School, or uni, and not the subjects I liked or wanted to do.
Consequently I ended up failing most of my AS Levels and finished Lower Sixth/Year 12 with BEDUU.

At the time it felt like everyone was against me telling me to drop down a year, drop out of school completely and go to college but I'm a stubborn character and made my own choices; I got myself into the mess so had to sort myself out!

I didn't get on with my Business Studies teacher for GCSE but I liked the subject and was actually good at it, thought it would be useful afterwards and so picked it up for AS alongside my other A2 subjects.
I ended up really liking it and got an A without doing too much work - it has actually been really useful since and has helped with getting a job too.

I started working hard over Christmas of Year 12 because I really wanted to go to Uni and but then I got a Merit Award for Aberystwyth, which basically meant I had two Unconditional offers to study Animal Science or Zoology - I didn't have to finish my A Levels and they'd give me £1,000 for going to Uni; so I did just that!

I finished Year 13 with CCA, so I like to say that over my two years I finished with EDUCA - half an education ;)

Looking back it was a stupid thing to do and I wish I hadn't have found out until after I'd sat my exams but at the time I thought it was great.

The only reason I got those offers was on the back of my work experience placements because I wrote two essays in my entrance exam about the changing face of agriculture in the UK and another on Orf, a disease in sheep - all what I'd picked up on placement, not from textbooks, and it got me into Uni.

Again, when I was in Aberystwyth doing my Animal Science degree I didn't put enough work in and got an average grade. In third year when I should have been doing my Dissertation, I was stupidly busy working 24/7 lambing a research flock on the Uni farm.


All the vets, nurses and clients have asked which uni I'm going to and even though Slovakia is far from the answer they expected to come out of my mouth, everyone has been really positive about it.
Nowadays more and more students are going abroad to study so I don't think I'll have a problem finding a job in a few years time.

I guess the point of my random waffling is even though I haven't got in to Vet School the most conventional way straight after A Levels I'm still going but now I have a degree behind me that I can always fall back on, I guess I have some life experience and I've had a pretty good journey getting this far!
There are always other options or routes to take it might just take a bit longer than you first expected!