2021 Scholarship Winner

Mary McFillen

Penn Foster

Essay topic: Describe where you see yourself in 3 years and how you plan to attain those goals.

"The one question that we are continually asked throughout the course of our lives is “Where do you see yourself in x years?” It’s a question that haunted me through my 20s. Everything before the age of 22 was easy. At 18, I knew I would be in college at 21, with loads of friends! I would be getting my Creative Writing degree! At 10, I knew that when I grew up I wanted to be an actress. At 5, I knew I wanted to be a Radio City Rockette.

Well, at 23, I was married, I had a B.A. in theatre and found myself marooned in Missouri with a husband working to complete a PhD. And that was it. I had reached the end of what I knew about myself, and the yawning future was, at that time, exciting. After all, when you’re in your 20s, you’re sure you’re never going to be in your 30s.

I met and adopted Champ at the age of 23. My first dog and the best friend I will ever have. I knew from the moment I met him that I’d do anything for him. In 2010 at the age of 27, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself and I was starting to get antsy. But my gut feeling about what I would do for Champ was put to the test that year when he developed bloat after hours. My husband I scrambled to get him to the University of Missouri Veterinary Health Center. There, as I paced the lobby, weeping, thinking I was going to lose my dog, they saved his life, somewhat incidentally by making him throw up while trying to intubate him. His stomach empty, his life was no longer at critical risk and his signs of shock began to resolve.

He spent the night in the ICU and I spent the night having an epiphany that what I wanted to do was help animals like Champ. I wanted to take care of owners like my husband and me. I wanted to spend my life taking care of animals. It was a sea-change in my lifelong pursuit of the arts and creativity. People in my life couldn’t believe that I would take blood, watch surgery, smear poop on slides, and risk being bitten and scratched. But I knew it. I heard the call and I rushed to the source.

I was accepted into tech school at Bel-Rea. But I never made it. My finances fell through first. This compounded with the fact that I got very little support for the idea from most people my life outside of my husband. Now, here I was, having quit my job with the notion that I would be going to pursue this newly awakened dream, and I was aimless, and very scared.

It took me seven years, three unsatisfying retail jobs, and a lot of depression and anxiety to finally get the experience and the guts enough to apply, and apply, and apply again for an administrative position at the VHC. I finally got hired in May of 2018. And I was pleased. I was happy to just even be in the same building and offer administrative support that helped keep the clinical side that I believed in so fully, running.

It took roughly two years for Dr. Meagan Brophy to jokingly ask me in a flippant email reply after I sent her a record she requested; “Wanna come work for local?” She may not have realized that I had been waiting 11 years to hear that sentence when she wrote it but, she learned that to be the case quickly as I replied “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” within ten seconds of receiving it. Within two months of that first conversation, I found myself the new Veterinary Assistant for Community Practice, flanked by incredibly talented senior technicians and relentlessly dedicated veterinarians.

I threw myself so hard into my job, all the members of the Community Practice team seemed to be a bit stunned by how well I picked it all up and ran with it. Sure, I called for referring records, wrote out our anesthesia sheets and filed rabies certificates. But I was also trained to restrain, to perform a TPR, and give injections. I was over the moon. I felt (and honestly still feel) unstoppable, and as such, my comfort level soared, and I was allowed to do more and more.

Within 8 months of becoming an assistant, I finally scraped the money together to enroll in Tech school with Penn Foster. Now I work 40 hours a week, and come home to write papers, read, and take exams well into the night. I haven’t been this tired maybe in my whole life. But I’ve also never been so fulfilled. I experience full-on elation as I work through my courses and I can suddenly understand the more technical things our service head, Dr. Richard Meadows, says in rounds. I look at every cytology I have time to. I am what my lead techs call “a natural” at blood draws. I research pathologies on my own time out of sheer curiosity.

I recognize I’m in a particularly unique situation where my learning is supplemented by listening to our doctors teach their veterinary students. But I am so incredibly lucky that they will let me ask my long-winded questions, too. They’ll pause reviewing discharges to explain the abnormalities they saw in bloodwork to me, or they’ll help me remember the signs of Cushing’s, just because I’m trying to learn it for my own interest.

I love medicine. I love it in a way that I never expressly knew or explored as a child. I love being a part of a team that digs down deep to find the answers that heal pets, or at least let them live more comfortable lives with their chronic illnesses. I look forward to the rechecks when things are going well, and improvements are marked. And I feel great honor and responsibility that I get to help those who do not or cannot improve when the time has come to say good-bye.

At the beginning of each new rotation, we say to our group “Say who you are, where you’re from and what you want to be when you grow up.” I always say: “Hi, I’m Mary! I’m your veterinary assistant, and I’m from Pennsylvania. And when I grow up, I want to be a veterinarian technician at the MU VHC’s Community Practice.” It always gets a chuckle, but I mean every word of it. I waited and worked and struggled for 11 years to get to where I am. I’m not going anywhere.

So where do I see myself in three years? I see myself graduated from my program and a Registered Veterinary Technician for the MU VHC’s Community Practice. I see myself passing on the skills that I will have mastered to our future veterinarians. I see myself counseling them in the same ways I do now: technically, emotionally, and professionally. I envision sitting at our microscope explaining the difference between stain precipitant and cocci.

I now even have a plan beyond those three years. My long-term plan is a VTS in General Practice. I want to pursue what I love so passionately to the furthest extent that I can. I want to be the greatest asset I can be to our team and our students. I want to learn and keep learning. And I just cannot wait.

I know I’m lucky that I’m already where I want to be, and that I’m supported by a group of academically minded individuals. I plan to use my unique position to make my lifelong learning that much easier. Attending the College of Veterinary Medicine’s many continuing education events will help me learn advanced diagnostics faster. Making great use of our library resources and boarded specialists when I have questions about specific cases will ensure that when I’ve put in enough time to start my VTS, I will be fully prepared to dive in and dive deep. In three years, I know I’ll still be running down a dream, but what a pleasure to finally be chasing."

Pictured: 2021 MOVTA scholarship recipient ary McFillen.