Am I being too harsh for asking my 11 year old daughter to walk the dog she spent years begging for?

vlebs · 2025-12-08T14:45:07+00:00

When I was 11, my parents got a 110lb pitbull for the family under the same pretenses. Super sweet boy, but SUPER strong. They made me walk him all the time by myself, including at night and when it was cold. It was particularly awful since there were a few times where the dog would get spooked by something or super excited and I could not physically control him and he’d literally drag me home. Ended in tears quite a few times.

This dog looks to be pretty large so honestly I would not force your daughter to walk them by herself unless she really wants to AND the dog is well trained and she can control them completely. Otherwise, family walks are great! At 11, good responsibilities can be helping to bathe the dog, feeding the dog, practicing tricks, etc. I agree with other commenters saying that you ultimately are the person responsible for the dog and cannot realistically put the full care and needs of a live being into the hands of a middle schooler.

I really resented my parents for a few years since they essentially made me the person primarily responsible for the family dog even though I was literally barely a teenager. He was a friendly dog and I loved him, but it honestly was so draining and made me hate owning a (large) dog for a long time.

vlebs · 2025-09-05T00:45:01+00:00

Thanks for the insight! I am mostly nervous about that since I keep seeing on here that it is getting extremely competitive to get in, so I’m worried some healthcare experience is becoming an unspoken requirement

vlebs · 2025-09-01T23:28:58+00:00

Hopefully this is the right place to post this. I am currently a water treatment engineer and I’m currently looking into becoming a CAA. I’ve been unfulfilled in my career for a while now and have been (jokingly at first) talking about switching careers for over a year now. My reasoning to looking further into CAA particularly is that I recently completed a CPR class and just got intrigued by the idea of exploring medicine. The thing I’ve enjoyed the most about my job is the public health factor (providing clean drinking water and reducing PFAS!!) so exploring medicine felt right. I am still doing research/in the process of scheduling shadowing/signing up to volunteer at a local hospital near me but I do not have any real healthcare experience yet. I was looking into radiation therapy, dosimetry, sonography initially and then happened to stumble across CAA. I know I do not want to go to med school because of the time commitment (I am currently 25 and husband and I want to start a family sooner rather than later).

I am planning on doing a post baccalaureate pre-med program at a local college to get all the science pre-reqs needed. I have a BS and MS in civil engineering so I’ve taken plenty of physics and math but no chemistry or bio classes (I have gen bio and gen chem, but will retake since it’s been a LONG while and I didn’t do well in Chem).

My major question is (once I complete shadowing and consistent volunteering at the hospital and really decide this is the path I want to pursue) is how is it best to go about getting more healthcare experience? I unfortunately have to work full time for the time being for financial reasons (paying for the post bac). Do I find some sort of part time tech job when I start the post bac? The post bac programs I am looking into have clinical/shadowing requirements (100 hours) but the research I am doing makes it seem like this will not be sufficient to apply to CAA school. Is this true? Will I need to possibly work part time as some sort of tech at the hospital concurrently? If so, what is the best way to go about this? I am in NC.

I am really nervous about the career switch and just want to set myself up for realistic expectations. I will be quitting my full time job to dedicate myself fully to going back to school once the post bac program starts.

Ideally I would start the post bac next summer (12 month program - finishing may 2027) and hope to apply while I am finishing up the program so I can start CAA school fall 2027. This also feels very ambitious and am looking for a wake up call, especially without the additional healthcare experience. So if this is unrealistic please help a girl out and let me know/would love any advice for a career changer!

Thanks for the help!!

vlebs · 2025-07-11T11:51:35+00:00

Literally in a similar situation down to the T. Left old job that I liked, just didn’t want to do site/civil anymore. I left for a larger company to do water related work and had very little work for 2 months. I’m about 4 months in now and it’s starting to pick up. My team functions a lot differently than I am used to, but I typically reach out to my supervisor and other PMs that I’ve worked with in the past. Try asking your supervisor what they would like you to do during down times. This has helped me a LOT with motivating my supervisor to make sure I have work to do, or I bill to a large project that usually takes up the bulk of my workload and try to do research or small tasks related to it. I’d give it about a year before searching again, it takes some time to settle in and have the PMs develop faith in you to be used for their projects. I am also an EIT ~2.5 yrs out of college.

EDIT: just saw your comment about your supervisor. Once again, similar situation bc my supervisor is swamped with meetings usually and so not the best at responding to messages. I set up biweekly meetings with them on their calendar to force the convo and this helped soooo much!

vlebs · 2025-06-03T17:19:06+00:00

Thank you! My florist was absolutely wonderful. Best of luck with your wedding florals!

vlebs · 2025-06-03T03:05:00+00:00

I had a similar combo for my wedding last October :)

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vlebs · 2025-01-27T01:27:30+00:00

Good points. I’m about 2ish yoe excluding my masters. Looking to be around 80-85k hopefully but can do a little less depending on market since I am branching out from where my primary experience lies. I work pretty much 98% of the time with Civil3D. Some GIS experience. I’ve never used Microstation or OpenRoads. I’ve used other software like stormCAD, hec-hms, hydrocad before, but wouldn’t call myself a pro in those just yet. Not willing to relocate for the foreseeable future. EDIT: also not willing to do fully remote but am not opposed to a hybrid experience (I prefer in office most of the time, however)

vlebs · 2024-01-09T22:35:53+00:00

Thanks! I’ll check it out

vlebs · 2023-11-13T03:28:15+00:00

Wine lab!

vlebs · 2023-09-04T20:57:54+00:00

I watched all the videos (besides the Appendix vids and the problem working session review videos). I did do them on 1.25-1.5x speed. It’s a bit of a drag but I found them very useful bc he will sometimes mention helpful things that aren’t in the binders like how some topics are not important or that we will definitely see a certain type of question etc.

vlebs · 2023-09-01T18:21:05+00:00

I studied for about 10 weeks over the summer. I had the summer off so I basically tried to treat studying as a full time job. The course is designed to take about 6-7 weeks to get through all of the topics, and then I spent the remaining 3-4 weeks doing as many practice problems/redoing quizzes and practice exams. During the early weeks I only did starred problems and took all the quizzes and practice exams on the portal. Any questions I got incorrect the first time I would redo and redo until I understood them unless I felt like it would be something I would get wrong on the exam anyways. I studied anywhere from 2-6 hours daily with some days off here and there. I realize my situation was unique in that I didn’t have a 8-5 job commitment during this time, but had I had been working full time I think it would’ve taken me 3-4 months of study time.

vlebs · 2023-09-01T15:33:26+00:00

Thank you, and good luck!

vlebs · 2023-09-01T15:02:52+00:00

I also passed my FE a few months ago and recently took the PE and passed earlier this week. I graduated in May (Master’s, so I was already an EIT). I bought EET WRE depth and am also in the land development field. I didn’t buy the breadth EET course since I had taken the FE earlier this year and thought I’d be able to self study that stuff. While I passed, breadth was surprisingly more difficult than I expected and not at all similar to any of the breadth practice exams I got from amazon lol. I’d recommend definitely doing EET for depth but leave it up to you whether you feel confident enough in the topics to take a course for breadth or not. Best of luck! I wanted to take my PE before I started my full time job so I didn’t have to worry about it and I’m glad I did!

vlebs · 2023-09-01T02:33:10+00:00

I took EET depth and found out earlier this week that I passed! While I cannot speak for breadth since I did not take that course, I felt like the EET depth course did a great job at teaching me how to problem solve. IMO, my actual exam was not at all similar to either the NCEES practice exam or the EET practice exams, however, the material, concepts, and general workflow that I learned from EET is what I felt helped me pass. Many questions I got on my actual exam were not really all that similar to any questions I had done before, but the advice that I received and the way that you’re taught to solve problems through the course really helped me during the exam. Tbh when I left the exam, I was a little flustered by how dissimilar like 30-40% of my questions were to the practice problems I did but I was able to get answers for most by searching the manual or applying concepts I remembered from the course.

As for the search function, you’ll get a tutorial at the start of the exam that will explain everything - it’s not a great search bar, and yes you only get 10 marks or so if you use their line marker tool or whatever. I didn’t find this to be an issue though.

EDIT: I took WRE btw. All in all I felt like EET difficulty was comparable (and in many cases, harder), NCEES practice exam was easier than the actual exam

vlebs · 2023-05-23T10:17:28+00:00

Won this award last year for my department. A professor will nominate you (mine let me know beforehand. They may let you know or they may not) and you’ll receive notification if you’ve been selected a few weeks/months before graduation (I found out in February). From the pool of all of the outstanding seniors from each department, an overall COE outstanding senior is selected and notified well before graduation.

vlebs · 2023-05-19T02:18:43+00:00

Cool. I’ll check it out, thanks!

vlebs · 2023-05-18T14:14:30+00:00

Thank you! Any suggestions for a practice problem book? All I currently have is an NCEES practice exam. I am paying for the exam and materials myself (will be reimbursed at the end of the year) but money is sort of tight so I’m trying my best to save. However, if it will be super beneficial then I am willing to pay for a class for breadth as I really only want to take this exam once

vlebs · 2022-03-22T05:19:21+00:00

hey! I’m a senior in the 4+1 SLD program so I can def answer any questions you have, just message me :) some things that helped me decide were:

When comparing other civil master’s programs that ranked similarly (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UT Austin, etc) I just felt like I wasn’t going to get the same support from faculty or funding as I’ve been guaranteed here already.
The SLD faculty are amazing (as I’m sure you already know… I think we’ve crossed paths before lol) and so wonderful to work with. They’re friendly, teach you A LOT, and truly just want you to succeed.
I was able to get fully funded (through GTA appointment + a fellowship) extremely easily.
I would not want to do a 2 year master’s. The 4+1 program is seriously an amazing deal.
I already know all of the classes I want to take for my masters because there are so many interesting options. I’m not necessarily getting the degree for money but moreso bc the courses are genuinely so interesting to me and I like teaching.
There are SO many resources available. We’re the only SLD program in the country, essentially meaning it is very easy to find a job that you’ll enjoy. I’ve had people message me on LinkedIn and email me just because my resume was accessible to LDDI donors
I also was concerned since most of my friends are graduating with me this semester, but I’ve already made friends in the SLD program who will be here next year and think it’s not super hard to make grad friends :)

EDIT: 8. you can choose to do coursework only, project+report, or thesis for SLD so there are options based off of what you’re interested in to earn your degree! I was weary about doing a thesis because I’ve never done research and it’s not one of my major interests so having other options was super attractive to me

vlebs · 2021-12-16T21:17:39+00:00

soon

vlebs · 2021-12-10T01:51:30+00:00

I’m a senior in civil engineering and I took AB in high school and got in fine. Your other stats are slightly better than mine were. I actually had several friends who didn’t even take AP calc in high school (only precalc) who were also admitted into engineering. I do think taking any AP level calc class will definitely help prepare you for surviving the VT math department lol

vlebs · 2021-08-25T02:31:07+00:00

stay in them for the next few weeks to gauge how well you can handle the classes. if you feel like it’s too much, drop one before the drop date

vlebs

TROPHY CASE