Part blog, part oral history, part research project.
How has the Great Recession affected your path beyond college? What is your story?

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Recession Grads on the Radio! (Part 2)

What? A fantastic story
Where? On Crosscurrents, an award-winning daily news program on 91.7 FM, KALW
When? Monday, June 13th, between 5-5:30 pm*

This is the second installment in a three-part series exploring the experiences of San Francisco Bay Area Recession Grads. Marica Patchett graduated in 2009 with a degree in veterinary medicine from U.C. Davis.

Here's some of the story that was left on the cutting room floor (as a teaser, of sorts):

Before Marica pursued vet school, she was a self-described lab rat...

At the time I was working for the USDA and we were doing an aging study on these particular species of fly and I would take up these dried up little flies from the desiccator and I would chop their heads off, grind them up, on ice, in the dark, using a variety of chemicals, and then inject my little solution into a machine and I would wait 7 minutes for it to spit out the results --and then I would do it again.

Over and over and over again. I started to feel like I was going a little bit crazy, because it was just so repetitious and it was just, it was boring. It was really starting to affect me.

I had most of the requirements ready to go into vet school, I just had a couple classes that I needed to take, but the big hurdle was that I'd never worked in a veterinary clinic before. I didn't have any actual animal handling experience. Aside from handling insects, which didn't really count.

I had to start at the bottom and I got a job scooping poop at the local humane society. And so here I was, I had this degree in molecular biology and I was scooping poop and walkin' dogs. But that was the only way to start and get my foot in the door in order to become a technician and to log some veterinary hours, in order to even be considered for application for vet school. So that's sort of where it started.

* It's only a 3 minute piece--I'm not sure where it will be placed in the program's line-up. But, the program (i.e., Crosscurrents) is always a treat--it didn't win a bunch of national awards for nothin'!