The new Pre Vet club was created two days before the activity fair by senior Lauren Swearingen with the sponsorship of Student Naturalist teacher Darcie Badger with a plan to allow students to get more knowledge of animals before going into the veterinary career.
“I kind of have it [Pre Vet Club] open for anybody,” Swearingen said. “If you want to look into the field, if you’re interested, you can come and we can do some activities and you can join us.”
Swearingen intends to major in Pre Vet at Purdue.
“I wanted to just let people have some more experience going into college so it could help out their resumes, so I created the club,” Swearingen said.
Love for animals is seen through the school’s student naturalist course, but not all of these students get the opportunity to take the class.
“For the vet club, we really want to grow it,” Badger said. “I think that is the main goal, and to get students involved because there’s a lot of students I’ve noticed, who are interested in becoming a vet or going [into] some type of animal job direction and they don’t always have the time to take my class.”
Swearingen took Student Naturalist her junior year, but it’s common for upperclassmen to take a course like Student Naturalist due to its easier course work compared to other upperclassman science courses.
“I just kind of wanted to do something cool this year because I got diagnosed with [a] functional neurological disorder last year,” Swearingen said.
Swearingen dives deeper into her experience with this disorder.
“It made the school year really hard for me last year,” Swearingen said. “I wasn’t there a whole lot. I missed a lot of school. I just kind of wanted to, like get a jumpstart back on my life. Get back to being busy and everything. And so that’s why I created it [Pre Vet Club].”
The vet club has given Swearingen a new purpose to be involved in her school.
“That’s actually probably one of my main motivators for the club,” Swearingen said. “I just wanted to do something cool for myself after having a little downfall last year.”
Not everyone has the same motivations as Swearingen, but that doesn’t mean that students who have a different career in mind can’t be in Pre Vet Club too.
Pre Vet Club is currently seeking out members, and is open to all students.
