I learned some very important lessons in my 3-4 hours of learning how to operate the fork lift. My co-worker that trained me has been working at the VMTH for many years and has a large breadth of knowledge to offer me. Sometimes I wish I could just tap her brain and know everything she does, but I have to learn it a little bit at a time from her.
The most important lesson I learned was that I am my own worst enemy. As I was learning how to back up the cart into a parking space with the fork lift, I would make drastic movements with the steering wheel when I was trying to avoid jack-knifing or going over the parking space lines (which were supposed to represent a barn)...lets just say if it had been a barn, it might not have remained standing after I was done with it. Anyways, until I learned to train my mind to communicate to my hands that I only needed to compensate for the movement of the trailer a little bit, I struggled and became very frustrated. My co-worker sat on her stool with her arms crossed shaking her head. She was like the wise woman that was trying to teach me a great lesson. Finally after seeing me fail to accomplish the task three times in a row because I was making the same mistake, she came over and turned off the fork lift. I told her maybe I'd had enough for the day and we should do fork lift training another day. She smiled at me and said, "well maybe, but do you realize what you are doing?" I shook my head and said, "I'm over-correcting, I'm not that great at this!" She said, "you know what, you are your own worst enemy, I hope you'll be a better vet than you are at learning how to drive a fork lift." That stung a little bit cause I felt like I was REALLY trying. I was so frustrated, but I took a deep breath and said to myself, "I can do this!" My co-worker fired up the fork lift and said, "give it another try, watch your wheels!" she said over her shoulder as she walked back to her perch on the stool.
Something in my mind clicked, I had been over-doing it entirely...by just looking at where my cart was going, when I finally took a second to look at the wheels on the fork lift, I saw a pattern...I was finally able to park the muck cart without taking down the imaginary barn. I couldn't believe it, why had I sat there beating myself up when I hadn't researched every option? I think this is a very common occurrence among veterinary students. We get our minds going down one path of diagnosis, but then when that is proven incorrect, we back-pedal as fast as we can to go down another road of diagnosis. However, if we had just considered a broader range of diagnosis in the first place, we might not hit so many dead ends and we will be able to think through each potential diagnosis carefully.
I never would have thought that learning how to drive a fork lift would teach me such an important lesson. I'm sure it won't be the first time I experience it, since I am so strong minded I will probably forget this very important lesson. But I hope I think about it every once in a while...
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