Welcome back!

Hi there; Birdie here!

I kind of meant to do an admissions sort of post, interview tips or something like that, over the break, but...well, after a semester of vet school I had a lot of relaxing to catch up on. Besides ordering a couple of textbooks for this semester, I don't think I did anything useful, and I'm quite pleased with that. Oh, and I got a stethoscope for Christmas! The plastic tubing is teal, and the bell (the part you hold against the animal to listen) is rainbow. I like it a lot.

We just started classes today, and by "classes" I mean PBL. In case I haven't mentioned before, that means Problem Based Learning--we get a case to work on as a group, diagnose with whatever tests and suggest treatment, learning about absolutely everything related to the case (/breed/disease process/medication/etc.) along the way. Our first two weeks are all PBL, no classes. Which didn't stop my group from being there 8-3 as usual, but we're not starting until 9 tomorrow, so that's nice. We have one case for each of the two weeks, and an exam (about the "learning issues" we're supposed to cover while working this up) on Tuesday when we come back after MLK day. It includes a couple of "clinical labs" which I'm hoping will be fun and also kind of hoping they will give me an opportunity to use my stethoscope.

This week's case is canine. We were really surprised when our signalment was a 6 month old puppy who was just in for a routine exam, but he's shaping up to be plenty of a case. PBL is really fun! My group is awesome, and we're totally on the right track. They've started moving the client communication into first year too, so we got to take our history with the facilitator doctor acting as client. He did annoyingly fail to mention things like that the dog is coughing even though we asked if he had any other concerns, but he's really chill. It's really cool to be diagnosing things! And we got to go down to the clinics...mostly to get paperwork (we have to fill out the proper forms to get additional diagnostics, just like real life--it's so that we get used to where they are), but we also talked to one clinician to ask about the way something was on the price sheet.

Last night I went to a potluck sort of dinner party, and that was great. The paella was really good, and the pie I made was a hit! It was nice to hang out with some vet school people outside of class. I need to do that more often.

Well, I've got some learning issues to research and differentials to come up with. But I just wanted to blog first because this semester is looking pretty good!