Berit Owen

5th Year Student

I was born in northern California in the 60's to hippie parents and was raised in a national redwood forest where I spent all of my free time outdoors, climbing trees and exploring the woods by myself.

I was a high achiever all through my early school days, everyone (including me) thought I'd go straight to college and do something brilliant with my life...until I turned 16, when I started hanging out with a gang of punk rockers and went through a rebellious stage. Although later I found a career where I was earning a lot of money (as a 'vacation home specialist' in Hawaii), deep down I knew I was selling out and wasting my potential, and that I could be doing so much more with my life.

I found my calling when my moggie cat, Nigel developed diabetes in my late 20's. I envied my vet, who always knew how to fix Nigel when he'd have one of his blood sugar crashes, and I started wishing I was a vet, too. It seemed like such a fascinating job to have...you would always have more to learn, you would never be bored. When I was in my early 30's and EVERYONE told me I was too old to go to vet school.

My opportunity came when I met Patrick Hayburn while on holiday in Sydney in 2001. He and I had a whirlwind romance and got married shortly afterward. Patrick knew I dreamed of being a vet one day, and he insisted on helping me achieve that dream. I moved to Australia and started working at a vet clinic in Sydney as a kennel hand/vet nurse, and found out that I really did love the veterinary world; that I loved working with fellow animal lovers, that getting crap and blood on my clothes didn't bother me in the least. I had to do a year at a university in Sydney, taking biology, chemistry, physics...the stuff I hadn't completed in high school, in order to be accepted into vet school. Then I received that letter in the mail saying I was accepted into vet school, I jumped up and down, laughing and screaming with joy. I almost thought I'd never get accepted, and at times I wondered if everyone else was right and maybe I was just too old, but Patrick fortunately was there by my side and never let me dwell on those negative thoughts.

After 3 years of vet school, Patrick and I divorced. I believe it was partially due to the amount of time I had to spend studying, and also the fact that I worked every weekend as a vet nurse, and I simply didn't have the time to fix the problems that were slowly eroding our marriage. I had to move out of our home and support myself, which was an enormous change for me, and looking back I can't believe that I managed to do it. But absolutely nothing short of death was going to make me quit uni, I didn't care what I had to sacrifice by then; I'd already invested way too many years of my life pursuing that goal. Most of all, I knew how bored I would be if I had to go back to my 'old life', and the obvious course of action was to continue plodding ahead no matter how difficult the journey might become. I transferred into Murdoch University after four years at University of Queensland, driving alone across the country, which was one of the most beautiful journeys of my life. I brought my two cats with me, and the three of us have been a little family ever since.