Browsing by Author "Ring deRosset, Susan, author"
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Item Restricted An harm we none: memoir of a veterinary medical education(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Ring deRosset, Susan, author; Thompson, Deborah, advisor; Doe, Sue, advisor; Holmquist-Johnson, Helen, committee memberThe veterinary profession, we First-Years were told during orientation, is the white-collar demographic with the highest addiction, depression, divorce, and suicide rates in the country. Despite these warnings and all the heavy baggage I was coming in with—as an older student and an ecofeminist Nature gal with limited resources, a spinal disease, and unresolved grief and hauntings—I gave vet school my best shot: It was my Big Dream. Part One of this book-length memoir, my creative nonfiction thesis, covers personal events in 1998, from the January acceptance letter from Colorado State University and the summer before classes started, through fifteen weeks of rigorous academics, with little to no sleep, all the way to our first final exams in December. Like most authors of contemporary veterinary memoirs, including Loretta Gage, Allen Schoen, and Suzy Fincham-Gray, I also share where my passion for animals and the ambition to become a doctor probably originated; the vet-clinic work, volunteer hours, and GPAs we needed to rack up before we even applied; our first euthanasia experiences as well as inspiring scenes with mentor-veterinarians; and how intense vet school interviews and taking out around a hundred-thousand dollars of federal student loans can be. I also begin to explore the complicated relationship between humans and nonhuman animals from inside the veterinary institution.Item Restricted The stone wolves(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Ring deRosset, Susan, author; Callahan, Gerald, advisor; Levy, Ellen J., committee member; Rollin, Bernard, committee memberWith a July 2012 Pacific Northwest road trip undergirding this narrative nonfiction woven from three strands (the present, past, and contemplations on science, nature, and mythology), the Colorado author's husband and aging Yellow Labrador join her during the Summer of Fire as she returns to places of wild beauty where, in her twenties, she lived off-the-grid, rock-climbed, and engaged in ecofeminist campaigns to save wolves and wilderness from destruction. They are on their way to the San Juan Islands in the hope of seeing whales. But the road trip through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon also forces this former veterinary student to face the events of March 19, 1995. That first Sunday of Spring Break eighteen years ago resulted in an accidental death of her ex-partner's German shepherd, who was like a child to them, and nearly took their lives as well. The incident at Oregon's Crooked River Gorge was the defining moment of the young animal-lover's life; there was Before the gorge and there is After. There are still things that happened there that she cannot face, including what happened just after the dog fell to his death. Was she reckless that evening, or merely innocent? And does innocence get us off the hook for actions that result in irreversible loss and suffering--how does one forgive oneself for the sin of carelessness? It's time to face the unfaceable and return to the abyss. But it's also time to work out these complicated relationships with the other animals, with romantic partnerships, career aspirations, and with the untrusting self. It's time to take a close look at terrifying questions of life and death and irreversibility, control vs. responsibility, and what it means to be human and terribly, terribly fallible. What it means to not find what one had hoped for but to discover improbable serendipities just as redemptive.