Chapter 02: An Interest in Living Medicine
Files
Loading...
Description
In this chapter, Dr. Tinkey sketches her early educational experiences. She notes that her family didn’t have a lot of animals. However, she had an affinity for science from an early age and notes that she thought in terms of “living medicine” with ideas of going to medical or veterinary school. She explains that she had many women classmates in veterinary school due to the state-wide need for vets and it was easier for women to work with large animals, given the availability of injectable drugs.
Identifier
TinkeyPT_01_20160531_C02
Publication Date
5-31-2016
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Educational Path; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Personal Background; Experiences Related to Gender, Race, Ethnicity
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So what did you think you would do?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
So being an air force child, we moved around every couple of years. My dad was reassigned to a different base. But we seemed to come back to San Antonio a lot, because again that’s what my dad was involved in. So we were in San Antonio for several years when I was in grade school, and were transferred to other places. But then we had come back to San Antonio when I was starting high school. And so I happened to be in San Antonio during my high school years. And it was during that time where -- I don’t know how much of this is you get a comfort level with certain subjects or certain school things from your parents, or maybe that’s just genetic, and you have affinity. But I had an affinity for science. It was clear. That’s what I liked. I liked science. I had other good subjects too but that’s what I liked. So by high school I knew that I wanted to do something science-based. And I was thinking about something living medicine-based, not cold medicine like chemistry, but living medicine-based. And so I remember thinking well, I’d like to either go to medical school or veterinary school. I’m not sure which one. Back then, as still is today, the only veterinary school in Texas was at Texas A&M. So I decided I’ll go to Texas A&M for my college career, and then I can go either way. And so that’s what was in my head when I went off to A&M. And after my first year there I’m not even sure why I can tell you I decided I think I want to be a veterinarian, I’m going to go to veterinary school, or at least I’m going to try for it.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So what was the history of your interest in animals? Or was this a new idea? Despite the fact that your dad is a vet.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah. We always had pets round when I grew up. But we were definitely not one of those families that collected a lot of animals. I think by virtue of a couple of things. One is again we were a military family. We lived on military bases. And there are a lot of rules and regulations. So you can certainly own a pet, but you couldn’t own 10 dogs. And we moved a lot. And so we always had a dog when I was growing up, but that was about it. So it wasn’t like we were surrounded by gobs and gobs of animals. I never owned a horse. But I remember as a kid -- so maybe it was just these kind of things -- flipping through my father’s journals from the American Veterinary Medical Association. Just flipping. They were there. So I would just flip through. Probably more conversation about the work he was doing with mice and rats and primates filtered into the house than I’m even aware of. But I had a strong feeling about medicine. Like I said, when I went to A&M, I don’t even remember having a pivotal moment. I just know at one point during my freshman year at A&M I decided. I had joined a couple of the clubs. I’d been over to the veterinary school to look around. And I just decided this is what I want to do. This feels right to me. But I didn’t think of laboratory animal medicine at all. What I wanted to do was be a traditional veterinarian. I wanted to practice on companion animals.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Interesting. Now when I was in college I remember having a friend who was going to vet school. And there weren’t a lot of women, particularly with large animal medicine. So what was the situation for you at that time?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah, it wasn’t that at all. So I started in veterinary school in 1979. And I had a lot of female classmates. It was a transitional time at Texas A&M because A&M had previously had a four-year veterinary program. And they had a statewide need for veterinarians. I can’t even tell you when they went, but I’m going to say sometime in the ’60s they believed there was going to be a veterinary shortage, maybe late ’60s, early ’70s. And so they revised their curriculum to make it a compressed three-year curriculum so they could graduate more veterinarians. And as I arrived in 1979, they were just going back to a four-year curriculum, because a compressed three-year was three years 100% of the time. There were no breaks. And the students were telling them, “This is tough. This is a tough curriculum.” So my class in 1979 was unique in that they actually enrolled twice the number of students they normally would -- almost twice. Well, did they? Maybe they didn’t. Because our class size was about 130, and maybe it was always 130. But the last year I was in school we only had half the number of people because half of our class elected the three-year curriculum and half of our class elected the four-year curriculum. I guess I’m getting away from your question about males and females. But I had quite a few female classmates. But at the end we were a small close-knit class. I don’t believe we were 50-50 at all, but right now there are veterinary schools where 80% of the students are women.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Really.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah. So sometime in the late ’80s, ’90s, the percentage of students in veterinary school who were female went over 50% and now females predominate. But I can’t even tell you what the percentage was. I would say at least 30% of my class was women. So I didn’t feel any awkwardness about gender at all. And the other thing, it’s gotten even better now, but the other thing was in the late ’70s we were getting some really nice injectable drugs. So with the large animal medicine my motto was better living through chemistry. I’m not going to be able to muscle down a 1,500-pound horse. I can give an injection, and then when the horse is lying on the ground, then I can do what I need to.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Very interesting. I want to go back a little bit and ask you during high school, and then we haven’t really talked about your college curriculum. But what were your hobbies, your interests? How did you spend your time outside of your interest in college?
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Golly, I have such a bad memory. I’m a live-in-the-present sort of person. My parents could probably tell you more. I always participated in athletics, always. I ran track. I played basketball. Always did those two things. I was on the track team and the basketball team always. And I think I probably played from time to time on other things. I hated volleyball, I don’t know why I never played volleyball. So I always did that. And then I participated in other clubs. I think I was in the German club. I took German in high school. I don’t remember us really having anything like a chemistry club. But chemistry was my favorite class in high school. We had an awesome chemistry teacher. So that was my favorite class in high school. And I know there’s pictures. I can’t remember why I did this. I think clearly I was thinking about medicine even when I was in high school, because I was a candy striper, the volunteers in the hospitals.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I was one too.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Because I have a picture that my parents took of me sitting there in my candy striper uniform when I was in high school. So I did things like that. I participated in the candy stripe volunteer program.
T. A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Part of the reason I ask these questions is I noticed actually in your Legends and Legacies essay you were talking about how you really bring together a very unusual skill set. And I was just curious when some of those things started to show themselves. And people have mentioned team sports as being so important for an experience later with understanding collaboration. So I was just curious how to trace some of the things that you were intuitively gravitating toward even at a very young age that presage some of these things.
Peggy Tinkey, DVM:
Yeah. I loved sports. I still love sports. And I like individual sports but I really love team sports too. I went to a small school. And so while we were never very -- the cool thing was -- well, I was going to say while we were never very good we did manage to go to the state basketball tournament, which we did not win, when I was a senior in high school. But I guess that’s another thing that I guess a lot of people would find odd. But I told you that we were back and forth in San Antonio a couple of different times. Both of my parents are staunch Catholics. They felt very strongly about Catholic education. And so my brothers and I were educated in Catholic schools all the way up through to high school. When I was in San Antonio in grade school, I was aware of some of the Catholic high schools, and then we moved away. I didn’t know we’d be in San Antonio. And I told you I came back in the midst of my freshman year, like in March of my freshman year we relocated back to San Antonio. And I had somewhat of a choice of where I could go to school. I have no -- well, I shouldn’t say I have no idea. I chose to go to a Catholic high school in San Antonio called Providence High School. It happened to be a girls’ school. That was my choice. I get the impression nowadays if you told a lot of eighth grade girls, “You’re going to a girls’ school,” they would commit mutiny or something or sulk. I guess they wouldn’t want to do that. But I wanted to go to this school. And I can’t remember what experience I might have had in grade school. They send speakers out to the elementary schools to tell you about the school. Maybe there was something I heard or saw when I was in grade school that put this idea in my head. But coming back to San Antonio when I knew we were coming back, I remember telling my parents, “I really want to go to Providence High School.” It’s in the middle of downtown San Antonio. I had to ride a bus 30 minutes or something like that from the base to get there. So it wasn’t exactly convenient. But I had such a great experience. And I did not force my daughter to go to a girls’ school. But I tried to tell her. It’s a super good environment I think for a teenage girl to be at a girls’ school for a couple different reasons. You don’t have a lot of social anxiety that I think sometimes you do if you’re in a coed environment at that period in your life. And you can really concentrate on school and building female friendships and relationships. The other part, it was a small school. So I got to participate in a lot of things that I probably wouldn’t have gotten to participate in otherwise. Thinking back, I think I was on the school newspaper, the yearbook committee, or something. When you’re in a small school, if you’re an average athlete, you’re going to be on the team. If you’re an average writer, you’re going to be -- you can pretty much be involved in whatever you want to be involved in. And so that was really a great environment for me because I was able to participate in sports. In a very large high school I probably wouldn’t have made the team.
Recommended Citation
Tinkey, Peggy T. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 02: An Interest in Living Medicine" (2016). Interview Chapters. 1222.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1222
Conditions Governing Access
Open
