I'm back!

Hi, everyone! Thanks to good fortune and better timing, the old blog is back - and I'm returning to France!

For those of you just tuning in for the first time, "It Happened in Montpellier" was my old blog/personal diary thing to record my thoughts and memories while I spent my junior year studying abroad in the awesome Mediterranean town of Montpellier, France. I did so mostly for personal reasons - out of a desire to get out and see the world, improve my French, and live someplace new for awhile. While at the time I didn't see it giving me any leg up for future grad/vet school applications, the intangible benefits were astronomical. I went from shaky and poor in my language skills to being able to converse fluidly and confidently in French, saw and did so many amazing things, made wonderful friends and essentially had the time of my life. Since I've been back I've always wanted to return, but since starting vet school I didn't really imagine it to be a possibility. So, I pushed it aside.

That is, I pushed it aside until fate smiled upon me and led me to the reason for re-starting this blog! See, every summer, all 28 vet schools across the United States, plus the Canadian schools and some in the Caribbean, sponsor a certain number of first- and second-year veterinary students to take part in the Merial Veterinary Summer Scholars Program. Merial is an American-based, multinational animal health/research/drug company that co-sponsors veterinary students (that means we get paid! yippee!) to spend their summer working in a professor's research lab, eventually presenting that research at the Merial-NIH (National Institutes of Health) symposium in August. In their words:

"The mission of the Merial Veterinary Scholars Program is to expose veterinary students in their first or second year of veterinary school to biomedical research and career opportunities in research."

 So, essentially, encouraging students who want to delve into the world of veterinary research for the summer, with the hope that this exposure will help them keep veterinary research in their minds as a possible career path - and it is one that is quite in demand right now!

 It was my goal from the start to try to participate in this program at Auburn during the summer, since I have a bit of research background and also a strong interest in public health and infectious diseases. In any case, competition was super steep and there wasn't room for me at the program in Auburn. But, wise and encouraging friends reminded me to not despair, and keep trying for other things!

 And now we arrive at why this all relates to France. For the past two years, Merial has been sending a couple of European veterinary students to American vet schools to participate in this summer program. This year, however, is their "pilot program," as the first time they are doing the opposite - sending American veterinary students to Europe! The two participating countries are the Netherlands and France, with three students to be sent to each, with the same goal - working with a professor at one of these schools, performing a research project in their lab.

 So, given that things in Auburn didn't work out, why not apply to the one in France, right? The worst they could do was say no, I could always go work at home, yaddah yah... However, I did happen to have one ace in the hole, that the France leg of the program asked its applicants to have a sufficient level of French for the needs of daily life (there is no language requirement to apply for the Netherlands). In general, the French aren't quite as proficient at English as the Germans or the Dutch, so to live anywhere that isn't Paris you really ought to have at least some of the language to survive.

 But I digress. Long story short, I sent in my application and, not too long after, I was notified that I'd been accepted!! For a fun bit of trivia, France actually is home to the world's very first veterinary school, established in 1761 in Lyon. As of today, there are three other vet schools in the country - in Paris, Nantes, and Toulouse. It was my job, after being accepted, to contact the professor at the school I was interested in to discuss the possibility of working in their lab. We were given a list of potential projects, and I tried to find the best of both worlds - a city I'd want to spend my summer in, plus a research project I'd like to do. My first choice of city was Toulouse, a medium-sized city in southwest France. I love love love the ambiance and everything else about southern France, and decided that this was the place for me to spend my summer.

The project I will be working on, which I'll discuss a bit more in a post to come (as this one seems to be getting quite long), involves a mycotoxin (fungal toxin) called deoxynivalenol. It is a food contaminant that is found in cereal grains and, while it won't kill you unless you get an especially high dose, it is toxic to both humans and animals (its common name? vomitoxin). In people it causes symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, headache, and so on. More relevant to my study, in animals it causes significantly reduced food intake and, as a result, these animals don't thrive and don't gain weight. This equates to lost money for the farmer/producer who feeds his animals grains infected with this toxin. Pigs are of particular interest, since their diet is largely grain.

This is the reader's digest version of the story, and I'll likely go into more detail on this topic, but based on my discussions with the professor, I'll be participating in the facet of research trying to characterize how deoxynivalenol produces its toxic effects in an animal model.

Okay, for any friends/family brave enough to read this novel above, thank you! I'm happy you're interested enough to follow what I'll be up to this summer. Don't be a stranger now. Hit me up anytime to say hello, and I promise lots of fun posts involving my second go at life in France :)

Until next time!