My spot, plus people pushing the car down the hill into our parking lot
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Thursday, December 8, 2011
Baby it's cold outside...
And also Columbia does not really salt and for sure does not plow until there is 3-4 inches of snow. So the first snow of the year was a bit of a cluster and was very slippery for everyone involved.
Did I mention that the road to our parking lot is about a 50 degree angle? It's decently steep.
But on the bright side, I am still in a wonderful place. I am still loving vet school and I have finally been here long enough that I am starting to retain things, starting to know the teachers, starting to chill out about tests. Now whether that last one is a good thing or a bad thing has yet to be determined.
I am sticking with my morning study routine. Not being a morning person, it is sometimes hard to get going, but I have my coffee on the way to school and by the time I am in my spot - a computer in the lab which is on a corner so I have ton of space for my crap (picture to follow) - I am awake and happy to listen to Pandora and do a little studying. Then when I lose motivation or don't get home till later at night I still have gotten some studying in.
I have really enjoyed the clubs and things I have been doing. I have, of course, ended up loving clubs I didn't originally enjoy or even join at first and of course some other ones have fallen by the wayside. For example, while I love working with the raptors and really do want to work my way up, I have found some of the other clubs to be more rewarding in other ways. I have found it hard to schedule myself for an extra commitment. I think that is what will probably draw me away from raptor rehab club and towards some of the others. It is hard to look at a 4 hour block of time and go "you know what? Let's go ahead and get rid of 2 hours of that".
I have really been loving equine club though. I wasn't even going to join because while I am kind of clueless about horses, I am way clueless about cows and pigs and sheep. But bovine club seemed like a little less bang for your buck as far as wet labs and lectures were concerned. I really enjoy everything I have done with equine club.
For example, in addition to palpation lab (where I got to feel the inside of a horse from inside) I also got to go to a pilot program for AAEP (American Association of Equine Practitioners). They have a certain set of basic skills they want you to have when you graduate if you plan to go into an equine practice and so we had like 3 different vets come in from all over the place (Kentucky, Colorado, etc...) and we did different centers just like kindergarten :-) We did oral meds, checking feet, doing a physical exam (including listening to the heart, lungs, etc...), bandaging, intravenous meds and checking eyes, and palpation. It was so much fun and so good for me to just be around. I feel like a little horse deprived sponge. It was so great to have some equine practice and to have a bunch of vets around who are just so happy to help you out and to help you practice. It was also amazing when the vet was working with us on physical exams and was asking us about all the bones in the body. Now we have not started large animal anatomy yet, but we were able to extrapolate what we had learned on small animals and imagine how it would work out in horses. It was amazing. I also felt like kind of a bad ass at the palpation because it was not my first time.
Another thing we do with equine club is go on rounds. Rounds are where a clinician takes you through the hospital and talks about/asks questions about the animals who are there. Dr. SuperCute Equine Intern was doing our rounds last night for equine so that of course made it even better ha ha! But even though there were only 4 animals there, he did such a good job of talking us through the whole process. Mind you, the first years can rarely answer a question because we don't know s*** about s*** (the catch phrase a friend and I invented after the first rounds) but for the second years? It is so cool when they have just had a test on something like antibiotics and Dr.SCEI asks them what the antibiotics they could use on this horse are. I can't wait. Plus it is, again, great for me to hear people talk horse stuff because I need that in my life so I don't feel so lost. And I really am learning. I have only been on rounds twice and I already feel like I am not as lost.
Subject Change. We have already lost a classmate :(
She dropped last Friday. I was confused about why she would drop before this block ended, because if you want to reapply, wouldn't you want to show that you tried really hard at the end? But she was a 3 and 1 student from Mizzou (3 years of undergrad then your first year of vet school counts as your last year of undergrad) and apparently if you fail a class this semester (as in you don't withdraw, you just wait till they fail ya) you don't get your bachelor's degree either. So by withdrawing she has the opportunity to go finish undergrad if she wants and then she can apply again I believe. Still really sad because she was one of those people that you would never guess are struggling and who would make an amazing vet. I also have heard through the very-highschool-like vet school grapevine that we are probably gonna lose another.
Also one of the girls had her baby this weekend and the other is frantically trying to take all her tests a week early so she can bust out of here before she gives birth! She is do on the 16th but is technically full term, so if she can push through Friday then she will have 3 weeks of break to rest before she comes back. I couldn't do it, but I think she is amazing!
8 days and 6 (more like 7) tests to go! Christmas break, here I come!
Did I mention that the road to our parking lot is about a 50 degree angle? It's decently steep.
But on the bright side, I am still in a wonderful place. I am still loving vet school and I have finally been here long enough that I am starting to retain things, starting to know the teachers, starting to chill out about tests. Now whether that last one is a good thing or a bad thing has yet to be determined.
I am sticking with my morning study routine. Not being a morning person, it is sometimes hard to get going, but I have my coffee on the way to school and by the time I am in my spot - a computer in the lab which is on a corner so I have ton of space for my crap (picture to follow) - I am awake and happy to listen to Pandora and do a little studying. Then when I lose motivation or don't get home till later at night I still have gotten some studying in.
I have really enjoyed the clubs and things I have been doing. I have, of course, ended up loving clubs I didn't originally enjoy or even join at first and of course some other ones have fallen by the wayside. For example, while I love working with the raptors and really do want to work my way up, I have found some of the other clubs to be more rewarding in other ways. I have found it hard to schedule myself for an extra commitment. I think that is what will probably draw me away from raptor rehab club and towards some of the others. It is hard to look at a 4 hour block of time and go "you know what? Let's go ahead and get rid of 2 hours of that".
I have really been loving equine club though. I wasn't even going to join because while I am kind of clueless about horses, I am way clueless about cows and pigs and sheep. But bovine club seemed like a little less bang for your buck as far as wet labs and lectures were concerned. I really enjoy everything I have done with equine club.
For example, in addition to palpation lab (where I got to feel the inside of a horse from inside) I also got to go to a pilot program for AAEP (American Association of Equine Practitioners). They have a certain set of basic skills they want you to have when you graduate if you plan to go into an equine practice and so we had like 3 different vets come in from all over the place (Kentucky, Colorado, etc...) and we did different centers just like kindergarten :-) We did oral meds, checking feet, doing a physical exam (including listening to the heart, lungs, etc...), bandaging, intravenous meds and checking eyes, and palpation. It was so much fun and so good for me to just be around. I feel like a little horse deprived sponge. It was so great to have some equine practice and to have a bunch of vets around who are just so happy to help you out and to help you practice. It was also amazing when the vet was working with us on physical exams and was asking us about all the bones in the body. Now we have not started large animal anatomy yet, but we were able to extrapolate what we had learned on small animals and imagine how it would work out in horses. It was amazing. I also felt like kind of a bad ass at the palpation because it was not my first time.
Another thing we do with equine club is go on rounds. Rounds are where a clinician takes you through the hospital and talks about/asks questions about the animals who are there. Dr. SuperCute Equine Intern was doing our rounds last night for equine so that of course made it even better ha ha! But even though there were only 4 animals there, he did such a good job of talking us through the whole process. Mind you, the first years can rarely answer a question because we don't know s*** about s*** (the catch phrase a friend and I invented after the first rounds) but for the second years? It is so cool when they have just had a test on something like antibiotics and Dr.SCEI asks them what the antibiotics they could use on this horse are. I can't wait. Plus it is, again, great for me to hear people talk horse stuff because I need that in my life so I don't feel so lost. And I really am learning. I have only been on rounds twice and I already feel like I am not as lost.
Subject Change. We have already lost a classmate :(
She dropped last Friday. I was confused about why she would drop before this block ended, because if you want to reapply, wouldn't you want to show that you tried really hard at the end? But she was a 3 and 1 student from Mizzou (3 years of undergrad then your first year of vet school counts as your last year of undergrad) and apparently if you fail a class this semester (as in you don't withdraw, you just wait till they fail ya) you don't get your bachelor's degree either. So by withdrawing she has the opportunity to go finish undergrad if she wants and then she can apply again I believe. Still really sad because she was one of those people that you would never guess are struggling and who would make an amazing vet. I also have heard through the very-highschool-like vet school grapevine that we are probably gonna lose another.
Also one of the girls had her baby this weekend and the other is frantically trying to take all her tests a week early so she can bust out of here before she gives birth! She is do on the 16th but is technically full term, so if she can push through Friday then she will have 3 weeks of break to rest before she comes back. I couldn't do it, but I think she is amazing!
8 days and 6 (more like 7) tests to go! Christmas break, here I come!
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