Thursday, March 31, 2011

SAVMA Symposium 2011


Today was the fourth straight day I’ve needed a nap since returning from my trip to California for the 2011 SAVMA (Student American Veterinary Medical Association) Symposium. But each day the nap has been getting shorter, and today was the first day I’ve studied since getting back, so I’m hopeful that my recovery is nearly complete. What is there to recover from? Well… I’m sorry to report that while I did not do a single educational thing at the symposium, I did have a lot of fun! (And I met students from other vet schools, which is networking, which is important, right?)

This year’s symposium was held at UC Davis. The tagline was “California Dreaming” – “can’t wait to see you in dreamy California.” Now I’ve been to California before, and specifically to northern California before, so I wasn’t entirely buying the pitch that we would be treated to a string of warm, sun-soaked days. None of us however, were prepared to visit the Land of the Pouring Rain. Apparently, it had been raining for days and days, and the weather gods didn’t see fit to put a stop to it just because 1500 vet students from around the country were in town. It was also cold and windy. We made the most of it by getting to know the local bars and restaurants quite well.

Day 1: Failure of laptop clocks to change time zones results in early partying in the hotel room. (One person looks at the clock, sees it is 6:30, cracks open a beer and starts to get ready to go out to dinner. Everyone else follows along. Several beers later, we realize it is only 4-something and we wouldn’t be going out for several more hours. Oh well!)


Despite the early start, we made a strong showing on the Wednesday night Davis bar scene. Everyone was happy.



Day 2: The day of sideways rain. Rain so horrible it made walking around absolutely miserable. We rented a car.

Then spent the afternoon playing pool.



The kickoff event for the symposium was supposed to be a competitive game of kickball among the vet schools, to be played at the minor league ballpark Raley Field in Sacramento. We couldn’t play because the field was so soaked we would ruin it.



The beer tasting event continued as planned.





As did the dance party, where I have photographic evidence of networking. That chick in the orange is from Oregon State.




Day 3: I opted to participate in one of the symposium day trips – this one to San Francisco. We took a bus from Davis to San Francisco, where the rest of the symposium goers got off to spend the day doing touristy things in Chinatown and around Pier 39. I spent the day with Ginny and Natalie!



I got back to Davis in time to join the post-80’s dance party fun (my friend in the headband is still in costume)



Day 4: The weather cooperated and cleared a bit for our trip to Napa for wine tasting.



There was even a hint of sunshine!



By the time the evening finale at a Sacramento art museum rolled around, we were all pretty tired. But we managed to pull it together for a couple of hours for a little more wine and fun.



Tiredness quickly won out however, so we packed it in early, stopped by a Mexican fast food place, and gorged ourselves on tacos and quesadillas in bed. (Sorry, no pics of that.) We were happy to return home the next day!

Symposium 2012 is at Purdue, which is somewhere in Indiana, right? Might take a pass on that trip…