Dallas Part 2: The End

Name: Abbey McDermott
Class Year: Junior
Hometown: Burton, OH
Internship: Undergrad Hospital Intern
Location: Dallas Zoo

Short note: Due to delays in approval, this is being posted three weeks after initially being written.  I am currently back in Ohio, not moping around my tiny Texas apartment because I have to leave soon.

With just a few short days left here at the Dallas Zoo, I feel like it’s time for another update.  My internship is drawing to a close, and I don’t know how I feel about it.

On one hand, we’ll call it the right hand, there’s the heat.  Actually, I think I’m going to devote an entire paragraph to this real fast.  Yesterday, it was one hundred and one degrees.  One hundred and one.  Not with the heat index.  Just as the stand alone temperature.  Today, as I was driving home, sweat literally dripped down my calf.  At night, Taryn and I crank the AC to make our apartment seventy degrees, but still, nothing seems to help.  Nothing cures the Texas heat. 

On the second right hand, the tech student is here, which means my responsibilities have all but disappeared.  All observation of procedures and treatments has ceased, and I’ve been instead spending my time doing projects around the hospital.  These include cleaning, retyping things, and organizing boxes of x-rays, journals, and files.  The days are beginning to blur together and no single one seems distinct from another.

But see, then we have the first left hand.  I love it here.  I love not being home.  I love having a job to go to every day, living in an apartment and not needing to set aside extra time for homework.  I love the long roads, the new city, the endless possibilities for adventures.  I love the parks and the zoos, the hospital-staff trivia nights, Fossil Rim and Whataburger.  If it weren’t for that hundred degree heat, I could probably live here.  Texas really is almost all it’s cracked up to be.

Lastly, we have the second left hand.  I’ve made friends here.  Actual, legitimate friends—not just coworkers, but people I do things with outside of work.  The vet student and I go to parks on the weekends to go hiking and sit in the grass.  My roommate Taryn, who I had never met before coming down here, takes me to zoos and watches New Girl with me while we make dinner.  Eliza Hanes, a girl that was once just my volunteer supervisor at the wildlife center, spent two full days with Taryn and I, just to see our faces.  I have two intern friends that I text almost daily, and a Dallas-Native friend that has shown me nearly everything in the city.  And as I’m typing this I’m realizing I have to leave these people in two days and I really don’t think I’m ready for it.

So overall, I’m torn on whether or not I really want to go home.  But either way, I’m entirely grateful for the amazing experience this has been.  I’ve worked with the best people at one of the best places and I wouldn’t trade it if I could.  Thanks, Dallas, you’ve been the best.

My absolute favorite snake, the beautiful black mamba

Eliza, Taryn and I having the MOST fun at Fossil Rim, the safari park Eliza is interning at

And finally Tebogo, the friendliest Giraffe (but only when you wear your intern shirt)