College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Transcript

All right, everyone this is gonna be a lot of fun. This is one of the very few times the college tour gets to visit a horse barn. This one in fact has been here for over a hundred years and that’s where we’re gonna meet Gabby. She’s a freshmen majoring in animal science. And she’s gonna talk about her experience as a city girl in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Okay Gabby, you’re on.

– Hi everyone. So growing up I always knew that I wanted to work with animals. I had two cats, Casey and Rastki and my favorite book growing up was my Encyclopedia of Dog Breed. So during high school, I had the opportunity to shadow one of my local veterinarians for a couple months and I knew right away that that was what I wanted to do. So right now my dream is to attend the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, which by the way, is the number one ranked vet school in the world. And I wanna work with large predators and rehabilitative zoos. But as of right now, I am a first year animal science major in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. We offer 28 majors and 40 minors and a broad variety of topics that have everything to do with the sustainability and safety of our planet. We have stuff covering climate change, conserving habitats, making sure people have the food space and hope that they need. It also includes the science of brewing and wine-making. And of course the health of our lovely animals. Like I said, it covers a lot. Choosing Davis was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, even despite the pandemic, our professors have gone above and beyond to make sure that our classes are engaging and that we’re learning the material that they’re teaching. I knew I was at home when I started my first class, intro to animal science with professor Russ Hubby. For a class project we even conducted an experiment to see whether we could teach his old dog a new trick. And so we took his dog Sunny and we tried to see if we could teach her to jump through a hoop and she did it and it was the cutest thing ever. If I’m being completely honest, it was a bit of a culture shock moving from the Bay Area to Davis because I’m surrounded by farm animals, but I fell in love so fast. There are so many different ways for our students to get their hands dirty and get into some research and internship opportunities here on campus. We have internships and hands-on learning opportunities ranging from a student run student farm to landscape architecture in our vertical gardens. One of the ones that I’m actually really interested in is one that’s right here at our horse barn, where students get to work with our mares poles and stallions because fun fact, we are also a fully functional breeding facility here in addition to being a teaching barn. It has been truly a pleasure to spend my first year here at UC Davis and I cannot be more excited to see what my future holds. Back to you, Alex.

– Gabby, thank you for sharing what sounds like a memorable first year that gives new meaning to hands on learning and you wanna work with large predators at the zoo, I can’t wait to see that happen. Good luck on your journey to veterinary school and beyond. Thanks again, Gabby.