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!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Fell off the Thanksgiving deep end
So there were 2 major issues keeping me from blogging.
1a) The week before Thanksgiving we had our last big test on Tues and all of our brains left for break immediately afterwards
1b) I was on break.
2) I worked an overnight Sunday night
but now I am back in action baby!
Thanksgiving break was so wonderful. It was so nice to let my brain have a break and to practice talking to people who aren't in vet school. I relearned how to make jokes that are not anatomy or physiology based, so that was good for my social life.
I also got to walk my dogs and lay around and see my family and family friends. I am refreshed and ready for these last 3 weeks.
Three weeks left of my first semester of vet school? That is crazy. What is even crazier is that in the last 2 weeks of it we have like 6ish tests and I am not freaking out at all. I knew things would get easier, or I would get lazier and I think both have happened. Or I have just gotten even more relaxed than I was (we didn't even know that was possible).
I went to go get a new battery for my car yesterday and it was quite the experience. First of all it took 2 hours. Secondly I spent the last 20 min letting some dude tell me his highly unlikely life story which involved his new house (8600 sq ft without counting the basement), his son who he conceived when his ex-gf was 21 and he was 13, his new car, and his general feelings towards his ex and how he made something of himself by working on a farm during the day and at a restaurant at night. Oh and he was a marine. Very strange.
I also got to chit chat with one of the manager guys about meeting Debbie Turner (google her, Miss America, Mizzou vet school grad, generally awesome) and about vet school in general. I quite enjoyed myself. Which was good because the dude working on my car was crabby. He was peeved about everything either of the managers asked him to do and I could hear him yelling at them from inside. The yelling involved the fact that he was a veteran. I have no clue how that had any bearing on him running diagnostic on my car to make sure everything but my battery was fine....
But now it is fixed and I finally got a full nights sleep and I am ready for some learning. I'm working on actually knowing things so that someday when one of my friends or family asks me a question I will be able to answer and sound like I know what I mean :-)
Next time I will tell you a little how the ICU works because I really should get to class.
Have a great day y'all
1a) The week before Thanksgiving we had our last big test on Tues and all of our brains left for break immediately afterwards
1b) I was on break.
2) I worked an overnight Sunday night
but now I am back in action baby!
Thanksgiving break was so wonderful. It was so nice to let my brain have a break and to practice talking to people who aren't in vet school. I relearned how to make jokes that are not anatomy or physiology based, so that was good for my social life.
I also got to walk my dogs and lay around and see my family and family friends. I am refreshed and ready for these last 3 weeks.
Three weeks left of my first semester of vet school? That is crazy. What is even crazier is that in the last 2 weeks of it we have like 6ish tests and I am not freaking out at all. I knew things would get easier, or I would get lazier and I think both have happened. Or I have just gotten even more relaxed than I was (we didn't even know that was possible).
I went to go get a new battery for my car yesterday and it was quite the experience. First of all it took 2 hours. Secondly I spent the last 20 min letting some dude tell me his highly unlikely life story which involved his new house (8600 sq ft without counting the basement), his son who he conceived when his ex-gf was 21 and he was 13, his new car, and his general feelings towards his ex and how he made something of himself by working on a farm during the day and at a restaurant at night. Oh and he was a marine. Very strange.
I also got to chit chat with one of the manager guys about meeting Debbie Turner (google her, Miss America, Mizzou vet school grad, generally awesome) and about vet school in general. I quite enjoyed myself. Which was good because the dude working on my car was crabby. He was peeved about everything either of the managers asked him to do and I could hear him yelling at them from inside. The yelling involved the fact that he was a veteran. I have no clue how that had any bearing on him running diagnostic on my car to make sure everything but my battery was fine....
But now it is fixed and I finally got a full nights sleep and I am ready for some learning. I'm working on actually knowing things so that someday when one of my friends or family asks me a question I will be able to answer and sound like I know what I mean :-)
Next time I will tell you a little how the ICU works because I really should get to class.
Have a great day y'all
Monday, November 14, 2011
Vet School has made me a gambler
Playing a little game of chicken with my car battery (will it start? It's a surprise!"
Drinking milk 2 days after the expiration date.
What will I do next?
I'm a loose cannon!
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Thursday, November 10, 2011
Addison Marie
Keeping the house safe from wayward crickets since she moved in.
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Tuesday, November 8, 2011
But it is still hard.
In case anyone was getting the idea that vet school is not a life sucking, fun-sucker.
Because, while you can take a night off, you can rest, you can vaccuum your room and watch Knocked Up and not study, it will make you panic and you will feel behind
Vet school is the one time (besides organic chem) where there is literally not a single moment in time where there is not something I should be studying. Because even if by some insane stroke of luck I knew everything we had learned in this section, I could be reviewing what we learned in the last sections. Unfortunately, animals do not have the decency to only have diseases/problems/processes that you recently studied. Weird and also kind of inconsiderate.
Did you know?
That there are about a bazillion little bits and pieces to every bone on your body? You know that bony bump on your elbow? The main pointy bit? It's your olecranon, part of your ulna, part of your antebrachium, and it is a paired structure (there is one on both sides). Ps there are about 4 different features associated with it.
Surprise information:
Your head and skull have as much information as your leg and your repoductive systems and some of your digestive system combined. Well according to our test system anyways :-) We spent almost 2 full hours today going over the fissures and foramens (holes) as well as the foramina (little holes) and bone bits in the skull. But we got to do it with pipe cleaners and my favorite professor said he would drift back to our group because we are entertaining. We do bust out laughing about every ten minutes which keeps things light and awesome. I love my lab group for exactly that reason.
Actual factual interesting information for the day:
Did you know typhoid Mary (the cook who single-handedly started a HUGE typhoid outbreak) actually started 2 different outbreaks? After the first one was traced back to her, they sent her to an island with a mental hospital and left her there for some years. Then they let her go back with the one condition that she not be a cook again. Then there was another outbreak and it was traced back to a Mrs. Brown, a cook who turned out was actually typhoid Mary again. So she got sent back to the island and died there. In total she spent 56 years there.
These random factoids that my 2nd year roommate spits out a me seem to stay in my mind better than anything else!
Now back to studying. I'm glad I took this time to remember that I do still love vet school, it just makes me sleepy haha!
Because, while you can take a night off, you can rest, you can vaccuum your room and watch Knocked Up and not study, it will make you panic and you will feel behind
Vet school is the one time (besides organic chem) where there is literally not a single moment in time where there is not something I should be studying. Because even if by some insane stroke of luck I knew everything we had learned in this section, I could be reviewing what we learned in the last sections. Unfortunately, animals do not have the decency to only have diseases/problems/processes that you recently studied. Weird and also kind of inconsiderate.
Did you know?
That there are about a bazillion little bits and pieces to every bone on your body? You know that bony bump on your elbow? The main pointy bit? It's your olecranon, part of your ulna, part of your antebrachium, and it is a paired structure (there is one on both sides). Ps there are about 4 different features associated with it.
Surprise information:
Your head and skull have as much information as your leg and your repoductive systems and some of your digestive system combined. Well according to our test system anyways :-) We spent almost 2 full hours today going over the fissures and foramens (holes) as well as the foramina (little holes) and bone bits in the skull. But we got to do it with pipe cleaners and my favorite professor said he would drift back to our group because we are entertaining. We do bust out laughing about every ten minutes which keeps things light and awesome. I love my lab group for exactly that reason.
Actual factual interesting information for the day:
Did you know typhoid Mary (the cook who single-handedly started a HUGE typhoid outbreak) actually started 2 different outbreaks? After the first one was traced back to her, they sent her to an island with a mental hospital and left her there for some years. Then they let her go back with the one condition that she not be a cook again. Then there was another outbreak and it was traced back to a Mrs. Brown, a cook who turned out was actually typhoid Mary again. So she got sent back to the island and died there. In total she spent 56 years there.
These random factoids that my 2nd year roommate spits out a me seem to stay in my mind better than anything else!
Now back to studying. I'm glad I took this time to remember that I do still love vet school, it just makes me sleepy haha!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Things that are happening right now
- I am in class
- I am not listening
- I am being taught about things I learned in high school
-I am jacked up in coffee and can't nap
- I am getting excited for the Purina Lunch n' Learn which will teach me things while I eat Chinese :-)
- I am not excited about my big ol anatomy test on Fri
- I am still contemplating getting a rat
- i am avoiding facebook because I am so sick of seeing all the statuses about how much the renal physiology test sucked ( its been over 24 hrs, you should be over it by now, I was over it about 2 min after it happened)
- I can see 3 people in Facebook from where I am sitting
Basically I have too much brain power and nothing to do with it. Did I mention that the next 2 tests in this class have an average of a 97% because the teacher gives pretty much all the ?s and answers in his review session?
....yea that makes me very unmotivated to listen.
I want to buy a house! One of my best childhood friends just closed on her house and it makes me so incredibly jealous. I mean I have a partially complete education that costs me about the same....
But you can't paint it, so it's not as fun.
Still pumped for Chinese food!
Also at Zumba in Halloween night, we did the Thriller dance. Zumba is seriously the most fun workout ever. I almost forgot about the bazillion squats we did during the rest of the class :-)
Maybe I'll pay attention now....
But the odds aren't good.
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