Hi there; Birdie here!
Had a bit of internet trouble, so I think this published somewhere about halfway through my typing it? Anyway, this is the full post.
For a short week with a Labor Day holiday at the start, it sure
feels pretty long. I guess being at school from before 8 until after 5 or 6
will do that to you. That's not normally the case around here--I'm looking at
my schedule and there's only a handful of days we're scheduled until 5. A
little of it was from anatomy lab, but mostly it was problem solving class:
moving it to the end of the day for rabies vaccines, adding two hours of it to
the end of the day for presentations, and of course preparing for those
presentations. Our group did well on the presentations--only lost fractions of
a point on our learning issues, probably for not being complete enough; I am so
not worried about that.
I'm also feeding an owl at the raptor rehab facility. It's a rotation
such that any one person is responsible for a single bird only about once a
month for a five day period, and my first one is this week. He’s an owl named
BAMF (he earned it, apparently). Since he’s a night bird, he gets fed after
5pm. Every day except today, that’s meant “when I get out of class” more or
less, including staying late in anatomy.
I missed the initial
training session so I’m not sure what I’m doing and haven’t tried “fisting” him
(holding him on my glove), but a fellow feeder showed me the super basic basics
on Tuesday. The first day I had to wait in the rain for like 10 minutes for the
coordinator since the lock wouldn’t open—it turned out I just needed to push it
up! That made me feel smart, not.
We had our second rabies vaccines this week. I'd heard the second
one is the worst, and I'm pretty inclined to agree. My first one wasn't bad at
all, but the day after this one I felt absolutely miserable. Combined with the
fact that I needed to feed BAMF and study still, it meant I didn’t make the run
this week. Definitely next week, though—and I might try and join tomorrow, too.
I only had one club this week, but they’ve started feeding me!
Apparently radiology always has the best food, or so they say. Diagnostic Imaging
Club also has the honor of being the first club I’ve actually paid my dues for.
They’re having an ultrasound lab on the equine distal limb on Sunday, and I’m
going. The meeting today was in preparation for it, and it was really positive.
A doctor from radiology showed some slides of some normal ultrasounds and some
with lesions, and explained them well enough that I totally understood
everything. I could really see what was abnormal! Of course, it was just one
view of one area and I don’t really know what to do with that diagnostically,
but it felt really nice. DIC is totally worth the dues.
We had a “fresh” dog in anatomy today, as opposed to the embalmed
one we’ve been working on. It a lot worse than the usual anatomy lab smell: wet
dog + raw meat. A lot of the muscles looked different when they were fresh
(especially when they were already cut). The fresh tendons and muscle
attachments were really pretty though! Some of the fibers had yellows and blues
in them. Not in a sick way, just like a sheen to them. I’m not sure my description
is getting it across, but it was really nice. I still need to study my muscles
a LOT, but I’m feeling a little better about it. And after the instructors got
to the first two for us, my partner and I found ligaments ourselves. I for one
was pretty proud of that, considering that ligaments are just thickenings of
the joint capsule and I’m pretty sure we cut through the first one we tried to
find.
Tomorrow is the first home game for LSU football, and I am so NOT
excited about it. I don’t get football, so to me it just means 1) everything is
really crowded/traffic and 2) they changed the parking rules and I’m not sure
where I can park without being towed or ticketed. Guess I’m not going to school
to study tomorrow…
This is the first weekend I’m actually spending here in BR, and I
know exactly what I’m doing: lots of studying. We have our first two exams next
Monday and Tuesday, in problem solving and cell bio. So far I’m studying cell
bio the way I studied in undergrad: typing my notes (though I’m about 6
lectures behind now) and going over all the notes every night for a week before
the test. It’s a pretty time-intensive way of studying (it took me 3 hours last
night), so I doubt I can keep it up. I haven’t started studying problem solving
at all yet, but that’s what the weekend is for.
Speaking of studying, I should get to it. I have a lot of cell bio
to get through.
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