so much for international

I have been in the international certificate program here at school...basically it is an extra program you apply for, finish a project abroad and write a paper on, attend every other week seminars until clinics start, and complete yearly written reports on your progress with your chosen mentor, finished up by a final oral exam with three faculty members in your senior year.

5 of my classmates and I are in the program...and it just gives you a written slip when you graduate saying you did extra in this veterinary medicine field while in school, so no worries if you don't get it. All of us in the program have been completely disappointed with it. There is no guidance, no structure, no organization. And sadly, my mentor happens to be the only mentor whom the entire international staff fights with all the time. All of our projects abroad were fun, but did not result in publishable results (surprise surprise). I published a paper the year before on similar research but it was not the direct culmination of my trip abroad. All of us started to think the program was a joke in our second year. But of course, I became known as the dork who attended every forum (you are allowed to miss two a year) and who read all the chapters of our required text ahead of time instead of an hour before the lecture on it.

So the letter I received yesterday had a lot of irony to me. All my other classmates got emails last week saying they should schedule their oral exam soon. I didn't, and I thought that was weird. I also talked to Katie about it, one of my best friends in the program who jokingly became known as the slacker in the program since she was frequently late to the seminars and never read ahead of time. We all discussed our written reports that we wrote this past summer for the year before, and I was bold and did not hold back that I was disappointed the program did not support its students, and that it could use some more organization. The report asked us to reflect on our progress as well as our opinion of the program, so I tried to give them some constructive critcism. Even more ironic was that I started contacting them in October asking when to schedule my oral exam, and they never replied to me, while my classmates forgot about the exam and decided "They will contact me when they want me to take it, if they forget that is their problem."

My letter basically says "Dear Lindsey, We regret to inform you that we have decided to drop you from the international certificate program. We feel that you have achieved tremendous amounts in veterinary school and have always been impressed by your activities and academic achievements in school. Sadly, we do not feel that your international project and subsequent paper are of publishable quality and have unanimously decided that it is not sufficient to complete your international certificate." blah blah blah from there.

Funny things was I was not mad. This is not going to affect me in any way, it just means that I wasted my time for 3 years attending all those seminars and reading that book. It was not a total waste, I learned something, but I could of done other things instead.

And my mentor got a copy of the same letter. She has not been the best mentor. She is always at odds with the program. She is supposed to be in the program, which is funny since she did not hear of this "unanimous decision" before the letter came to her, and she freaked out. She emailed me and immediately wanted to go to the Dean and once again start a battle trying to get one of the faculty members of the program that she hates kicked off, but I asked her politely to not pursue this. I am tired and in clinics and am not in the mood to stir up any thing on campus before leaving. I felt their letter was respectful and not rude in any way, although all of my classmates in the program flipped as well since they felt I was one of the hardest workers in the program. I guess I have taken the whole "it is one less problem for me to deal with" approach. But I do secretly wonder how much my frankness in my last written report as well as having the one mentor that every other faculty member openly hates affected the decision. Oh well.