Hi there; Birdie here!
Today's post title is a reference to the song from Treasure Planet, which has been in my head for the past hour or so. It's also about what I'm feeling regarding vet school right now--however difficult it continues to be, I've gotten this far and I can get through it.
I've currently got a cookie sheet of snickerdoodles cooling, and I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've baked since the semester started. It's been a while! It helps that I've got people to share the baked goods with; I'm going to a potluck tonight (it's the first one of those in a while, too, huh?). We had our cardio final today, and it wasn't too bad. There were a few I wasn't sure on, but especially with how well I did on the first exam, I'm not too worried about it. The farm animal exam earlier this week is a different story--for that one, I'm hoping I guessed well and relying on the fact that it's less than half the points of our last exam, plus we still have 2 more exams to go. Luckily one of my classmates recorded the audio for the lectures I missed so I at least heard everything on this week's exams, but I still have two hours of lecture to catch up on in exotics (hopefully tonight). Then I can go on and miss two MORE days of class that I'll have to catch up on next week.
This week we also had our first surgery lab (my group went on Monday), and it was kind of incredibly intimidating. Now that I've caught up on the first two lectures for that class, I realize I was pretty unprepared for lab. I didn't wear my lab coat because I didn't see why we should when we're just changing into a gown--turns out it's because in real life we're supposed to wear a coat over our scrubs when we leave the surgery suite to reduce contamination. I also didn't get the memo about not wearing nail polish (the reason for that is because where it's chipped can create reservoirs for bacteria that you can't reach with your scrub) and blatantly had on nail polish. She didn't notice (probably because it was still the pink I had for DC), but I could easily have taken it off that morning and replaced it at night if I'd known. Still kicking myself for that. And that's not even mentioning the intimidation factor from the lab itself. Our first lab was all about how to create the sterile field: scrubbing, gowning and gloving, and draping the patient. The first thing we learned is that it's critical to fold your gown the right way when you wrap it so that you can put it on without contaminating anything but the inside. Then we learned both open (normal, with just your hands, like for a castration or something where you're not fully gowned) and closed (with your fingers tucked inside the cuffs of your gown the whole time) gloving, and how to scrub, and how to drape the patient. Said "patient" was actually a pillow with a xyphoid, pubis, and mammary chains drawn on it. It is surprisingly difficult to towel clamp drapes to a pillow. Like, incredibly difficult, actually. I managed to do everything, but it's so precise I'm really anxious about messing it up. At least I had the right type of cap. The caps in our packs are all guys' caps (which is a terrible idea on the bookstore's part--they don't give us a choice in buying them, but well over half of us can't use them), so some of the girls had to wear bouffant caps underneath. Luckily, I have a cute purple one with gold fleur de lis that I got from a feline club fundraiser. Over the summer I'm planning to find some cute material and make one or two more.
On Tuesday we had a small animal abdominal ultrasound for Diagnostic Imaging Club. It was pretty cool, except that we split the big group into two hour-long sessions--but as an officer, I had to stay the whole time. The dogs at my station both hours had some interesting issues: a thickened intestinal submucosa (potentially Heterobilharzia) in one and some bladder sediment in the other. I got to do the ultrasound myself once, naturally. I even got the right kidney on the first try, and found the duodenum! After we flipped the dog into left lateral, but still. But basically I spent most of the second hour hovering around, trying to be useful or learn something or at least not get in the way, and thinking about how I needed to be studying cardio. I'd definitely say it was a good wetlab. We had over 20 people (which had been supposed to be our limit), so I'm pretty happy with that!
Then on Wednesday, we did a mulitheaded microscope wetlab for path club. And by "we," I mean me and my li'l sib, because that's all who came. We had a few other people RSVP, but they couldn't make it for various reasons such as worrying about oncology, or forgetting about it. Couldn't get any of my classmates to come along, either. We looked at a few oncology cases, and I'm really proud of my little--it seemed like he learned a lot. It was mostly a review for me. We talked about the 5 round cell tumors (TVT, mast cell tumor, plasma cell tumor, histiocytoma, and lymphoma) and how to tell a sarcoma from a carcinoma--all of which I still remember from clin path and from going over again recently in oncology.
I also got to ride twice this week! There were lessons on Monday to make up for last week, when there were no Thursday or Friday lessons. I got to ride Sailor again, and we did some really cool stuff. My instructor put me on the lunge line and took away my reins and then had me canter without the reins. And, what I think is more impressive, after a few canter transitions she had us sitting trot with no reins. I'm really proud of how well I did at that. I remember when I was much younger and taking riding lessons, I mentioned to my instructor that I'd read that you should stop a horse with your seat first before using the reins and asked how to do that. Back then, they told me at my level I shouldn't be trying to do that. Well, now I can! And yesterday I rode Cajun, which I was really into. He was a lot better about not jumping huge, and I'm really proud of him. Well, but then the last jump in our line got moved for our last time through, and he still jumps really big when he gets a long spot. Still, I stayed with him! My position wasn't great, and I had a hard time keeping my heels down. It was a fun lesson though. My instructor thanked me a couple of times for riding him, but I had zero problem with it. I rather liked him yesterday, actually.
It helps that the book I just finished, Catch Rider, is all about a girl who wants to be able to ride any horse. I'm glad I read it on the week I had two lessons! I'm also pretty glad I read Snowman first. In Catch Rider, the main character goes to the Maclay finals at Madison Square Gardens, and I recognized that show site from the other book, so that was pretty cool. Before that, I finished Counting by 7s, which I liked a lot (my disliked characters got a lot of development, too), and The School for Good and Evil. I'm not real sure what to do with that one--I'm still not sure what happened at the ending, and I had some problems with it in general. There's two more, it's a trilogy, but I don't think I'll be picking up the others (at least in the near future). Since Terry Pratchett died, I decided that I need to re-read Going Postal immediately. I'm not even sure whether I'll count it for the challenge; it might be outside of that. It could probably count for funny book if I wanted it to. And at some point I need to finish Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a book recommended by a friend, which is due back to the library before symposium unless I renew it) and read my Temple Grandin book (before Friday!). Oh, and study for oncology still. Right, studying too.
Tomorrow my family's coming up and we're going to the St. Patrick's Day parade. I'm pretty excited. I didn't get to any Mardi Gras parades this year, and I generally like St. Patrick's parades better because they throw a wider variety of stuff, including vegetables. One time I caught a pack of sour straws. Vegetables are much more useful than doubloons, too. I don't understand the kind of parades where people don't throw you anything--I'm a Louisiana girl at heart! Then on Sunday I'm running in the Great Rover Road Run 5k. I haven't actually been running in at least a month probably, so that's not really ideal. At least I have been riding so I should be sort of in shape? I just want to run the whole thing, I know I have zero chance of placing at all. But the entry fee goes to local shelters and the Dream Clinic, so it's a worthy cause. I'm glad I'm doing it, regardless of how unprepared I am.
Showing posts with label clubs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clubs. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2015
Friday, March 6, 2015
Progress, I suppose
Hi there; Birdie here!
This week has been intense, but I can't really say it's over because I still need to catch up on lectures. First I went to DC, which--more on that later, but it was pretty stressful. Then I came back and didn't even have time to unpack because I had to study for my derm final makeup yesterday and my orthopedics final today. And then yesterday I found out that I got the Banfield summer job program--AND I got summer scholars. So in the midst of my exams I had to deal with that decision. I wound up deciding on summer scholars, since I don't have any research experience and unfortunately despite being in vet school I am still forever trying to make myself look good for the next application. Also my housing in Texas near the Banfield hospital fell through. I made the calls/emails to make that decision official this morning. And I've still got about 7 hours of lecture I hope to get through this weekend, which isn't counting the studying I need to do for next week's exams. Vet school's tough.
I'm actually pretty upset, because even though our classes are usually recorded (which I was counting on, being gone for two days) a certain farm animal clinician decided that not enough people were in class and didn't record. One of my classmates gave me her notes, but I'm not super comfortable with that; I'd rather hear it myself. I'm going to be missing his class for Symposium, too...this time I'll make sure to ask him beforehand in the hopes he won't decide not to record.
DC was...honestly, not what I was expecting. When it talked about "exposing veterinary students to the legislative process" I didn't know that meant making up lobbyists and setting up meetings for us with congress members' offices. The first night was good. We had a little reception to talk with other participants (one of my VLE groupmates was there!), and then a bunch of us went out to a place called the Beer (Bier?) Baron, where I got funnel cake burger sliders and another guy in the group got a chicken Parmesan donut. It was really cold! As we were walking back, everything was encased in ice. It was also raining earlier that day when I was walking to the hotel from the metro station. I actually took the metro station the wrong way for 2 stops, but I wound up on the same train I would have have to wait for, so I consider it a win--I waited in warm trains instead of on a cold platform.
The second day (first full day) was when the problem started. After several talks (we even had powerpoint printouts, just like vet school lectures), we had some mock meetings. The first couple of people who went up made me cringe. First, there was a large group that gave me so much secondhand embarrassment because no one seemed to know what to say and the person playing the senator had to keep feeding them lines. Then the next person was quite good, except that she kept saying things that were probably jokes but were just so very "no, don't do that!" So I figured, I have some idea what I'm doing, I'll go up. So I did. And I completely messed up which bill is which (we were presenting two bills: the Veterinary Medical Loan Repayment Program Enhancement Act and proposals for reauthorization of the Higher Education Act). I did my best to keep going anyway, and I probably wasn't the only one who would do that, but I felt horrible. It was not easy, it was not fun, and it did not make me feel good about messing up in front of actual congressmen (or their staff) the next day. No matter how much I wanted to bow out and fly home, though, I couldn't get out of it. I think they thought they needed me, although after my meetings I'm not sure why. I don't think I made any difference whatsoever: either they already supported our position or they brushed me off without listening. I met with one senator and two representatives--well, I met with their offices. Overall, I don't really know how to feel about it. It's a worthwhile experience and I'm sure it will look good on my resume, but I'm not sure it was a good experience for me.
The surgery wetlab a couple of weeks ago was a better experience, but that wasn't what I was expecting either. Basically, since literally none of us had sufficient background, we spent the wetlab learning to suture and do ligatures. At the end one of the groups got to do the neuter on their dog, but that's about it. Still, it might have actually been better, since literally everyone got to have hands-on personally instructed experience. I mean, the group that did the neuter, it was just 2 people who got to do it, I'm not sure what they would have done with the groups of 3-4 we had. And I feel like I learned a lot about spay/neuter procedures from the lecture beforehand. Either way, it's giving me a great leg up in our current surgery class. We had lectures on suture patterns and on instruments this week, and I have a good basis for that right now. We also had our first microscope wetlab for path club, and finally had a meeting and officer elections. I wasn't able to be there (it was Tuesday, while I was in DC), but I kept my vice-presidency.
At my riding lesson last week, I got to ride Sailor, my favorite! I think we did well together, and my instructor said I "managed him well. He gets a little excited." I also worked on my position, especially over jumps. The ring was super crowded, though, which I didn't appreciate. Naturally I didn't ride this week since I had so much in the way of tests (and summer decisions) to deal with, but actually there weren't lessons at the end of this weeks so I get to make it up on Monday and ride twice next week.
On the book front, I finished Tam Lin and was pretty disappointed in it. In the hopes of reading something I'd like better than my last few books, I got a short story collection called 21 Proms that has a John Green story in it (kind of hoping it would be like My True Love Gave to Me, a recent Christmas short story collection I loved). Well, the John Green story was alright, but I didn't like any of the others. I didn't relate to the characters, and some of them were just plain weird. On my flights/in DC, I read Top Dog by Jerry Jay Carroll for a book I own but hadn't read. It's the best one I've read in a while, which isn't saying much. I liked the battle between good and evil, and some of the symbolism, but as a whole I didn't care for the narrator's tone and I wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending. Now I'm reading Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan. I've read nearly 200 pages just today (mostly just after I got home), so that's pretty good. I firmly dislike certain characters and situations, though. I need to find some better books, or I'll forget why I love reading (no I won't, I'll never do that).
I just got back from going to the gymnastics meet with A. It was senior night--the seniors' last meet. We got there a little late, after the first event had started. There were like three 10.0s this time--there weren't any last time! The star floor performer had her routine last, with music that included Stand Up and Get Crunk (a Saints pump-up song) and I'm pretty sure the LSU fight song too. She got a 10.0 for it, and she totally deserved it. Anyway, it was really fun and totally not catching up on lectures like I should have been doing.
Today I also started my feeding shift. The co-chair on duty right now is actually my li'l sib, and I caught him in the feed room when I went in before my test. He showed me and another feeder how to put on jesses (like a bird leash), and when I came back after the exam I jessed Lucy as well as feeding her. I have to say, it felt pretty cool to just walk around with a bird on my fist, nbd. I'm meeting him again in the morning to help stretch an owl that the wildlife hospital got in.
Next week I've got a farm animal exam (on less than 7 lectures this time, because that makes sense...I really don't like that class) and a cardio final, and the week after that it's Symposium. After this week, I really hope things get better (though I can't really see them getting worse, knock on wood).
This week has been intense, but I can't really say it's over because I still need to catch up on lectures. First I went to DC, which--more on that later, but it was pretty stressful. Then I came back and didn't even have time to unpack because I had to study for my derm final makeup yesterday and my orthopedics final today. And then yesterday I found out that I got the Banfield summer job program--AND I got summer scholars. So in the midst of my exams I had to deal with that decision. I wound up deciding on summer scholars, since I don't have any research experience and unfortunately despite being in vet school I am still forever trying to make myself look good for the next application. Also my housing in Texas near the Banfield hospital fell through. I made the calls/emails to make that decision official this morning. And I've still got about 7 hours of lecture I hope to get through this weekend, which isn't counting the studying I need to do for next week's exams. Vet school's tough.
I'm actually pretty upset, because even though our classes are usually recorded (which I was counting on, being gone for two days) a certain farm animal clinician decided that not enough people were in class and didn't record. One of my classmates gave me her notes, but I'm not super comfortable with that; I'd rather hear it myself. I'm going to be missing his class for Symposium, too...this time I'll make sure to ask him beforehand in the hopes he won't decide not to record.
DC was...honestly, not what I was expecting. When it talked about "exposing veterinary students to the legislative process" I didn't know that meant making up lobbyists and setting up meetings for us with congress members' offices. The first night was good. We had a little reception to talk with other participants (one of my VLE groupmates was there!), and then a bunch of us went out to a place called the Beer (Bier?) Baron, where I got funnel cake burger sliders and another guy in the group got a chicken Parmesan donut. It was really cold! As we were walking back, everything was encased in ice. It was also raining earlier that day when I was walking to the hotel from the metro station. I actually took the metro station the wrong way for 2 stops, but I wound up on the same train I would have have to wait for, so I consider it a win--I waited in warm trains instead of on a cold platform.
The second day (first full day) was when the problem started. After several talks (we even had powerpoint printouts, just like vet school lectures), we had some mock meetings. The first couple of people who went up made me cringe. First, there was a large group that gave me so much secondhand embarrassment because no one seemed to know what to say and the person playing the senator had to keep feeding them lines. Then the next person was quite good, except that she kept saying things that were probably jokes but were just so very "no, don't do that!" So I figured, I have some idea what I'm doing, I'll go up. So I did. And I completely messed up which bill is which (we were presenting two bills: the Veterinary Medical Loan Repayment Program Enhancement Act and proposals for reauthorization of the Higher Education Act). I did my best to keep going anyway, and I probably wasn't the only one who would do that, but I felt horrible. It was not easy, it was not fun, and it did not make me feel good about messing up in front of actual congressmen (or their staff) the next day. No matter how much I wanted to bow out and fly home, though, I couldn't get out of it. I think they thought they needed me, although after my meetings I'm not sure why. I don't think I made any difference whatsoever: either they already supported our position or they brushed me off without listening. I met with one senator and two representatives--well, I met with their offices. Overall, I don't really know how to feel about it. It's a worthwhile experience and I'm sure it will look good on my resume, but I'm not sure it was a good experience for me.
The surgery wetlab a couple of weeks ago was a better experience, but that wasn't what I was expecting either. Basically, since literally none of us had sufficient background, we spent the wetlab learning to suture and do ligatures. At the end one of the groups got to do the neuter on their dog, but that's about it. Still, it might have actually been better, since literally everyone got to have hands-on personally instructed experience. I mean, the group that did the neuter, it was just 2 people who got to do it, I'm not sure what they would have done with the groups of 3-4 we had. And I feel like I learned a lot about spay/neuter procedures from the lecture beforehand. Either way, it's giving me a great leg up in our current surgery class. We had lectures on suture patterns and on instruments this week, and I have a good basis for that right now. We also had our first microscope wetlab for path club, and finally had a meeting and officer elections. I wasn't able to be there (it was Tuesday, while I was in DC), but I kept my vice-presidency.
At my riding lesson last week, I got to ride Sailor, my favorite! I think we did well together, and my instructor said I "managed him well. He gets a little excited." I also worked on my position, especially over jumps. The ring was super crowded, though, which I didn't appreciate. Naturally I didn't ride this week since I had so much in the way of tests (and summer decisions) to deal with, but actually there weren't lessons at the end of this weeks so I get to make it up on Monday and ride twice next week.
On the book front, I finished Tam Lin and was pretty disappointed in it. In the hopes of reading something I'd like better than my last few books, I got a short story collection called 21 Proms that has a John Green story in it (kind of hoping it would be like My True Love Gave to Me, a recent Christmas short story collection I loved). Well, the John Green story was alright, but I didn't like any of the others. I didn't relate to the characters, and some of them were just plain weird. On my flights/in DC, I read Top Dog by Jerry Jay Carroll for a book I own but hadn't read. It's the best one I've read in a while, which isn't saying much. I liked the battle between good and evil, and some of the symbolism, but as a whole I didn't care for the narrator's tone and I wasn't entirely satisfied with the ending. Now I'm reading Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan. I've read nearly 200 pages just today (mostly just after I got home), so that's pretty good. I firmly dislike certain characters and situations, though. I need to find some better books, or I'll forget why I love reading (no I won't, I'll never do that).
I just got back from going to the gymnastics meet with A. It was senior night--the seniors' last meet. We got there a little late, after the first event had started. There were like three 10.0s this time--there weren't any last time! The star floor performer had her routine last, with music that included Stand Up and Get Crunk (a Saints pump-up song) and I'm pretty sure the LSU fight song too. She got a 10.0 for it, and she totally deserved it. Anyway, it was really fun and totally not catching up on lectures like I should have been doing.
Today I also started my feeding shift. The co-chair on duty right now is actually my li'l sib, and I caught him in the feed room when I went in before my test. He showed me and another feeder how to put on jesses (like a bird leash), and when I came back after the exam I jessed Lucy as well as feeding her. I have to say, it felt pretty cool to just walk around with a bird on my fist, nbd. I'm meeting him again in the morning to help stretch an owl that the wildlife hospital got in.
Next week I've got a farm animal exam (on less than 7 lectures this time, because that makes sense...I really don't like that class) and a cardio final, and the week after that it's Symposium. After this week, I really hope things get better (though I can't really see them getting worse, knock on wood).
Friday, February 20, 2015
Keep moving forward
Hi there; Birdie here!
I have now completed seven weeks of classes, but it feels like at least twice that. I was just home for Mardi Gras break as recently as Tuesday, but mostly that just served to throw me off...somehow I was still convinced I was coming back on Monday. I'm really angry about the orthopedics test I took this morning. It was at least half short answer, a lot of which involved questions with 4 blanks or "circle 5 things" or list three...yet none of them were worth more than two points. And the exam is worth 50 points overall, which means there's less of a cushion to get any wrong. I really don't know why they didn't just make it 100 points. And that's not even to mention how confusing some of the questions were...at least I found out that I did well in derm, and kept up my grade in urinary (despite how I felt walking out of the final).
I'm also stressing pretty hard about everything coming up. I'm leaving for Washington, D.C. next Sunday, but I still need to buy some more professional clothes and figure out when I'm taking the derm final, and that's in addition to the 20+ lecture exam in farm animal next Wednesday. It's not that it's hard material, but I've never done anything with farm animals so I know approximately none of it, and it's a TON of information. It would be a lot even if I didn't have to deal with derm, but I'm not sure whether I'm taking that final early (as in, Friday) or late (as in, right before the orthopedics exam). Missing exams in vet school is the worst. They're already crammed on top of each other, there's not really room for much more of it!
I did manage to make my riding lessons these past 2 Thursdays, at least. I've been riding a mare named Nora who used to be a Western pleasure horse and is pretty new to jumping. I like her, and she has lovely smooth gaits! Last week (after 2 weeks off), I had some trouble keeping her going. I did a lot better this week, though, especially in canter transitions (which we worked on a lot). We're also working on bending lines with her. This week we had a bending line where she had to change leads over the second jump (as well as get the correct lead over the first jump), and we weren't very good at it, largely because she doesn't know what she's doing. Honestly, I'm happy I got her to canter out every time I asked for it. Next week I'll do even better. I have to be pretty determined to get to my riding lessons now, though. Last week I studied pretty much every waking hour that I wasn't in class, including the day I took another exam, for my anesthesia final. Currently I'm holding on to the fact that there's only 6 weeks until spring break, and I'm traveling for part of 2 of them. Which means that at least a couple of the others I'll be scrambling to catch up, so I'm sure it will pass impossibly quickly and also take forever to do it--that's vet school.
Of course I'm also determined to keep up with my reading. I finished The Eighty-Dollar Champion and was actually pretty disappointed in it. It was exactly what I don't like about nonfiction: too much history, not enough story. It didn't really make me want to read my other horse books yet, so I haven't. I'm currently reading my year-book (that is, "A book published the year you were born"), but I paused in the middle to read Dragons Deal. I happened on it in Barnes & Noble the day before Mardi Gras, and it happened to be about a Mardi Gras krewe...so naturally I immediately read it in two days. I'm still hoping to read Animals in Translation before I hear Temple Grandin speak at symposium, but I'm not sure what it will count for in the challenge. Regardless, I'll probably read it on one of my plane rides...I have 3 of them before I want to have it read.
The alligator wetlab was pretty cool. I did hit the vein, but apparently "between scales" means between rows of scales, not between scales within a row (even though I'm pretty sure I was between scales, and I did get a flash of blood). I kind of failed at hitting the sinus behind the skull to give any drugs, though. Or rather, when I hit it the gator flailed and broke the needle or pulled it off the syringe or similar. Our alligator was 44 and a half inches long, I believe--three and a half feet. The necropsy was really interesting. Their testicles are kind of long structures almost at midline near the spine, and their kidneys are knobby little masses of tissue. Also, apparently reptiles have pigmented membranes, so fascia and other such connective tissue can just kind of be blue for no particular reason. So that's good to know. In addition to our wetlab, the gators had some specimens taken for a research project someone's working on. We had a really good turn out--26 people or so out of 30 spots, and everyone who couldn't make it gave us warning. Unfortunately our path club president wasn't feeling well and couldn't be there, and after all the work she put into planning it, too! But at least after all that work, it was a success.
We're working on planning our multihead microscope wetlabs for path club now: one histology, one cytology, and one correlation, with the first one next week. I'm also doing another wetlab tomorrow, this one with surgery club. Tomorrow I'll get to practice spays/neuters! We had the lunch meeting intro lecture yesterday, and the talk about ligation made my look at my notes from symposium last year since I went to a lecture on that topic. Unfortunately, my notes are kind of hard to follow. I don't know the suture patterns well enough to understand them, so the drawing doesn't really help unless I see it step by step. Still, maybe I'll look at it tomorrow so I at least have some idea how to do a circumferential and a three-clamp method. I'm pretty excited that I'll get to practice something I know I'm going to do in my career! I'm sure I'll learn a lot tomorrow about spay/neuter surgeries and also about surgery in general (we still haven't started our surgery class...despite being halfway through orthopedics).
Every time I look at my last blog post, it's cute how I think I will stop having so many things at once, ever. After spring break, maybe, when electives start. Until then, I'll just try to enjoy the mess of things I've got besides school.
I have now completed seven weeks of classes, but it feels like at least twice that. I was just home for Mardi Gras break as recently as Tuesday, but mostly that just served to throw me off...somehow I was still convinced I was coming back on Monday. I'm really angry about the orthopedics test I took this morning. It was at least half short answer, a lot of which involved questions with 4 blanks or "circle 5 things" or list three...yet none of them were worth more than two points. And the exam is worth 50 points overall, which means there's less of a cushion to get any wrong. I really don't know why they didn't just make it 100 points. And that's not even to mention how confusing some of the questions were...at least I found out that I did well in derm, and kept up my grade in urinary (despite how I felt walking out of the final).
I'm also stressing pretty hard about everything coming up. I'm leaving for Washington, D.C. next Sunday, but I still need to buy some more professional clothes and figure out when I'm taking the derm final, and that's in addition to the 20+ lecture exam in farm animal next Wednesday. It's not that it's hard material, but I've never done anything with farm animals so I know approximately none of it, and it's a TON of information. It would be a lot even if I didn't have to deal with derm, but I'm not sure whether I'm taking that final early (as in, Friday) or late (as in, right before the orthopedics exam). Missing exams in vet school is the worst. They're already crammed on top of each other, there's not really room for much more of it!
I did manage to make my riding lessons these past 2 Thursdays, at least. I've been riding a mare named Nora who used to be a Western pleasure horse and is pretty new to jumping. I like her, and she has lovely smooth gaits! Last week (after 2 weeks off), I had some trouble keeping her going. I did a lot better this week, though, especially in canter transitions (which we worked on a lot). We're also working on bending lines with her. This week we had a bending line where she had to change leads over the second jump (as well as get the correct lead over the first jump), and we weren't very good at it, largely because she doesn't know what she's doing. Honestly, I'm happy I got her to canter out every time I asked for it. Next week I'll do even better. I have to be pretty determined to get to my riding lessons now, though. Last week I studied pretty much every waking hour that I wasn't in class, including the day I took another exam, for my anesthesia final. Currently I'm holding on to the fact that there's only 6 weeks until spring break, and I'm traveling for part of 2 of them. Which means that at least a couple of the others I'll be scrambling to catch up, so I'm sure it will pass impossibly quickly and also take forever to do it--that's vet school.
Of course I'm also determined to keep up with my reading. I finished The Eighty-Dollar Champion and was actually pretty disappointed in it. It was exactly what I don't like about nonfiction: too much history, not enough story. It didn't really make me want to read my other horse books yet, so I haven't. I'm currently reading my year-book (that is, "A book published the year you were born"), but I paused in the middle to read Dragons Deal. I happened on it in Barnes & Noble the day before Mardi Gras, and it happened to be about a Mardi Gras krewe...so naturally I immediately read it in two days. I'm still hoping to read Animals in Translation before I hear Temple Grandin speak at symposium, but I'm not sure what it will count for in the challenge. Regardless, I'll probably read it on one of my plane rides...I have 3 of them before I want to have it read.
The alligator wetlab was pretty cool. I did hit the vein, but apparently "between scales" means between rows of scales, not between scales within a row (even though I'm pretty sure I was between scales, and I did get a flash of blood). I kind of failed at hitting the sinus behind the skull to give any drugs, though. Or rather, when I hit it the gator flailed and broke the needle or pulled it off the syringe or similar. Our alligator was 44 and a half inches long, I believe--three and a half feet. The necropsy was really interesting. Their testicles are kind of long structures almost at midline near the spine, and their kidneys are knobby little masses of tissue. Also, apparently reptiles have pigmented membranes, so fascia and other such connective tissue can just kind of be blue for no particular reason. So that's good to know. In addition to our wetlab, the gators had some specimens taken for a research project someone's working on. We had a really good turn out--26 people or so out of 30 spots, and everyone who couldn't make it gave us warning. Unfortunately our path club president wasn't feeling well and couldn't be there, and after all the work she put into planning it, too! But at least after all that work, it was a success.
We're working on planning our multihead microscope wetlabs for path club now: one histology, one cytology, and one correlation, with the first one next week. I'm also doing another wetlab tomorrow, this one with surgery club. Tomorrow I'll get to practice spays/neuters! We had the lunch meeting intro lecture yesterday, and the talk about ligation made my look at my notes from symposium last year since I went to a lecture on that topic. Unfortunately, my notes are kind of hard to follow. I don't know the suture patterns well enough to understand them, so the drawing doesn't really help unless I see it step by step. Still, maybe I'll look at it tomorrow so I at least have some idea how to do a circumferential and a three-clamp method. I'm pretty excited that I'll get to practice something I know I'm going to do in my career! I'm sure I'll learn a lot tomorrow about spay/neuter surgeries and also about surgery in general (we still haven't started our surgery class...despite being halfway through orthopedics).
Every time I look at my last blog post, it's cute how I think I will stop having so many things at once, ever. After spring break, maybe, when electives start. Until then, I'll just try to enjoy the mess of things I've got besides school.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Can I just take a minute to breathe?
Hi there; Birdie here!
It has been an extremely busy past two weeks. I've actually had to miss both my riding lessons because I've been kind of behind on studying for tests and needed my Thursday night to study for Friday exams. We had 2 tests each week. Last week's weren't bad (cardio and urinary), but this past week...systemic path was actually totally fine, but I wasn't nearly prepared enough the day before. And derm wasn't bad, but it was so short (only 40 questions) that it doesn't take many wrong answers to really bring your grade down. Which was kind of inappropriate for how much material we had on it. But before the tests, I also had a bunch of other things to deal with, starting with the fact that I spent all day at Open House last Saturday. I spent most of the day at the path club table. Actually, I was the one who went and picked out the specimens we got earlier last week, too. We had a heart with a low ventricular septal defect that I'd thought was a dog's but turned out to be a calf's (which made a lot more sense actually), the obligatory heart with heartworms, a primary pulmonary carcinoma, an end stage liver, and a polycystic kidney. The highlight was a cross section of a cow's head showing Lumpy Jaw (Actinomyces bovis). I originally was kind of resistant to including it, but I'm actually really glad we did. Then I finished the day at the Josh Project table, where the popcorn machine had already stopped working so I basically just cleaned up. Next year as a third year I won't be so involved in clubs (we'll have new officers and everything; third years are going into clinics in the spring), so hopefully I won't need to take more than one or two shifts. I really want to NOT work all day at open house...
And of course I also had to work on my summer applications! The proposal for Summer Scholars was due this Monday, and we were working on it until noon that day, so that also didn't leave much time for studying. Everything is all turned in now, though. Well, at least I hope Tulane has my whole application...I couldn't get anyone on the phone on Monday to confirm. I sent off the Johns Hopkins application, too. And I had my interview for Banfield last Wednesday. I think it went pretty well, probably better than last year. I got a little upset when I had to answer the question about when I got constructive criticism about how I handled a stressful situation, but I think my answer was at least coherent. I especially liked the question about which of my accomplishment I'm most proud of--I said winning NaNoWriMo for 5 years in a row including during vet school. I was a little thrown when they asked about a professional or educational goal someone else set for me, but I think I came up with a good answer about how I actually got my first job. Anyway, everything is in other peoples' hands. Now I just have to wait until early to mid-March and see what, if anything, I get.
Last blog entry I mentioned that I was going to Spay Day. That was a good experience--I did get to do some cat wrangling!--but I only got to set one endotracheal tube. I was kind of expecting more--there were only 4 of us who'd done the wetlab, and they tube every cat who's getting spayed,
I actually might have been able to make my riding lesson this week and still have time to study if it weren't for the Diagnostic Imaging Club wetlab that was also on Thursday. It actually meant I was still hanging out with horses--it was a distal limb ultrasound. I got fussed at for getting gel on the gel bottle and our teacher kept wandering off to help other groups so I didn't really figure out how to get the oblique view of the sesamoid bones, but I did get a nice picture of the flexor manica and was the first one to show where the palmar annular ligament inserts. Also this week I got to school extra early for a breakfast presentation with Banfield. It was about "I saw it on the internet..." in regards to pet nutrition. She had to rush a lot, though, and we still were late to class. Plus I think it was the same presentation she gave last year.
I'm still ahead on my reading challenge, with 13/52 books read, 11 prompts filled. I actually just finished book 13 this morning: Astonish Me, by Maggie Shipstead for "A book with bad reviews." I didn't really like any of the characters, and there was too much drugs and stuff, but it had some really interesting lines and I'm glad I read it. Don't think I'll read it again ever, though. I also read my book originally written in a different language: A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse. I got a little lost in the names and different writing style, especially at the beginning, and I didn't care over much for the ending, but I really liked the parts in the middle about the founding of their bookstore and what it was like. I'm about to start my "based on a true story," The Eighty-Dollar Champion. It's the one of 3 horse books I'm planning on reading, probably one after another, so I really don't want to miss my riding lesson this week! Also, I've lately gotten really into Taylor Swift. I got 1989 a while ago, recently after it came out, but last weekend I decided I absolutely needed to get one of her older CDs, Speak Now (I knew some of the songs because they show up on my Pandora). It was actually a bit of a mess and more time consuming than I would have liked, but I've been listening to it a lot since. I think I might order other ones online though. Less effort and time on my part.
Last night A and I went to the gymnastics meet vs. Georgia. It was really cool. The girls were very impressive, and we didn't even hit traffic on the way home. Plus it was free for me as a student! I'd be willing to go again. I missed the bachelor auction this year, since it was also last night, but I don't mind that at all. Tomorrow we're (finally) doing our joint path club/WAZEM (exotics club) alligator wetlab. We're going to be practicing some procedures and also necropsy. Then I should really have nothing on my plate but school. I'm looking forward to having Monday and Tuesday off next week for Mardi Gras, and being able to go home for the long weekend!
It has been an extremely busy past two weeks. I've actually had to miss both my riding lessons because I've been kind of behind on studying for tests and needed my Thursday night to study for Friday exams. We had 2 tests each week. Last week's weren't bad (cardio and urinary), but this past week...systemic path was actually totally fine, but I wasn't nearly prepared enough the day before. And derm wasn't bad, but it was so short (only 40 questions) that it doesn't take many wrong answers to really bring your grade down. Which was kind of inappropriate for how much material we had on it. But before the tests, I also had a bunch of other things to deal with, starting with the fact that I spent all day at Open House last Saturday. I spent most of the day at the path club table. Actually, I was the one who went and picked out the specimens we got earlier last week, too. We had a heart with a low ventricular septal defect that I'd thought was a dog's but turned out to be a calf's (which made a lot more sense actually), the obligatory heart with heartworms, a primary pulmonary carcinoma, an end stage liver, and a polycystic kidney. The highlight was a cross section of a cow's head showing Lumpy Jaw (Actinomyces bovis). I originally was kind of resistant to including it, but I'm actually really glad we did. Then I finished the day at the Josh Project table, where the popcorn machine had already stopped working so I basically just cleaned up. Next year as a third year I won't be so involved in clubs (we'll have new officers and everything; third years are going into clinics in the spring), so hopefully I won't need to take more than one or two shifts. I really want to NOT work all day at open house...
And of course I also had to work on my summer applications! The proposal for Summer Scholars was due this Monday, and we were working on it until noon that day, so that also didn't leave much time for studying. Everything is all turned in now, though. Well, at least I hope Tulane has my whole application...I couldn't get anyone on the phone on Monday to confirm. I sent off the Johns Hopkins application, too. And I had my interview for Banfield last Wednesday. I think it went pretty well, probably better than last year. I got a little upset when I had to answer the question about when I got constructive criticism about how I handled a stressful situation, but I think my answer was at least coherent. I especially liked the question about which of my accomplishment I'm most proud of--I said winning NaNoWriMo for 5 years in a row including during vet school. I was a little thrown when they asked about a professional or educational goal someone else set for me, but I think I came up with a good answer about how I actually got my first job. Anyway, everything is in other peoples' hands. Now I just have to wait until early to mid-March and see what, if anything, I get.
Last blog entry I mentioned that I was going to Spay Day. That was a good experience--I did get to do some cat wrangling!--but I only got to set one endotracheal tube. I was kind of expecting more--there were only 4 of us who'd done the wetlab, and they tube every cat who's getting spayed,
I actually might have been able to make my riding lesson this week and still have time to study if it weren't for the Diagnostic Imaging Club wetlab that was also on Thursday. It actually meant I was still hanging out with horses--it was a distal limb ultrasound. I got fussed at for getting gel on the gel bottle and our teacher kept wandering off to help other groups so I didn't really figure out how to get the oblique view of the sesamoid bones, but I did get a nice picture of the flexor manica and was the first one to show where the palmar annular ligament inserts. Also this week I got to school extra early for a breakfast presentation with Banfield. It was about "I saw it on the internet..." in regards to pet nutrition. She had to rush a lot, though, and we still were late to class. Plus I think it was the same presentation she gave last year.
I'm still ahead on my reading challenge, with 13/52 books read, 11 prompts filled. I actually just finished book 13 this morning: Astonish Me, by Maggie Shipstead for "A book with bad reviews." I didn't really like any of the characters, and there was too much drugs and stuff, but it had some really interesting lines and I'm glad I read it. Don't think I'll read it again ever, though. I also read my book originally written in a different language: A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse. I got a little lost in the names and different writing style, especially at the beginning, and I didn't care over much for the ending, but I really liked the parts in the middle about the founding of their bookstore and what it was like. I'm about to start my "based on a true story," The Eighty-Dollar Champion. It's the one of 3 horse books I'm planning on reading, probably one after another, so I really don't want to miss my riding lesson this week! Also, I've lately gotten really into Taylor Swift. I got 1989 a while ago, recently after it came out, but last weekend I decided I absolutely needed to get one of her older CDs, Speak Now (I knew some of the songs because they show up on my Pandora). It was actually a bit of a mess and more time consuming than I would have liked, but I've been listening to it a lot since. I think I might order other ones online though. Less effort and time on my part.
Last night A and I went to the gymnastics meet vs. Georgia. It was really cool. The girls were very impressive, and we didn't even hit traffic on the way home. Plus it was free for me as a student! I'd be willing to go again. I missed the bachelor auction this year, since it was also last night, but I don't mind that at all. Tomorrow we're (finally) doing our joint path club/WAZEM (exotics club) alligator wetlab. We're going to be practicing some procedures and also necropsy. Then I should really have nothing on my plate but school. I'm looking forward to having Monday and Tuesday off next week for Mardi Gras, and being able to go home for the long weekend!
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Now we're really getting into it
Hi there; Birdie here!
Week 3 of second year is done, and with it the first two tests of the semester. They were...probably okay? I'm pretty sure I passed, at any rate, but I'm not really sure how well I did. We're finished with derm path, which means there's only about two weeks left of systemic pathology. We also had our anesthesia midterm--3 weeks left of that, and after Mardi Gras we'll be starting orthopedics and surgery! I also put in my first IV catheter/hit a vein in a dog for the first time at our anesthesia lab on Tuesday, so that's exciting. Other than not screwing the port in all the way (in my defense, we had a different kind at the clinic I worked at that didn't screw, just was placed in), I totally got it! So that's really exciting.
I did make my chart for this semester, and it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. We have two exams a week for the first four weeks, but after that there's a lot of weeks where we only have one exam...it's kind of sad that that's a break for us, isn't it? And the only time there's 3 exams in a week, one of them is a take-home for behavior (which they insist on calling Animals In Society 2, even though it really isn't). And we have no exams the week after spring break, which is necessary, because there's no way I'm studying when I'm in Disney World. I added an extra column this semester, too, for "Other Major Things," mainly SAVMA convention and the Legislative Fly-In. I'm going to go to DC for a couple of days! I applied sort of the day after it was due, but I got alternate, and then I got an email a while ago that said I'm in! Well, actually it said they were pleased to tell me I'd been chosen as an alternate, which I already knew, but that email went out to people from other schools and was followed by one telling me what to do for it, so I figure that translates to "I'm in."
I'm signed up to feed the birds again this semester (day birds this time--there's only one owl left now, since BAMF passed away, and there's a lot of day birds), but we haven't got the schedule yet. We've already had a bunch of club meetings and sent out our open house requests, which of course remain pretty much blank. We've even had 2 VBMA meetings already: one on Louisiana-specific legislation and one on practice evaluation which wound up being a bunch of boring financial stuff that didn't seem very practical. Um, what else...Last weekend I went home, so that was nice. And my dad found a website that's basically a Farmer's Market that delivers. He got me a king cake that I brought to school, a bunch of blood oranges (which are basically the best, btw), and a couple other things. So that was really cool, too.
I'm still working on summer stuff (and I've only got about a week to finish it all...), but at least I know what I'm applying to: four things this year. My mentor found a project for me...actually two projects. One is the only-takes-two-weeks one, collaborating with several other people to replicate a blood pressure study using the gold standard transducers rather than the commonly used ones as in their last study. The other is a validation of some company's indirect blood pressure measurement. The timing works perfectly, too, since our Italy trip fits nicely in between those two projects. Unfortunately, though, apparently there are a boatload more letters of intent for summer scholars this year than usual, so I'm not sure what the chances are of me getting accepted for that. Thus, I'm applying for other things: Banfield (though I haven't quite figured out where my second and third choice locations are) and Tulane Primate Research Center again, and a diagnostic pathology program at Johns Hopkins. I've lined up my letters of recommendation (as of, um, yesterday) but I still need to write my letter of intent type things, so I'm hoping to work on that today.
I also need to do a lot of studying for urinary and possibly derm today since I won't have a lot of time tomorrow. I'm doing Spay Day tomorrow--and since I went to the ECC wetlab, I'm supposed to be able to intubate some cats! I'm not sure which station I'll work, but I'm probably going to try and do anesthesia again--cat wrangling is still what I'm least comfortable with. I'm also going to a Brian Regan comedy show tomorrow night, which doesn't leave a lot of time for studying! Luckily the urinary test shouldn't be bad, and we've got a good idea of what's going to be on it.
As for my reading challenges, I'm still well ahead. I have now read 10 books so far this month, which is a new record as far as I know--the last time I paid attention to how many books I read in a month was November, when I'd finished 9 and started a 10th by the 30th. I just finished a Mercedes Lackey book, The Black Swan, which I found kind of disappointing. Now I've started Group, a nonfiction book about group therapy, and it's pretty interesting so far. So despite the fact that tests have started, at least I'm keeping up with reading!
Week 3 of second year is done, and with it the first two tests of the semester. They were...probably okay? I'm pretty sure I passed, at any rate, but I'm not really sure how well I did. We're finished with derm path, which means there's only about two weeks left of systemic pathology. We also had our anesthesia midterm--3 weeks left of that, and after Mardi Gras we'll be starting orthopedics and surgery! I also put in my first IV catheter/hit a vein in a dog for the first time at our anesthesia lab on Tuesday, so that's exciting. Other than not screwing the port in all the way (in my defense, we had a different kind at the clinic I worked at that didn't screw, just was placed in), I totally got it! So that's really exciting.
I did make my chart for this semester, and it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. We have two exams a week for the first four weeks, but after that there's a lot of weeks where we only have one exam...it's kind of sad that that's a break for us, isn't it? And the only time there's 3 exams in a week, one of them is a take-home for behavior (which they insist on calling Animals In Society 2, even though it really isn't). And we have no exams the week after spring break, which is necessary, because there's no way I'm studying when I'm in Disney World. I added an extra column this semester, too, for "Other Major Things," mainly SAVMA convention and the Legislative Fly-In. I'm going to go to DC for a couple of days! I applied sort of the day after it was due, but I got alternate, and then I got an email a while ago that said I'm in! Well, actually it said they were pleased to tell me I'd been chosen as an alternate, which I already knew, but that email went out to people from other schools and was followed by one telling me what to do for it, so I figure that translates to "I'm in."
I'm signed up to feed the birds again this semester (day birds this time--there's only one owl left now, since BAMF passed away, and there's a lot of day birds), but we haven't got the schedule yet. We've already had a bunch of club meetings and sent out our open house requests, which of course remain pretty much blank. We've even had 2 VBMA meetings already: one on Louisiana-specific legislation and one on practice evaluation which wound up being a bunch of boring financial stuff that didn't seem very practical. Um, what else...Last weekend I went home, so that was nice. And my dad found a website that's basically a Farmer's Market that delivers. He got me a king cake that I brought to school, a bunch of blood oranges (which are basically the best, btw), and a couple other things. So that was really cool, too.
I'm still working on summer stuff (and I've only got about a week to finish it all...), but at least I know what I'm applying to: four things this year. My mentor found a project for me...actually two projects. One is the only-takes-two-weeks one, collaborating with several other people to replicate a blood pressure study using the gold standard transducers rather than the commonly used ones as in their last study. The other is a validation of some company's indirect blood pressure measurement. The timing works perfectly, too, since our Italy trip fits nicely in between those two projects. Unfortunately, though, apparently there are a boatload more letters of intent for summer scholars this year than usual, so I'm not sure what the chances are of me getting accepted for that. Thus, I'm applying for other things: Banfield (though I haven't quite figured out where my second and third choice locations are) and Tulane Primate Research Center again, and a diagnostic pathology program at Johns Hopkins. I've lined up my letters of recommendation (as of, um, yesterday) but I still need to write my letter of intent type things, so I'm hoping to work on that today.
I also need to do a lot of studying for urinary and possibly derm today since I won't have a lot of time tomorrow. I'm doing Spay Day tomorrow--and since I went to the ECC wetlab, I'm supposed to be able to intubate some cats! I'm not sure which station I'll work, but I'm probably going to try and do anesthesia again--cat wrangling is still what I'm least comfortable with. I'm also going to a Brian Regan comedy show tomorrow night, which doesn't leave a lot of time for studying! Luckily the urinary test shouldn't be bad, and we've got a good idea of what's going to be on it.
As for my reading challenges, I'm still well ahead. I have now read 10 books so far this month, which is a new record as far as I know--the last time I paid attention to how many books I read in a month was November, when I'd finished 9 and started a 10th by the 30th. I just finished a Mercedes Lackey book, The Black Swan, which I found kind of disappointing. Now I've started Group, a nonfiction book about group therapy, and it's pretty interesting so far. So despite the fact that tests have started, at least I'm keeping up with reading!
Friday, November 21, 2014
So many exams, so little time
Hi there; Birdie here!
Wow, this morning seems so long ago, much less when I wrote last two weeks ago. The first part at least is because I woke up at 5:30 this morning and took an exam at 8. Then I stayed for an extra hour and a half after we were supposed to be done with class for a review session..that's kind of a whole 'nother story. The review was extremely tension-inducing because the teacher does things like not answering questions and shutting them down with "let's keep it simple" (even when it really was a simple question) while still telling us we need to know "all that detail." I'd rather not get into how he interrupts students trying to answer his question so that he can say the same thing they were about to say. And then I went to dinner with L & H--I finally tried Kaminari! It's a buffet-style sushi and hibachi place, and I've heard classmates talking about going there to celebrate finishing an exam because it's also a great price. It was really good! The only problem is that there's no key for what's in the sushi... I'm really glad we got to go though, would buy again.
Other than the systemic path exam we just took (which I think went fine; I didn't have to do that well to keep my grade anyway), we have all our grades back for once. We finally got parasitology...though now that I look back, that was only a couple of weeks ago? Time moves differently in vet school--I mean, that was 5 exams ago. Anyway, we got our grades back last Friday, but they had some errors in the calculation. I think they confused themselves with how much they changed the points. Anyway, getting that grade upset me--I did as bad as I thought I did--but when I heard my classmates talking about the miscalculations I hoped it would make it better. And it turns out it did; even if this class is on the normal LSU scale and not a 10-point scale, I still got the grade I wanted! We also finished pharm, and I made an A. Not a very high A, but A is A and I'm super happy I got one in pharm. I also did well on the first virology exam, which was nice, so I'm not quite so worried about this next one, which is one of the 3 exams in 3 days standing between me and Thanksgiving. I am so ready for that break, even if it's just 2 extra days!
We also signed up for elective next semester. I'm going to be in three this year: the online USDA foreign/emerging diseases class that's required for things like writing certificates of health (which doesn't count towards your quota, which is why I can take 3 electives), an advanced feline medicine class (even though I haven't taken the basic one--I heard the basic one is not great, and this is case based and should be interesting), and a "cultural competency" class (which I'm actually really interested in, but I wouldn't be surprised if no one else signs up and it gets dropped).
At this point, I'm mostly stressing more for other people around me than for myself. I'm doing fine, and it totally sucks to have 3 exams in 3 days but I'll manage, and I'm looking forward to some easy, fun, PBL with associated free time. Meanwhile, people who want to get into competitive programs are struggling and getting Cs, and others are dreading PBL because they don't work well with their groups. I feel really bad for these people, but there's not really anything I can do for them...
My computer's been acting up a little recently. When I restarted for an update earlier this week, it took several tries to power on. I thought it was just an anomaly until it happened once randomly when I tried to turn it on after a routine shutdown. Of course now it's turning on fine, when I was about to let my friend's boyfriend in IT look at it. I'm keeping my backups very up to date (I think my virology objectives are only on there, not my laptop) and luckily I kind of have a backup laptop in my gaming one, so I'm not worrying about it yet. But that's probably something to deal with after Thanksgiving when I have time. Oh, and my summer research project fell through. So now I have to figure out something else for the summer, too.
We had our last DIC meeting of the semester this week. I decided to stick with the officerships I have...I don't want to back off with responsibility, that doesn't look good, and I kind of like being three officers. Sure, it's a pain sometimes, but I'm kind of proud of being able to handle it. So yep, I'm historian again! I also helped my team to victory in jeopardy. The highlight was probably how quickly I was able to rattle off the Roentgen signs (Size, Shape, Margination, Number, Location, Opacity!) before another student had even finished one or two. Well, after the question where I knew the answer (side effect of iodinated contrast in lungs = pulmonary edema) but someone else shouted out a wrong answer first while I was trying to discuss it, I wasn't going to sit back and let them do it! Also on the note of things to be proud of--did I mention I submitted an article to the Vet Gazette? I don't think I did, especially since they rejected it for the September issue. But now it's being published! It's about the VLE, and it's going up this weekend!
I'll finish this entry by talking about my riding. The clinic...well, it got better. We did fine at first over the warm-ups, but on the first or second course (probably the second, that's how it usually works for me) I actually fell off. I didn't get hurt at all, but it kind of sucked because someone else's horse was refusing earlier but then I had to go and prove that I was the worst rider in the class. So that's cool. But Isabella only refused a couple more times after that. I learned to ride her forward into my hand, which was a really helpful piece of advice because it meant I didn't have to make her go faster to get over the jump when she already wanted to be quick. By the end we were doing pretty well, I think.
Last week I rode Sailor, one of my favorites. We did a lot of no-stirrups work. Like, maybe half the lesson without stirrups, including some trot poles and once or twice over a little crossrail. The saddle I was in (because the previous rider had it) had weird stirrups with a hook sort of attachment instead of a buckle, so when I had to cross them in front of the saddle they didn't quite lay flat. I wound up with bruises on my legs from them! Sailor got a little quick at the end but I think we did alright. This week my instructor forgot to put me on the list, but I wound up on Cajun. I think he's a little green in his re-training; he's a former barrel racer and they're apparently trying to put some advanced students on him now, which I guess I qualify? He was really quick, and I was warned to keep a nice full seat at the canter or he'd run off. Which of course meant he kept breaking back to trot--but Alea said I have a nice deep seat like she does, which makes me feel good about myself. Cajun jumped really big, especially on the last jump (in a line). It wasn't much of a boost for my ego as a rider since he wasn't really great at the exercises, but I hope I did well for the horse. We also did some no-stirrups no-reins trotting on a lunge line. It was a tiny, tight circle, which made balancing a lot harder! At least I didn't fall again.
Unlike last weekend (I went to the Renaissance fair; maybe I'll write about it next week), this weekend I don't have anything planned but studying and a trip to WalMart (although I should try to run tomorrow morning). Three tests to go...Let's do this. Almost there.
Wow, this morning seems so long ago, much less when I wrote last two weeks ago. The first part at least is because I woke up at 5:30 this morning and took an exam at 8. Then I stayed for an extra hour and a half after we were supposed to be done with class for a review session..that's kind of a whole 'nother story. The review was extremely tension-inducing because the teacher does things like not answering questions and shutting them down with "let's keep it simple" (even when it really was a simple question) while still telling us we need to know "all that detail." I'd rather not get into how he interrupts students trying to answer his question so that he can say the same thing they were about to say. And then I went to dinner with L & H--I finally tried Kaminari! It's a buffet-style sushi and hibachi place, and I've heard classmates talking about going there to celebrate finishing an exam because it's also a great price. It was really good! The only problem is that there's no key for what's in the sushi... I'm really glad we got to go though, would buy again.
Other than the systemic path exam we just took (which I think went fine; I didn't have to do that well to keep my grade anyway), we have all our grades back for once. We finally got parasitology...though now that I look back, that was only a couple of weeks ago? Time moves differently in vet school--I mean, that was 5 exams ago. Anyway, we got our grades back last Friday, but they had some errors in the calculation. I think they confused themselves with how much they changed the points. Anyway, getting that grade upset me--I did as bad as I thought I did--but when I heard my classmates talking about the miscalculations I hoped it would make it better. And it turns out it did; even if this class is on the normal LSU scale and not a 10-point scale, I still got the grade I wanted! We also finished pharm, and I made an A. Not a very high A, but A is A and I'm super happy I got one in pharm. I also did well on the first virology exam, which was nice, so I'm not quite so worried about this next one, which is one of the 3 exams in 3 days standing between me and Thanksgiving. I am so ready for that break, even if it's just 2 extra days!
We also signed up for elective next semester. I'm going to be in three this year: the online USDA foreign/emerging diseases class that's required for things like writing certificates of health (which doesn't count towards your quota, which is why I can take 3 electives), an advanced feline medicine class (even though I haven't taken the basic one--I heard the basic one is not great, and this is case based and should be interesting), and a "cultural competency" class (which I'm actually really interested in, but I wouldn't be surprised if no one else signs up and it gets dropped).
At this point, I'm mostly stressing more for other people around me than for myself. I'm doing fine, and it totally sucks to have 3 exams in 3 days but I'll manage, and I'm looking forward to some easy, fun, PBL with associated free time. Meanwhile, people who want to get into competitive programs are struggling and getting Cs, and others are dreading PBL because they don't work well with their groups. I feel really bad for these people, but there's not really anything I can do for them...
My computer's been acting up a little recently. When I restarted for an update earlier this week, it took several tries to power on. I thought it was just an anomaly until it happened once randomly when I tried to turn it on after a routine shutdown. Of course now it's turning on fine, when I was about to let my friend's boyfriend in IT look at it. I'm keeping my backups very up to date (I think my virology objectives are only on there, not my laptop) and luckily I kind of have a backup laptop in my gaming one, so I'm not worrying about it yet. But that's probably something to deal with after Thanksgiving when I have time. Oh, and my summer research project fell through. So now I have to figure out something else for the summer, too.
We had our last DIC meeting of the semester this week. I decided to stick with the officerships I have...I don't want to back off with responsibility, that doesn't look good, and I kind of like being three officers. Sure, it's a pain sometimes, but I'm kind of proud of being able to handle it. So yep, I'm historian again! I also helped my team to victory in jeopardy. The highlight was probably how quickly I was able to rattle off the Roentgen signs (Size, Shape, Margination, Number, Location, Opacity!) before another student had even finished one or two. Well, after the question where I knew the answer (side effect of iodinated contrast in lungs = pulmonary edema) but someone else shouted out a wrong answer first while I was trying to discuss it, I wasn't going to sit back and let them do it! Also on the note of things to be proud of--did I mention I submitted an article to the Vet Gazette? I don't think I did, especially since they rejected it for the September issue. But now it's being published! It's about the VLE, and it's going up this weekend!
I'll finish this entry by talking about my riding. The clinic...well, it got better. We did fine at first over the warm-ups, but on the first or second course (probably the second, that's how it usually works for me) I actually fell off. I didn't get hurt at all, but it kind of sucked because someone else's horse was refusing earlier but then I had to go and prove that I was the worst rider in the class. So that's cool. But Isabella only refused a couple more times after that. I learned to ride her forward into my hand, which was a really helpful piece of advice because it meant I didn't have to make her go faster to get over the jump when she already wanted to be quick. By the end we were doing pretty well, I think.
Last week I rode Sailor, one of my favorites. We did a lot of no-stirrups work. Like, maybe half the lesson without stirrups, including some trot poles and once or twice over a little crossrail. The saddle I was in (because the previous rider had it) had weird stirrups with a hook sort of attachment instead of a buckle, so when I had to cross them in front of the saddle they didn't quite lay flat. I wound up with bruises on my legs from them! Sailor got a little quick at the end but I think we did alright. This week my instructor forgot to put me on the list, but I wound up on Cajun. I think he's a little green in his re-training; he's a former barrel racer and they're apparently trying to put some advanced students on him now, which I guess I qualify? He was really quick, and I was warned to keep a nice full seat at the canter or he'd run off. Which of course meant he kept breaking back to trot--but Alea said I have a nice deep seat like she does, which makes me feel good about myself. Cajun jumped really big, especially on the last jump (in a line). It wasn't much of a boost for my ego as a rider since he wasn't really great at the exercises, but I hope I did well for the horse. We also did some no-stirrups no-reins trotting on a lunge line. It was a tiny, tight circle, which made balancing a lot harder! At least I didn't fall again.
Unlike last weekend (I went to the Renaissance fair; maybe I'll write about it next week), this weekend I don't have anything planned but studying and a trip to WalMart (although I should try to run tomorrow morning). Three tests to go...Let's do this. Almost there.
Saturday, November 8, 2014
So close and yet so far
Hi there; Birdie here!
I have now taken two of my 8 exams in 4 weeks--Clin path exam 2 and Virology exam 1. In 3 more weeks, I'll be done with the hard part of the semester...it's not that long except that I also have 6 tests to go before then. I'm really looking forward to PBL after Thanksgiving.
Clin path was...not as great as last time. We still haven't gotten our grades back (even though they were supposed to be in our boxes Friday morning at the latest...) so I don't know exactly how bad it was, but the instructor sent out an email indicating that he was disappointed we didn't do as well as on the first exam. Virology, on the other hand--for all our stressing out about it--wasn't too bad. It was LONG (75 questions, most of which were 4-5 lines long not counting the answer choices) and a very complete assessment, but I thought it was very fair. There were only a couple of questions I straight up did not study, and nothing I was wondering "Where did this come from?" I'm really glad I went to his review session on Thursday; there were We just took that yesterday, but apparently he's already got the grades back because he sent out the distribution curve. It looked pretty reasonable to me--there were a good number of A's, and I think I'm one of them.
I did take time out of my studying Tuesday to go vote! Pretty much the entire evening out of my studying, tbh. I didn't realize the election was this week until the day before it happened, and I'm registered where my parents live, not in Baton Rouge. So I drove the hour there and back to vote, and got to have dinner with my mom and brother while I was there. Totally worth it, especially since I did get the dinner. Voting is Important.
Next week we only have one exam, but it's our cumulative final in Pharmacology. At least we'll actually have two hours for it this time...but it's also basically two tests in one, since we've covered a whole test's worth of new stuff. It's really quite intimidating. But I've done well in the class so far, and I just ran a grade calculator--if I get at least a decent B on this, I can keep my A. The exam got moved to Thursday, too--which is mildly inconvenient for the Pathology club wetlab we have planned for Wednesday, but really good for giving us more time to study. I'm planning to try and get on top of Systemic path this week, too, since that exam is next week and it's a ton of material.
So, um. You know how I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this November? Well, apparently I can't let November go by without taking a challenge. There's a thing on tumblr called the Book Photo Challenge where tumblr user books-cupcakes puts up a list of prompts for each day of the month, and you put up a photo for each day. So I am actually doing that. My favorite picture is still the first one I took:
I was reading on my bed and suddenly remembered that the challenge had started, so it was kind of spontaneous. I'm really happy with how it turned out. What I'm reading now, though, is The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. Somewhat conveniently, the main events of the novel take place in October/November. I love it when book-time matches up with real-time (sidenote: it's practically essential for holiday books). I bought it when I went into Barnes & Noble to get some shots for the Photo Challenge, but I've been thinking of getting it for a while since it came up on a search for Fantasy horse books. Despite the craziness of the bloodthirsty water horses, there are still normal horses and as a rider I appreciate the horse knowledge that went into it. I'm not quite 100 pages in yet, but so far I can at least say that I want to keep reading.
Speaking of horses...I am going to be riding in a jumping clinic tomorrow, like I mentioned last week. Only now I've ridden Isabella. She's...a challenge, that's a nice way to put it. I don't know what's wrong with me that I can't manage to have a good second course, but this one was BAD. We got around the whole course the first time (though she tried to run out at the first jump), and not badly either. But the second course was just a little more complicated, and Isabella refused a jump. And then went on to refuse about a dozen more jumps, including a crossrail. My instructor said it was because she was tired and didn't want to work (she had been ridden in the previous lesson, and schooled earlier), but that still didn't make me feel great about my riding. It's not very fun to spend half the lesson failing to get your horse over a single jump. Despite how blatantly terrible I was on Isabella, my instructor still wants me to ride her in the clinic. And I will, of course, but I don't think it will be as much fun as my ride last week. I wish I could have done the clinic on her instead. It's probably a good thing that I'll have to work with Isabella again--but I would prefer to do the clinic on a horse I actually work well with. I did at least trot a whole lap without stirrups, so that's something. Alea said next week we'll be starting No-Stirrups November, so that's apparently a thing.
I am really proud of myself regarding running, though! Last Friday I went running after school, and actually used the workout app I recently learned my iPod has so I could track my miles and my time. I had a good bit to run away from, between the Parasitology exams (no, I still don't know how I did) and Halloween stuff, and I actually ran the whole 4 miles! Actually, according to the app, it was 4.9 miles, but I don't know how much to trust that. And I was really proud of that, especially at an 8:09 mile, but I didn't really think that meant I could regularly run 4 miles...until this morning! I don't have my time because my iPod died halfway through (pretty near literally halfway, I think, now that I know the distance more concretely per the app), but I did definitely run the whole loop, and that's definitely 4 miles.
On Wednesday we had our first and only DIC wetlab of the semester, on ultrasound. It was the first successful wetlab since I've been an officer, but this time actually a good number of people came! We had two stations to practice ultrasound on live dogs, and one station with a cadaver dog so we could practice ultrasound-guided aspirates and biopsies. I took a bunch of pictures as Historian (but they're not on the computer yet and I'm not sure I'd want to put them up here anyway) and also got to do the things myself. It was the first time I looked at an ultrasound of the liver and recognized it as liver. I was only okay at finding things, but I'm getting a lot better at knowing what I'm looking at, and I feel like that's half the battle with ultrasound. I'm really glad I got a chance to do that, and I'm glad it was (for once!) successful.
Last night we had a VBMA dinner meeting where a vet from Texas came to talk to us about professionalism and also practice management. About half the time was him answering questions, and he kept asking for more questions and even picking out a random person in the audience and asking them to come up with a question (which I'm not really cool with). He made some interesting points, especially about "live to work" vs "work to live." According to one study he cited, people in large animal or mixed animal medicine are mostly "live to work," and "work to live" people can only be happy in small animal medicine. If that's the case, there is less a shortage of large animal vets and more a shortage of vets who would be happy in that career. It was a pretty interesting presentation, and I'm really glad I went. I went up and talked to him afterwards (especially after he said how he wanted to greet everyone as they came in) and gave him my card. I asked him to email me stuff about marketing, since he mentioned that he'd had some great success with that. I really like this idea for future networking--if I'm giving my card to somebody and I actually care (I give out a lot of business cards just because I can, and I've got 250 of them and they'll all be obsolete in 3 years), to ask them to email me about something specific. I'm still not sure whether I really care about networking with this particular vet, but he was really engaging--in that I personally asked a lot of questions, which I don't normally do. So, you know. I roll with it.
Well, I've effectively spent all morning not-studying. I'm going to grab some lunch and then get to work on this Pharm thing. Only 3 more weeks of exams!
I have now taken two of my 8 exams in 4 weeks--Clin path exam 2 and Virology exam 1. In 3 more weeks, I'll be done with the hard part of the semester...it's not that long except that I also have 6 tests to go before then. I'm really looking forward to PBL after Thanksgiving.
Clin path was...not as great as last time. We still haven't gotten our grades back (even though they were supposed to be in our boxes Friday morning at the latest...) so I don't know exactly how bad it was, but the instructor sent out an email indicating that he was disappointed we didn't do as well as on the first exam. Virology, on the other hand--for all our stressing out about it--wasn't too bad. It was LONG (75 questions, most of which were 4-5 lines long not counting the answer choices) and a very complete assessment, but I thought it was very fair. There were only a couple of questions I straight up did not study, and nothing I was wondering "Where did this come from?" I'm really glad I went to his review session on Thursday; there were We just took that yesterday, but apparently he's already got the grades back because he sent out the distribution curve. It looked pretty reasonable to me--there were a good number of A's, and I think I'm one of them.
I did take time out of my studying Tuesday to go vote! Pretty much the entire evening out of my studying, tbh. I didn't realize the election was this week until the day before it happened, and I'm registered where my parents live, not in Baton Rouge. So I drove the hour there and back to vote, and got to have dinner with my mom and brother while I was there. Totally worth it, especially since I did get the dinner. Voting is Important.
Next week we only have one exam, but it's our cumulative final in Pharmacology. At least we'll actually have two hours for it this time...but it's also basically two tests in one, since we've covered a whole test's worth of new stuff. It's really quite intimidating. But I've done well in the class so far, and I just ran a grade calculator--if I get at least a decent B on this, I can keep my A. The exam got moved to Thursday, too--which is mildly inconvenient for the Pathology club wetlab we have planned for Wednesday, but really good for giving us more time to study. I'm planning to try and get on top of Systemic path this week, too, since that exam is next week and it's a ton of material.
So, um. You know how I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this November? Well, apparently I can't let November go by without taking a challenge. There's a thing on tumblr called the Book Photo Challenge where tumblr user books-cupcakes puts up a list of prompts for each day of the month, and you put up a photo for each day. So I am actually doing that. My favorite picture is still the first one I took:
 |
| For November 1--Currently Reading; I actually finished it that day! |
Speaking of horses...I am going to be riding in a jumping clinic tomorrow, like I mentioned last week. Only now I've ridden Isabella. She's...a challenge, that's a nice way to put it. I don't know what's wrong with me that I can't manage to have a good second course, but this one was BAD. We got around the whole course the first time (though she tried to run out at the first jump), and not badly either. But the second course was just a little more complicated, and Isabella refused a jump. And then went on to refuse about a dozen more jumps, including a crossrail. My instructor said it was because she was tired and didn't want to work (she had been ridden in the previous lesson, and schooled earlier), but that still didn't make me feel great about my riding. It's not very fun to spend half the lesson failing to get your horse over a single jump. Despite how blatantly terrible I was on Isabella, my instructor still wants me to ride her in the clinic. And I will, of course, but I don't think it will be as much fun as my ride last week. I wish I could have done the clinic on her instead. It's probably a good thing that I'll have to work with Isabella again--but I would prefer to do the clinic on a horse I actually work well with. I did at least trot a whole lap without stirrups, so that's something. Alea said next week we'll be starting No-Stirrups November, so that's apparently a thing.
I am really proud of myself regarding running, though! Last Friday I went running after school, and actually used the workout app I recently learned my iPod has so I could track my miles and my time. I had a good bit to run away from, between the Parasitology exams (no, I still don't know how I did) and Halloween stuff, and I actually ran the whole 4 miles! Actually, according to the app, it was 4.9 miles, but I don't know how much to trust that. And I was really proud of that, especially at an 8:09 mile, but I didn't really think that meant I could regularly run 4 miles...until this morning! I don't have my time because my iPod died halfway through (pretty near literally halfway, I think, now that I know the distance more concretely per the app), but I did definitely run the whole loop, and that's definitely 4 miles.
On Wednesday we had our first and only DIC wetlab of the semester, on ultrasound. It was the first successful wetlab since I've been an officer, but this time actually a good number of people came! We had two stations to practice ultrasound on live dogs, and one station with a cadaver dog so we could practice ultrasound-guided aspirates and biopsies. I took a bunch of pictures as Historian (but they're not on the computer yet and I'm not sure I'd want to put them up here anyway) and also got to do the things myself. It was the first time I looked at an ultrasound of the liver and recognized it as liver. I was only okay at finding things, but I'm getting a lot better at knowing what I'm looking at, and I feel like that's half the battle with ultrasound. I'm really glad I got a chance to do that, and I'm glad it was (for once!) successful.
Last night we had a VBMA dinner meeting where a vet from Texas came to talk to us about professionalism and also practice management. About half the time was him answering questions, and he kept asking for more questions and even picking out a random person in the audience and asking them to come up with a question (which I'm not really cool with). He made some interesting points, especially about "live to work" vs "work to live." According to one study he cited, people in large animal or mixed animal medicine are mostly "live to work," and "work to live" people can only be happy in small animal medicine. If that's the case, there is less a shortage of large animal vets and more a shortage of vets who would be happy in that career. It was a pretty interesting presentation, and I'm really glad I went. I went up and talked to him afterwards (especially after he said how he wanted to greet everyone as they came in) and gave him my card. I asked him to email me stuff about marketing, since he mentioned that he'd had some great success with that. I really like this idea for future networking--if I'm giving my card to somebody and I actually care (I give out a lot of business cards just because I can, and I've got 250 of them and they'll all be obsolete in 3 years), to ask them to email me about something specific. I'm still not sure whether I really care about networking with this particular vet, but he was really engaging--in that I personally asked a lot of questions, which I don't normally do. So, you know. I roll with it.
Well, I've effectively spent all morning not-studying. I'm going to grab some lunch and then get to work on this Pharm thing. Only 3 more weeks of exams!
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Yes, I'm still blogging!
Hi there; Birdie here!
Sorry it's been a while since my last update. It actually wasn't because I was busy with school--last week was another break between exams (as defined as one exam Tuesday and then the next not until the next Friday). I've actually been doing a ton of extracurricular stuff. I guess I'll start where I left off...this is going to be a long post, but at least I'm putting some pictures in this time!
The Saturday after my last post (um, 3 weeks ago...) I volunteered to help out with an ultrasound CE course at school. It seemed like a good idea: free breakfast, free lunch, learn some stuff about ultrasound and get to practice ultrasounding dogs. But actually, I felt like it was a waste of my time. There were a lot of lectures in the morning, and I didn't feel like I was learning anything new. It was all the Basics of Ultrasound stuff we had in radiology class and a long list of artifacts. Then I didn't actually get to eat lunch--the email said we needed to be in Jr. Surgery helping to anesthetize and tube the dogs at 12, so I went there and was actually working for the whole hour. And by working I mainly mean holding a dog and asking what I could help with--I didn't even get to try placing a catheter. Then I monitored anesthesia for about 4 hours and got to spend 15 minutes actually doing the ultrasound. Overall, I didn't think it was worth the time away from studying for my two path tests that week. Definitely won't be doing it again next year.
Then the next weekend was my horse show. Yes, I did end up riding in it! I was kind of late to sign up though, so none of the horses I had wanted to ride were available for my class. I ended up on Nick, and I only got to ride him for 15 minutes at the end of my Thursday lesson before the Saturday show. My instructor told me to show up early so I could practice ride him before our class, so I did. I got to watch some of the Western classes--pole bending looked like a lot of fun, and I'd like to try it sometime! There was also a Halloween costume contest for Western showmanship, a class that would have been really boring without the costumes.
I missed the instructors' demos since that was when I got the chance to practice ride (at least, until someone came out and told me to get off and wait until my instructor was out here...). Two other kids were riding Nick in the show (different classes: flatting and trotting crossrails), so we had some fun times switching out the saddle about 6 times. I made friends with quite a few of the younger riders including the two who shared Nick with me. Also, a couple of my friends came to see me ride! I did really well. ^-^ I got first place in both my jumping classes, and fourth on the flat (out of I think 8 riders). My instructor said she's definitely moving me up to a higher class in the next show. Well, she should...I've shown at a much higher level than that in high school. I forgot to ask my friends to take pictures of me riding, but here's one of my co-riders on Nick:
I don't know when another show will happen, but there's about to be a jumping clinic next weekend! Once again, I can't have any of the horses I usually ride, so I'll be on a pony named Isabella. At least this time I should hopefully be able to ride her for a full lesson before the clinic. My lesson this past Thursday was a lot of fun. I was on Sadie, a dark bay to black mare. Apparently she can be a terror for less experienced riders, but she was great for me. I got to do some really fun stuff, too! After going through the simpler course with my instructor's other students, I got to do the complicated course another lesson was doing, with a bunch of rollbacks and interesting turns! I kind of completely blew my last course, though, and didn't really get a good spot on anything but the line. At least I did a great job with the single vertical I asked to take after that bad round, and even got the turn after it really smoothly.
Then last weekend was the Josh Project Chili Cookoff! We had a pretty good turnout, but apparently it was smaller than previous years. :( We'll have to do a lot better advertising it next time...but it was hard because we didn't have confirmation on first prize for about 3 weeks after I was supposed to have it. My little sib is on Josh Project committee now--he showed up early to study and kept asking how he could help out, so we let him. Then when we told him he's on committee, he was like "oh, I need to focus on bringing my grades up for this semester" and we told him this was the big thing this semester and he already did it. So yeah, he's in. Some of the chilis were pretty good, others I didn't like as much. I'm still really disappointed I didn't get to try the pumpkin chili someone apparently made last year or the year before.
The same person (one of my classmates!) won for both chili and dessert. Her chili had chocolate and beer and bacon in it--no wonder it was good! We actually only had 2 desserts: her peach cobbler, and some lemon icebox pies. Good thing we didn't have prizes for second and third place for that! Anyway, she's also the Hill's rep, so she brought some pumpkins for people to carve at the event. I think people had a lot of fun with that too. It was the day after the class Halloween party (which I didn't attend, for multiple reasons), which probably contributed to people not showing up. But we did have bloody marys, which a lot of people appreciated, and water and gatorade as well as the obligatory tailgate beer. Overall it was a pretty good time (the game, which I tried to go to after, was less so, but I don't need to dwell on that).
I also got inducted into Phi Kappa Phi a little over a week ago. I think I was the only vet student there (if there were others who got offered, they were probably studying instead of going to the ceremony...but I didn't want to have to find where to pick my stuff up alone later!), but it was undergrad junior and seniors as well as grad students. It was kind of pretentious, to be honest. But ever since high school I've always joined honor societies if I have the chance because even if most people who apply to whatever I'm applying to have that on their resume, I'm being compared to them so I need to have it too.My parents came up for the induction ceremony and we went to dinner afterwards, so that was nice. Last weekend I also went to see the Book of Life with my family! It was really good--better than I think the trailers make it look. I liked it a lot, and I'm planning to get it on DVD when it comes out.
We've had a couple of path wetlabs since I last wrote too. A couple Wednesdays ago we had a pathology resident from Tennessee do a multihead microscope wetlab with us. She brought some histology slides that were really cool--even more so because most of the cases were stuff we'd talked about in class recently. I got 4 of the 6 diagnoses! ...off of her leading questions, not from the slides themselves, but still. I felt really smart. We saw Cryptosporidium serpentis in a snake stomach, Johne's disease in a goat intestine, the epicardium of a cow with hardware disease, a cat brain with FIP, a horse kidney with Actinobacillus equuli in the glomeruli and a bunch of tissues from a dog with Blastomycosis. That was really cool, and the resident was cool too. I forgot to give her my card, but she said she'd send out a survey so hopefully I can email her back from that. We also did a clin path jeopardy to review for our second exam (Monday! eek!). About a dozen second years came to that, and it was pretty good too. I won first place, tied with a friend. Luckily, it was easy for us to figure out how to split the prizes--while everyone was arguing about tiebreakers, we quietly went up and I got the candy she didn't like and she got the Nightmare Before Christmas water bottle I didn't want.
Ok, now I'm more or less caught up to this week. On Wednesday, we had grand rounds in the morning--and the speaker was Dr. Betsy Charles, director of the VLI (in charge of VLE)! I heard her speak in the morning and at a lunch talk, and then several students and faculty members who have done VLE went out to dinner with her. We went to a sushi place downtown, and it was really nice. I did lose quite a lot of study time though--we were there for 3 hours! But I absolutely would not have rathered miss it. I didn't get to talk to Betsy much at dinner, but I did give her my card. I also learned that Dr. Burba is leaving LSU to go to Oklahoma! That makes me sad; I'd been looking forward to taking classes with him. So he got one of my cards too.
This morning I did another wetlab, with Emergency & Critical Care club. I learned how to place endotracheal tubes! And also how to do CPR on dogs and cats. I even managed to place a tube in a cat...after a few tries. Having a laryngoscope helps a lot. I tubed the cat once, and the dog a few times: in sternal, in lateral, and without a laryngoscope. I learned a lot, and I'm really glad I got to practice. And now I'll get to practice on live cats too, for Spay Day!
Oh, and I've been working on what I'm doing for the summer. I'm hoping to do research for Summer Scholars this year, and I've been talking with one of the clinicians about it. He's got a project he wants to do, and if they have enough funding it sounds like a fantastic opportunity. It's sort of an extension of the project his students worked on a couple of years ago involving blood pressure measurements. It sounds like I might be able to present this research at a ACVIM conference and get an article out of it! So I really hope the costs aren't more than they can afford (it's the particularly sensitive catheters they need to buy that's the limiting factor). And after that I hope I get accepted for Summer Scholars even though I'll be out for two weeks in Italy...
See? A lot of non-school stuff has been going on. But of course there's been plenty of tests too. We still haven't gotten systemic path back yet, but I aced the first clin path exam! And I made my A in endocrine. In fact, I did a lot better on the exam than I thought I did. I aced our last pharm exam, too, which is good--our final is cumulative, and I really appreciate the buffer that gives me, especially since I'll be focusing pretty hard on virology this week even though the pharm final is next Tuesday. And yesterday we finished another class--parasitology. I am very ready to be done with that class, but I don't know whether I managed an A in it. But I think it's unlikely I got less than a B (at least, if my grade calculations are at least a little accurate...which I'm not sure about, given how much they've changed point values around), and I definitely passed, so that's good enough for me right now. I have 8 exams in the next 4 weeks (which is why I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year...for once. At least I wrote a novel over the summer!), and I've got some major studying to focus on. I'll try and go back to updating more regularly, but for now...wish me luck!
Sorry it's been a while since my last update. It actually wasn't because I was busy with school--last week was another break between exams (as defined as one exam Tuesday and then the next not until the next Friday). I've actually been doing a ton of extracurricular stuff. I guess I'll start where I left off...this is going to be a long post, but at least I'm putting some pictures in this time!
The Saturday after my last post (um, 3 weeks ago...) I volunteered to help out with an ultrasound CE course at school. It seemed like a good idea: free breakfast, free lunch, learn some stuff about ultrasound and get to practice ultrasounding dogs. But actually, I felt like it was a waste of my time. There were a lot of lectures in the morning, and I didn't feel like I was learning anything new. It was all the Basics of Ultrasound stuff we had in radiology class and a long list of artifacts. Then I didn't actually get to eat lunch--the email said we needed to be in Jr. Surgery helping to anesthetize and tube the dogs at 12, so I went there and was actually working for the whole hour. And by working I mainly mean holding a dog and asking what I could help with--I didn't even get to try placing a catheter. Then I monitored anesthesia for about 4 hours and got to spend 15 minutes actually doing the ultrasound. Overall, I didn't think it was worth the time away from studying for my two path tests that week. Definitely won't be doing it again next year.
Then the next weekend was my horse show. Yes, I did end up riding in it! I was kind of late to sign up though, so none of the horses I had wanted to ride were available for my class. I ended up on Nick, and I only got to ride him for 15 minutes at the end of my Thursday lesson before the Saturday show. My instructor told me to show up early so I could practice ride him before our class, so I did. I got to watch some of the Western classes--pole bending looked like a lot of fun, and I'd like to try it sometime! There was also a Halloween costume contest for Western showmanship, a class that would have been really boring without the costumes.
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| One of my favorites: "Harry Trotter" |
I missed the instructors' demos since that was when I got the chance to practice ride (at least, until someone came out and told me to get off and wait until my instructor was out here...). Two other kids were riding Nick in the show (different classes: flatting and trotting crossrails), so we had some fun times switching out the saddle about 6 times. I made friends with quite a few of the younger riders including the two who shared Nick with me. Also, a couple of my friends came to see me ride! I did really well. ^-^ I got first place in both my jumping classes, and fourth on the flat (out of I think 8 riders). My instructor said she's definitely moving me up to a higher class in the next show. Well, she should...I've shown at a much higher level than that in high school. I forgot to ask my friends to take pictures of me riding, but here's one of my co-riders on Nick:
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| Audrey rocking the crossrail |
Then last weekend was the Josh Project Chili Cookoff! We had a pretty good turnout, but apparently it was smaller than previous years. :( We'll have to do a lot better advertising it next time...but it was hard because we didn't have confirmation on first prize for about 3 weeks after I was supposed to have it. My little sib is on Josh Project committee now--he showed up early to study and kept asking how he could help out, so we let him. Then when we told him he's on committee, he was like "oh, I need to focus on bringing my grades up for this semester" and we told him this was the big thing this semester and he already did it. So yeah, he's in. Some of the chilis were pretty good, others I didn't like as much. I'm still really disappointed I didn't get to try the pumpkin chili someone apparently made last year or the year before.
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| Chili tasting time! |
The same person (one of my classmates!) won for both chili and dessert. Her chili had chocolate and beer and bacon in it--no wonder it was good! We actually only had 2 desserts: her peach cobbler, and some lemon icebox pies. Good thing we didn't have prizes for second and third place for that! Anyway, she's also the Hill's rep, so she brought some pumpkins for people to carve at the event. I think people had a lot of fun with that too. It was the day after the class Halloween party (which I didn't attend, for multiple reasons), which probably contributed to people not showing up. But we did have bloody marys, which a lot of people appreciated, and water and gatorade as well as the obligatory tailgate beer. Overall it was a pretty good time (the game, which I tried to go to after, was less so, but I don't need to dwell on that).
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| Some of my favorite pumpkins people did |
We've had a couple of path wetlabs since I last wrote too. A couple Wednesdays ago we had a pathology resident from Tennessee do a multihead microscope wetlab with us. She brought some histology slides that were really cool--even more so because most of the cases were stuff we'd talked about in class recently. I got 4 of the 6 diagnoses! ...off of her leading questions, not from the slides themselves, but still. I felt really smart. We saw Cryptosporidium serpentis in a snake stomach, Johne's disease in a goat intestine, the epicardium of a cow with hardware disease, a cat brain with FIP, a horse kidney with Actinobacillus equuli in the glomeruli and a bunch of tissues from a dog with Blastomycosis. That was really cool, and the resident was cool too. I forgot to give her my card, but she said she'd send out a survey so hopefully I can email her back from that. We also did a clin path jeopardy to review for our second exam (Monday! eek!). About a dozen second years came to that, and it was pretty good too. I won first place, tied with a friend. Luckily, it was easy for us to figure out how to split the prizes--while everyone was arguing about tiebreakers, we quietly went up and I got the candy she didn't like and she got the Nightmare Before Christmas water bottle I didn't want.
Ok, now I'm more or less caught up to this week. On Wednesday, we had grand rounds in the morning--and the speaker was Dr. Betsy Charles, director of the VLI (in charge of VLE)! I heard her speak in the morning and at a lunch talk, and then several students and faculty members who have done VLE went out to dinner with her. We went to a sushi place downtown, and it was really nice. I did lose quite a lot of study time though--we were there for 3 hours! But I absolutely would not have rathered miss it. I didn't get to talk to Betsy much at dinner, but I did give her my card. I also learned that Dr. Burba is leaving LSU to go to Oklahoma! That makes me sad; I'd been looking forward to taking classes with him. So he got one of my cards too.
This morning I did another wetlab, with Emergency & Critical Care club. I learned how to place endotracheal tubes! And also how to do CPR on dogs and cats. I even managed to place a tube in a cat...after a few tries. Having a laryngoscope helps a lot. I tubed the cat once, and the dog a few times: in sternal, in lateral, and without a laryngoscope. I learned a lot, and I'm really glad I got to practice. And now I'll get to practice on live cats too, for Spay Day!
Oh, and I've been working on what I'm doing for the summer. I'm hoping to do research for Summer Scholars this year, and I've been talking with one of the clinicians about it. He's got a project he wants to do, and if they have enough funding it sounds like a fantastic opportunity. It's sort of an extension of the project his students worked on a couple of years ago involving blood pressure measurements. It sounds like I might be able to present this research at a ACVIM conference and get an article out of it! So I really hope the costs aren't more than they can afford (it's the particularly sensitive catheters they need to buy that's the limiting factor). And after that I hope I get accepted for Summer Scholars even though I'll be out for two weeks in Italy...
See? A lot of non-school stuff has been going on. But of course there's been plenty of tests too. We still haven't gotten systemic path back yet, but I aced the first clin path exam! And I made my A in endocrine. In fact, I did a lot better on the exam than I thought I did. I aced our last pharm exam, too, which is good--our final is cumulative, and I really appreciate the buffer that gives me, especially since I'll be focusing pretty hard on virology this week even though the pharm final is next Tuesday. And yesterday we finished another class--parasitology. I am very ready to be done with that class, but I don't know whether I managed an A in it. But I think it's unlikely I got less than a B (at least, if my grade calculations are at least a little accurate...which I'm not sure about, given how much they've changed point values around), and I definitely passed, so that's good enough for me right now. I have 8 exams in the next 4 weeks (which is why I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year...for once. At least I wrote a novel over the summer!), and I've got some major studying to focus on. I'll try and go back to updating more regularly, but for now...wish me luck!
Friday, September 26, 2014
It's been a long week
Hi there; Birdie here!
It's been a long week, but it went so quickly! The parasit exam was today, and I don't think it went great. I don't think I failed, but whether I did well is going to depend a lot on how well I guessed. I thought the lab portion went better...until people were asking me about it afterwards and it turns out I totally messed up something I thought I had. I also didn't realize until a few days ago that our pharm exam is next week, and by that time I was worrying about parasit too much to deal with it, so I haven't studied that at all. Luckily I've got all weekend to work on it--I'm going to work really hard this weekend, and really look forward to next week after the exam! On Tuesday I'm doing a game night at my friend's house for her boyfriend's birthday, and then Wednesday night I'll be going home for fall break! Unfortunately, most of the reason I'm actually going home is that I have to go to the dentist because my face decided to hate me this summer. But other than that, home will be nice, and I might even go to a convention on Saturday--haven't decided yet.
Josh Project is going better than I'd hoped though, or at least asking for donations (to be prizes for the chili cookoff) did. I've gotta say, we have the greatest pitch; who doesn't want to help give cute animals to sick kids? Every place we went to, the person we spoke with seemed interested in helping us. We even got one set of items to put as a prize already. I may have gotten our first prize, too; I went to exchange my new camera (I got a sweet new camera! A really nice one.), I talked with a manager and asked for a certain electronic that would make a fantastic first prize. He said he could definitely help me out, but I haven't been able to get in contact with him since. And I'd really like to since the camera's in now and I really don't want to drive there more than I have to. It's very inconvenient. None of the other stores has gotten back to us either, as far as I know at least. Every c/o 2017 committee member's email was on the letter, so maybe they emailed someone else and I just haven't heard.
This is one of those weeks where I got free lunch every day because I went to so many meetings. I saw my li'l sib at most of them, too...I guess he's being like me and going to basically everything. "Because knowledge is power, you know?" It was kind of nice to hear him say that today, actually. I've been kind of over it and not really wanting to pay attention to the talks and stuff, but today it was better. The fact that it was interesting stories instead of farm animal stuff that's irrelevant to my life probably helped. I do want to learn how to work with farm animals, but their presentation just seemed a lot more intensely farm animal focused than I am. Also, their main club thing is rounds, which mean skipping lunch. And I'd rather do rounds on species I'll actually work with. So I'm not doing farm animal club this year.
I did join critical care club this year because (like internal med), their meetings are interesting and informative, so even if I can't make the wetlabs, it's worth it. I really hope I can make wetlabs for things other than my officer clubs, but unfortunately it seems like things keep being scheduled the same day. Technically I could do the trach tube ECC wetlab and the path wetlab that are the same day, but that's a long day and I'm not sure I can spare it. And I'm really upset about missing the surgery club wetlab AGAIN. I forget what it was last year, but this year it's the same day as the chili cookoff. And as a committee member, I'm pretty sure I need to be there to set up and not roll in late after learning how to suture.
The meeting on Wednesday was our Phi Zeta meeting with (one of) the speakers. It was actually the one whose talk I didn't go to, since I spent those 2 hours studying instead--and the new dean didn't come talk to us! That was one of the ones where I had trouble paying attention, honestly. I think that was around the time I realized how behind I was on studying for pharm. But two of my classmates placed in the poster competition, so I'm really happy for them. I also talked with someone who did summer scholars last year, because I think I'm going to apply this year. I really want to do something actually vet related this summer. And still make money, but I think the part about being able to put it on my resume is a little more important now. The only thing is that I only have (an estimate of) 10 weeks, not the whole summer--because my family is going to Italy, and I'm not going to say no to that! I'm really really excited about the trip, especially since Italy is next on my list of Places I Really Want To Go.
I rode the same horse twice now! His name is Krewe, and he reminds me of my favorite horse at the barn I rode at in high school--mostly because he also likes to hold his head up higher than normal horses. He's very good, and I think I was on him again because my instructor wants me to ride him in the student show coming up in October. She told me about the show and about a clinic that are coming up this semester that she wants me to ride in, which makes me feel pretty good. We've also been doing a little more complex stuff in my lessons, like a bending line and a sort of mini course with a gymnastic around to a single jump. Yesterday she had me go around in half seat at the walk with no stirrups--I think that might be even harder than posting without stirrups! We also did a thing where the 4 people in my group did the course one at a time and then the others said something they liked about the ride and something they didn't. I'm still kind of frustrated sometimes at being worse than I was before I didn't ride for a year, so hearing the positives made me feel somewhat better! I heard some bad news, though, about another horse at the barn, Omega, who colicked and died. I never got to ride him, but I wanted to, and I'm sad for him.
One happier note so I don't end my post on that: I got to go see The Maze Runner with a couple of my friends from school, and that was a lot of fun (even if the book was, as always, better). Now I'm going to try and get some studying done. Local anesthetics and autonomic nervous system, here I come!
It's been a long week, but it went so quickly! The parasit exam was today, and I don't think it went great. I don't think I failed, but whether I did well is going to depend a lot on how well I guessed. I thought the lab portion went better...until people were asking me about it afterwards and it turns out I totally messed up something I thought I had. I also didn't realize until a few days ago that our pharm exam is next week, and by that time I was worrying about parasit too much to deal with it, so I haven't studied that at all. Luckily I've got all weekend to work on it--I'm going to work really hard this weekend, and really look forward to next week after the exam! On Tuesday I'm doing a game night at my friend's house for her boyfriend's birthday, and then Wednesday night I'll be going home for fall break! Unfortunately, most of the reason I'm actually going home is that I have to go to the dentist because my face decided to hate me this summer. But other than that, home will be nice, and I might even go to a convention on Saturday--haven't decided yet.
Josh Project is going better than I'd hoped though, or at least asking for donations (to be prizes for the chili cookoff) did. I've gotta say, we have the greatest pitch; who doesn't want to help give cute animals to sick kids? Every place we went to, the person we spoke with seemed interested in helping us. We even got one set of items to put as a prize already. I may have gotten our first prize, too; I went to exchange my new camera (I got a sweet new camera! A really nice one.), I talked with a manager and asked for a certain electronic that would make a fantastic first prize. He said he could definitely help me out, but I haven't been able to get in contact with him since. And I'd really like to since the camera's in now and I really don't want to drive there more than I have to. It's very inconvenient. None of the other stores has gotten back to us either, as far as I know at least. Every c/o 2017 committee member's email was on the letter, so maybe they emailed someone else and I just haven't heard.
This is one of those weeks where I got free lunch every day because I went to so many meetings. I saw my li'l sib at most of them, too...I guess he's being like me and going to basically everything. "Because knowledge is power, you know?" It was kind of nice to hear him say that today, actually. I've been kind of over it and not really wanting to pay attention to the talks and stuff, but today it was better. The fact that it was interesting stories instead of farm animal stuff that's irrelevant to my life probably helped. I do want to learn how to work with farm animals, but their presentation just seemed a lot more intensely farm animal focused than I am. Also, their main club thing is rounds, which mean skipping lunch. And I'd rather do rounds on species I'll actually work with. So I'm not doing farm animal club this year.
I did join critical care club this year because (like internal med), their meetings are interesting and informative, so even if I can't make the wetlabs, it's worth it. I really hope I can make wetlabs for things other than my officer clubs, but unfortunately it seems like things keep being scheduled the same day. Technically I could do the trach tube ECC wetlab and the path wetlab that are the same day, but that's a long day and I'm not sure I can spare it. And I'm really upset about missing the surgery club wetlab AGAIN. I forget what it was last year, but this year it's the same day as the chili cookoff. And as a committee member, I'm pretty sure I need to be there to set up and not roll in late after learning how to suture.
The meeting on Wednesday was our Phi Zeta meeting with (one of) the speakers. It was actually the one whose talk I didn't go to, since I spent those 2 hours studying instead--and the new dean didn't come talk to us! That was one of the ones where I had trouble paying attention, honestly. I think that was around the time I realized how behind I was on studying for pharm. But two of my classmates placed in the poster competition, so I'm really happy for them. I also talked with someone who did summer scholars last year, because I think I'm going to apply this year. I really want to do something actually vet related this summer. And still make money, but I think the part about being able to put it on my resume is a little more important now. The only thing is that I only have (an estimate of) 10 weeks, not the whole summer--because my family is going to Italy, and I'm not going to say no to that! I'm really really excited about the trip, especially since Italy is next on my list of Places I Really Want To Go.
I rode the same horse twice now! His name is Krewe, and he reminds me of my favorite horse at the barn I rode at in high school--mostly because he also likes to hold his head up higher than normal horses. He's very good, and I think I was on him again because my instructor wants me to ride him in the student show coming up in October. She told me about the show and about a clinic that are coming up this semester that she wants me to ride in, which makes me feel pretty good. We've also been doing a little more complex stuff in my lessons, like a bending line and a sort of mini course with a gymnastic around to a single jump. Yesterday she had me go around in half seat at the walk with no stirrups--I think that might be even harder than posting without stirrups! We also did a thing where the 4 people in my group did the course one at a time and then the others said something they liked about the ride and something they didn't. I'm still kind of frustrated sometimes at being worse than I was before I didn't ride for a year, so hearing the positives made me feel somewhat better! I heard some bad news, though, about another horse at the barn, Omega, who colicked and died. I never got to ride him, but I wanted to, and I'm sad for him.
One happier note so I don't end my post on that: I got to go see The Maze Runner with a couple of my friends from school, and that was a lot of fun (even if the book was, as always, better). Now I'm going to try and get some studying done. Local anesthetics and autonomic nervous system, here I come!
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Deep breath
Hi there; Birdie here!
Yesterday was our first systemic path exam, and our next exam isn't until next Friday (parasitology), so I'm enjoying a bit of a breather. Yesterday I pretty much aggressively did nothing useful (youtube and video games ftw) and ordered Chinese food for dinner. It was a nice break, and I kind of need it after a marathon of Parasit Friday-Pharm Tuesday-Endocrine Friday-Path Tuesday. Welcome to second year? That's definitely going to be happening a few more times this semester...
The pharm exam was kind of a mess. We only had 50 minutes for the exam, when literally every other class gives us 2 hours even if we really don't need it. AND we had 51 questions--less than a minute per question, and 12 questions more than that exam's had in previous years. AND a good deal of the questions were intense critical thinking, like "which of the following is composed of only true statements?" which is basically 4 true or false questions in one. It was not great. We got the grades for that yesterday, and the course coordinator gave us 6 points back on it, and we're all really grateful for that. I'm actually happy with my grade now with those added points!
The weekend I mostly spent studying, because pharm is a big deal. But I did have a nice surprise--my dad was in town, so we got to meet up for breakfast. That was really nice. We also tried to get my new phone, but I want to try out the iPhone 6 before I decide if I'm going to get a 5 or a 6 and they didn't have a demo yet. Oh, and on Friday we had a spontaneous movie night! We made brownies and a frozen pizza and watched The Black Swan--me and my first year roommate and another friend. I wound up not going to the football game, though, and I didn't even manage to give my ticket to anyone. Maybe I'll go this weekend? I am also going shopping with my sister on Saturday, too, so I'm not sure if I'll be ready to leave for football two hours before kickoff like I need to to get parking.
Last week, Aimee rode with me at my lesson! She was on a cute old bay named Jesse, and I had a cranky mare named Baby. Baby did not like being near other horses, so it was a little stressful keeping her away from everyone else, especially since we were all in the indoor. My instructor said she liked the way I rode Baby, though!
I'm pretty happy with how our first pathology club meeting went! A pretty good number of people showed up (not like surgery club levels of attendance, but still) and we had good food and I was able to get the drinks and I think the pathologists did a good job selling why pathology is important even if you don't want to specialize. I know we gained at least one member, too--my little sib!
Speaking of my little sib, the first years are having their first anatomy exam today and yesterday. Apparently my test file was pretty helpful--when I texted my li'l sib Good luck, he said I was the best big sib! So that makes me really happy.
There were a bunch of club meetings, too, since I've last written. Surgery club--I'm not sure whether I'll be able to make it to the suture wetlab this year, either; I think it's the same day as the Josh Project chili cookoff. VBMA--a very uplifting (sarcasm) talk about life insurance and disability insurance. Also a lab animal club meeting I went to mostly for the food, and it didn't change my mind at all about not being in that club.
And speaking of Josh Project...I'm kind of regretting being on the committee. But I'm basically the only one from my class who consistently shows up, so if I don't do it, no one else will. We have to start working on the chili cookoff approximately now; in fact, the second year members are having a meeting about it today at lunch.
Tonight I'm going to work on studying parasitology (because, of course, we still have a quiz on Friday), and (hopefully, if it works out) chatting with my undergrad friends. I'm looking forward to spending this weekend doing some things that aren't studying! Even if I should probably get started studying for my next couple of exams...that'll happen, too.
Yesterday was our first systemic path exam, and our next exam isn't until next Friday (parasitology), so I'm enjoying a bit of a breather. Yesterday I pretty much aggressively did nothing useful (youtube and video games ftw) and ordered Chinese food for dinner. It was a nice break, and I kind of need it after a marathon of Parasit Friday-Pharm Tuesday-Endocrine Friday-Path Tuesday. Welcome to second year? That's definitely going to be happening a few more times this semester...
The pharm exam was kind of a mess. We only had 50 minutes for the exam, when literally every other class gives us 2 hours even if we really don't need it. AND we had 51 questions--less than a minute per question, and 12 questions more than that exam's had in previous years. AND a good deal of the questions were intense critical thinking, like "which of the following is composed of only true statements?" which is basically 4 true or false questions in one. It was not great. We got the grades for that yesterday, and the course coordinator gave us 6 points back on it, and we're all really grateful for that. I'm actually happy with my grade now with those added points!
The weekend I mostly spent studying, because pharm is a big deal. But I did have a nice surprise--my dad was in town, so we got to meet up for breakfast. That was really nice. We also tried to get my new phone, but I want to try out the iPhone 6 before I decide if I'm going to get a 5 or a 6 and they didn't have a demo yet. Oh, and on Friday we had a spontaneous movie night! We made brownies and a frozen pizza and watched The Black Swan--me and my first year roommate and another friend. I wound up not going to the football game, though, and I didn't even manage to give my ticket to anyone. Maybe I'll go this weekend? I am also going shopping with my sister on Saturday, too, so I'm not sure if I'll be ready to leave for football two hours before kickoff like I need to to get parking.
Last week, Aimee rode with me at my lesson! She was on a cute old bay named Jesse, and I had a cranky mare named Baby. Baby did not like being near other horses, so it was a little stressful keeping her away from everyone else, especially since we were all in the indoor. My instructor said she liked the way I rode Baby, though!
I'm pretty happy with how our first pathology club meeting went! A pretty good number of people showed up (not like surgery club levels of attendance, but still) and we had good food and I was able to get the drinks and I think the pathologists did a good job selling why pathology is important even if you don't want to specialize. I know we gained at least one member, too--my little sib!
Speaking of my little sib, the first years are having their first anatomy exam today and yesterday. Apparently my test file was pretty helpful--when I texted my li'l sib Good luck, he said I was the best big sib! So that makes me really happy.
There were a bunch of club meetings, too, since I've last written. Surgery club--I'm not sure whether I'll be able to make it to the suture wetlab this year, either; I think it's the same day as the Josh Project chili cookoff. VBMA--a very uplifting (sarcasm) talk about life insurance and disability insurance. Also a lab animal club meeting I went to mostly for the food, and it didn't change my mind at all about not being in that club.
And speaking of Josh Project...I'm kind of regretting being on the committee. But I'm basically the only one from my class who consistently shows up, so if I don't do it, no one else will. We have to start working on the chili cookoff approximately now; in fact, the second year members are having a meeting about it today at lunch.
Tonight I'm going to work on studying parasitology (because, of course, we still have a quiz on Friday), and (hopefully, if it works out) chatting with my undergrad friends. I'm looking forward to spending this weekend doing some things that aren't studying! Even if I should probably get started studying for my next couple of exams...that'll happen, too.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Oh yes, this is second year
Hi there; Birdie here!
Today we had our first parasitology exam. Two exams, kind of, because we had a written in the morning and a lab practical in the afternoon. Neither of them was that bad, really, and I think I did pretty well on both of them. But I spent a lot of time on that class (especially if you count the time I spent studying for the 2 weekly quizzes on some of that material), and I don't really want to spend this evening studying, too. BUT since this is second year and we have two tests nearly every week, and at least one test every week but two (and one of them was last week), I already need to get on that. Especially since next week we have our first exam in Pharmacology, which as I understand it is basically the anatomy of second year. So I'm pretty worried about it. I haven't actually gotten to that studying yet...but I should at least get something done tonight.
Other than lots of studying, our first and uneventful DIC meeting, and a therio club meeting I attended purely for the free pizza, this week wasn't too exciting. I did order coveralls, though--therio club is selling embroidered coveralls as a fundraiser, and once we get them I can probably wear them to path club's big wetlabs, too. So that's cool.
This year my big sib didn't pass on anything, so I'm compiling a bunch of virtual resources onto a flash drive for my li'l sib. Today I actually got an email, though, from a friend in 4th year with a bunch of electronic resources that should be super helpful! I'm really glad for that. It's nice to not constantly have to rely on what other people put on dropbox.
I went to the Doctor Who viewing at the Mexican restaurant, too. I've probably mentioned it before, since I went for the 50th and also last week. I haven't found a good way to watch online, and since Certain People like to give me random comments about the episodes on Saturdays when they come out, I want to watch them as soon as possible. Which is apparently on Tuesdays at dinner. For the 50th and the first episode with the 12th doctor, it was a really good experience. Everyone was really excited, and it helped me get into the episode. This week, though, it was less great. I missed a bit of the beginning due to being stuck in traffic, and then people were kind of loud and made it harder to watch. One guy even wanted to do introductions and stuff in the middle of the episode. Like, I thought this was a Doctor Who viewing group? I'm not against a bit of commentary, but can we respect the show enough to not carry on unrelated conversations while I'm watching the new episode for the first time? So I don't know if I'm going back next Tuesday. When I was driving home, I was thinking definitely not. But, well, I still don't have a good alternative to watch the episode. So we'll see.
I also had my second riding lesson. This time I was on a bay mare named Lily, and all the lessons rode inside because it was raining. I will never get over being thankful for having an indoor arena--before I went to college, the barn where I rode had a few different rings, but none that were covered. So I've had several lessons canceled just because it rained. But this week, I still got to ride! There was a little gymnastic set up with 3 pretty low jumps that we went over a few times. We were pretty good, except that Lily kept landing on the wrong lead...even though the correct lead was the one she usually picks up automatically. So that's on me. I got the correct lead a few times, but mostly it was wrong. Especially at the end when I was jumping with one hand behind my back. At the very end of the lesson, my instructor asked me to post the trot with no stirrups for half a lap. I used to do no-stirrups work all the time in undergrad, and I really want to be good at it (and to get my muscle back)...plus, even in the huge ring we were working in, half a lap isn't much. So I did a lap and a half. I probably could have finished a full two laps except that my instructor asked me to come back in. So that, at least, made me feel pretty good about myself.
You know how last weekend was the first LSU football game? This weekend is the first home game. I've got a ticket, because my dad made me buy the season pass, and it's surprising how difficult it is to get rid of! I've messaged two people already who were looking to get a ticket, but one meant for next weekend and the other already decided not to go. So now I've got a couple more facebook messages waiting in the ether for the person to hopefully see it and respond...hopefully both of them don't try to take me up on it! And no, I really don't want to actually go to the game. See: pharm test on Tuesday.
Despite all that studying, I've also been doing some reading just for myself. I don't usually go for nonfiction (although there's a lot more of it on my to-read list now than there has been in the past), but I'm currently reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I'm about halfway to 2/3 of the way through it now, and it's really interesting. Sometimes I get kind of irritated, but generally the author seems to realize the importance of balance more than pushing an "Introvert Ideal" to counter the Extrovert Ideal she talks about. It also brings up a lot of questions that I find interesting, especially with my psych major background. Sometimes I wish I were having a conversation with her about this stuff instead of just reading it so I could ask her a bunch of questions (though, admittedly, frequently those questions are about what the control group was or how significance was calculated, for experiments she didn't even run). I haven't finished it yet, but I'm hoping to read the rest this weekend probably. You know, in between all the studying that also needs to happen.
Today we had our first parasitology exam. Two exams, kind of, because we had a written in the morning and a lab practical in the afternoon. Neither of them was that bad, really, and I think I did pretty well on both of them. But I spent a lot of time on that class (especially if you count the time I spent studying for the 2 weekly quizzes on some of that material), and I don't really want to spend this evening studying, too. BUT since this is second year and we have two tests nearly every week, and at least one test every week but two (and one of them was last week), I already need to get on that. Especially since next week we have our first exam in Pharmacology, which as I understand it is basically the anatomy of second year. So I'm pretty worried about it. I haven't actually gotten to that studying yet...but I should at least get something done tonight.
Other than lots of studying, our first and uneventful DIC meeting, and a therio club meeting I attended purely for the free pizza, this week wasn't too exciting. I did order coveralls, though--therio club is selling embroidered coveralls as a fundraiser, and once we get them I can probably wear them to path club's big wetlabs, too. So that's cool.
This year my big sib didn't pass on anything, so I'm compiling a bunch of virtual resources onto a flash drive for my li'l sib. Today I actually got an email, though, from a friend in 4th year with a bunch of electronic resources that should be super helpful! I'm really glad for that. It's nice to not constantly have to rely on what other people put on dropbox.
I went to the Doctor Who viewing at the Mexican restaurant, too. I've probably mentioned it before, since I went for the 50th and also last week. I haven't found a good way to watch online, and since Certain People like to give me random comments about the episodes on Saturdays when they come out, I want to watch them as soon as possible. Which is apparently on Tuesdays at dinner. For the 50th and the first episode with the 12th doctor, it was a really good experience. Everyone was really excited, and it helped me get into the episode. This week, though, it was less great. I missed a bit of the beginning due to being stuck in traffic, and then people were kind of loud and made it harder to watch. One guy even wanted to do introductions and stuff in the middle of the episode. Like, I thought this was a Doctor Who viewing group? I'm not against a bit of commentary, but can we respect the show enough to not carry on unrelated conversations while I'm watching the new episode for the first time? So I don't know if I'm going back next Tuesday. When I was driving home, I was thinking definitely not. But, well, I still don't have a good alternative to watch the episode. So we'll see.
I also had my second riding lesson. This time I was on a bay mare named Lily, and all the lessons rode inside because it was raining. I will never get over being thankful for having an indoor arena--before I went to college, the barn where I rode had a few different rings, but none that were covered. So I've had several lessons canceled just because it rained. But this week, I still got to ride! There was a little gymnastic set up with 3 pretty low jumps that we went over a few times. We were pretty good, except that Lily kept landing on the wrong lead...even though the correct lead was the one she usually picks up automatically. So that's on me. I got the correct lead a few times, but mostly it was wrong. Especially at the end when I was jumping with one hand behind my back. At the very end of the lesson, my instructor asked me to post the trot with no stirrups for half a lap. I used to do no-stirrups work all the time in undergrad, and I really want to be good at it (and to get my muscle back)...plus, even in the huge ring we were working in, half a lap isn't much. So I did a lap and a half. I probably could have finished a full two laps except that my instructor asked me to come back in. So that, at least, made me feel pretty good about myself.
You know how last weekend was the first LSU football game? This weekend is the first home game. I've got a ticket, because my dad made me buy the season pass, and it's surprising how difficult it is to get rid of! I've messaged two people already who were looking to get a ticket, but one meant for next weekend and the other already decided not to go. So now I've got a couple more facebook messages waiting in the ether for the person to hopefully see it and respond...hopefully both of them don't try to take me up on it! And no, I really don't want to actually go to the game. See: pharm test on Tuesday.
Despite all that studying, I've also been doing some reading just for myself. I don't usually go for nonfiction (although there's a lot more of it on my to-read list now than there has been in the past), but I'm currently reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I'm about halfway to 2/3 of the way through it now, and it's really interesting. Sometimes I get kind of irritated, but generally the author seems to realize the importance of balance more than pushing an "Introvert Ideal" to counter the Extrovert Ideal she talks about. It also brings up a lot of questions that I find interesting, especially with my psych major background. Sometimes I wish I were having a conversation with her about this stuff instead of just reading it so I could ask her a bunch of questions (though, admittedly, frequently those questions are about what the control group was or how significance was calculated, for experiments she didn't even run). I haven't finished it yet, but I'm hoping to read the rest this weekend probably. You know, in between all the studying that also needs to happen.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
Whew!
Hi there; Birdie here!
I really love being so involved that I have twenty million things to do, but man is it exhausting! I spent time after class almost every day this week working on plans for the semester and posters for club fair for both DIC and path club. I also did a vidchat with my undergrad friends on Thursday, which mean that I had to work really hard to get enough studying done for my parasit quiz and still do that!
My riding lesson was great! Okay, I was kind of a mess. We did some no-stirrups work, and I was trying hard just to stay on the horse! I used to be pretty good at that...a year ago, when I last rode. It didn't help that my horse had a very bouncy trot! He was a cute pinto named Fox, and my instructor referred to him as "the advanced babysitter." Another instructor seemed impressed that I was on him for my first lesson--"so you must have some experience, then." I'm scheduled to keep having weekly riding lessons, and I'm really happy about that (thanks, dad, for giving me the money for it)! I did move them to Thursdays instead of Wednesdays, though, once I realized that Wednesdays are a TERRIBLE idea because both my officership clubs like to have wetlabs then. Towards the beginning of the lesson I couldn't keep the canter for more than a few steps, but at the end we cantered over a crossrail, so I'm already feeling happy about coming back to it. Now if only I could get my heels to remember how to stay down...
Yesterday I was supposed to be in the VetFit relay, but between group confusion (three members dropped out, then we found more, then two of the members were sick) and how tired I was (especially when I had to spend my lunch at club fair), I didn't even show up to watch.
Oh, and we had our first VBMA meeting sometime early in the week, too. The speaker was a financial consultant who talked to us about budgets. He gave us his email and offered to give us non-sponsored advice, so I asked him about whether there are any options for paying back private loans the way there are for government ones. If he tells me anything useful, I'll let you know, in case any of my readers will have private loans after vet school, too. Do I even have any readers anymore after the summer off? Besides my parents, of course (hi mom & dad!).
Today I decided not to go to the first WHL workday/orientation. I'm planning to feed the night birds again this semester, but I offered to do AM if that's where they need more help. A TON of first years signed up, so I'm not sure they need me at all, but I think I'd like to stick with it. What I did instead this morning was go running--which may have not been the greatest idea considering the rain that started somewhere over a mile into it. I think I might have to replace my old iPod, which got water damaged...luckily my car key still works, so I still regret nothing. I'm not sure exactly how far I ran today since I didn't do the whole track, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere between 2 and 3 miles so I'm still okay with that.
Tonight is the first LSU football game, against Wisconsin. Did I mention how our endocrinology teacher cares a lot about football? She passed around a sheet where we could predict the score of the game and whoever is closest gets a bonus point. I don't even remember what score I put (by the time I got the sheet, the one I wanted to pick was taken). People near me were googling and stuff like, what sorts of numbers are football scores? (multiples of 7, in case you were wondering). Apparently one of my classmates is having a party at his house to watch the game--I'm not sure whether I want to go. For one thing, I need to see how much studying I get done today. I took yesterday off, and I really want to get caught up on pharmacology objectives and study parasitology over this weekend. Speaking of which...I should probably get on that.
I really love being so involved that I have twenty million things to do, but man is it exhausting! I spent time after class almost every day this week working on plans for the semester and posters for club fair for both DIC and path club. I also did a vidchat with my undergrad friends on Thursday, which mean that I had to work really hard to get enough studying done for my parasit quiz and still do that!
My riding lesson was great! Okay, I was kind of a mess. We did some no-stirrups work, and I was trying hard just to stay on the horse! I used to be pretty good at that...a year ago, when I last rode. It didn't help that my horse had a very bouncy trot! He was a cute pinto named Fox, and my instructor referred to him as "the advanced babysitter." Another instructor seemed impressed that I was on him for my first lesson--"so you must have some experience, then." I'm scheduled to keep having weekly riding lessons, and I'm really happy about that (thanks, dad, for giving me the money for it)! I did move them to Thursdays instead of Wednesdays, though, once I realized that Wednesdays are a TERRIBLE idea because both my officership clubs like to have wetlabs then. Towards the beginning of the lesson I couldn't keep the canter for more than a few steps, but at the end we cantered over a crossrail, so I'm already feeling happy about coming back to it. Now if only I could get my heels to remember how to stay down...
Yesterday I was supposed to be in the VetFit relay, but between group confusion (three members dropped out, then we found more, then two of the members were sick) and how tired I was (especially when I had to spend my lunch at club fair), I didn't even show up to watch.
Oh, and we had our first VBMA meeting sometime early in the week, too. The speaker was a financial consultant who talked to us about budgets. He gave us his email and offered to give us non-sponsored advice, so I asked him about whether there are any options for paying back private loans the way there are for government ones. If he tells me anything useful, I'll let you know, in case any of my readers will have private loans after vet school, too. Do I even have any readers anymore after the summer off? Besides my parents, of course (hi mom & dad!).
Today I decided not to go to the first WHL workday/orientation. I'm planning to feed the night birds again this semester, but I offered to do AM if that's where they need more help. A TON of first years signed up, so I'm not sure they need me at all, but I think I'd like to stick with it. What I did instead this morning was go running--which may have not been the greatest idea considering the rain that started somewhere over a mile into it. I think I might have to replace my old iPod, which got water damaged...luckily my car key still works, so I still regret nothing. I'm not sure exactly how far I ran today since I didn't do the whole track, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere between 2 and 3 miles so I'm still okay with that.
Tonight is the first LSU football game, against Wisconsin. Did I mention how our endocrinology teacher cares a lot about football? She passed around a sheet where we could predict the score of the game and whoever is closest gets a bonus point. I don't even remember what score I put (by the time I got the sheet, the one I wanted to pick was taken). People near me were googling and stuff like, what sorts of numbers are football scores? (multiples of 7, in case you were wondering). Apparently one of my classmates is having a party at his house to watch the game--I'm not sure whether I want to go. For one thing, I need to see how much studying I get done today. I took yesterday off, and I really want to get caught up on pharmacology objectives and study parasitology over this weekend. Speaking of which...I should probably get on that.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
I'm back, baby!
Hi there; Birdie here!
Aaand I have been welcomed to second year! Like, can we talk about the fact that we had a test and a quiz on the first Friday back? It honestly wasn't bad at all--the exam was basically a review of what we learned about endocrinology in physiology, and our teacher gave us plenty of warning for what would be on the quiz. But that's still kind of a signal about what this semester is going to be...we have at least one exam every week except this week and the last week before the end of the semester. I have a new roommate this year, too, a c/o 2018-er who used to be in my class but had to defer for medical reasons. She has a cat, too, so that's fun!
This past weekend was crazy busy, and really fun. This week is pretty busy, too! But I'm happy with it, tbh. Not sure if I can keep it up once exams start in earnest, but I'm enjoying riding the wave right now.
On Friday my club officer stuff started up with a DIC officers meeting where we figured out wetlabs and meeting dates at lunch, and then after school I went with the path club president to meet with our faculty advisor and talk about the semester.
Friday night, we had a surprise birthday party for one of my classmates, which was such a good time! I made a funfetti cake to bring (because you can't have a birthday party without a cake, right?) and had a great time. I met a couple of first years (oh yeah, I also met my little sib--he's pretty awesome and I'd like to hang out with him more) and just had a great time socializing. I noticed that I kept coming back to the same few people, and that makes me really happy--I really have vet school friends!
Saturday morning I did my first 5k (after running for the first time in months the day before..maybe not the greatest idea, but shhh). I decided at literally the last minute to go and was probably the last one to register (AS they were lining up already). It was a "zoo zoom" to benefit cheetah conservation, and one of my classmates posted about it on our class facebook. My time was 33 minutes, which I'm actually quite proud of. And I was in the top 100 (...out of 141, and only counting females. But still. Shhh). Then that afternoon (ALL afternoon, tbh) was Homes for Hounds--a Purina-sponsored doghouse painting contest we did in groups of 4. Our house was "Batdog" themed, with colorful houses like New Orleans shotgun houses. And we won...4th place, which is the highest place you can get without getting a prize. Ah well--they called our team name at least. Raise the Ruff!
And then Sunday was Spay Day. I worked anaesthesia this time since I've never done that before and am not 100% comfortable cat wrangling. I didn't actually end up wrangling many, though, mostly weighing and pulling up drugs, though I did inject a couple and hold one. I did a great stick on one in a squeeze cage--and completely failed at a different one, twice, so I guess it evens out. After that, I realized how tiring my insanely busy weekend was! I still spent a few hours that night studying pharmacology with my friends though. That's the class I'm most worried about--one of my classmates had been a year above me until she failed pharmacology.
This week is pretty darn busy too. The club fair is on Friday, so I've had to do a lot of work with both path and DIC to prepare for those, including making the board for DIC. The things I was supposed to have Monday got cancelled due to immense amounts of rain, which was kind of a relief--after the weekend, I kind of needed the time to recharge. Last night I went to the Doctor Who viewing group to see the new episode (the first one with the 12th doctor). It was really good!
Friday is also our first Fridays in the Courtyard, and a Vet Fit relay. I might not be able to do that anymore though...I think 3 of our 5 group members backed out. Tomorrow I'm hopefully doing a group chat with my undergrad friends--and tonight I have a riding lesson! I'm super excited. I haven't been able to ride in a year, and I really miss it.
At this point, I don't think this weekend is going to be too busy, but who knows. Last Friday I thought this week would be quiet, too!
Aaand I have been welcomed to second year! Like, can we talk about the fact that we had a test and a quiz on the first Friday back? It honestly wasn't bad at all--the exam was basically a review of what we learned about endocrinology in physiology, and our teacher gave us plenty of warning for what would be on the quiz. But that's still kind of a signal about what this semester is going to be...we have at least one exam every week except this week and the last week before the end of the semester. I have a new roommate this year, too, a c/o 2018-er who used to be in my class but had to defer for medical reasons. She has a cat, too, so that's fun!
This past weekend was crazy busy, and really fun. This week is pretty busy, too! But I'm happy with it, tbh. Not sure if I can keep it up once exams start in earnest, but I'm enjoying riding the wave right now.
On Friday my club officer stuff started up with a DIC officers meeting where we figured out wetlabs and meeting dates at lunch, and then after school I went with the path club president to meet with our faculty advisor and talk about the semester.
Friday night, we had a surprise birthday party for one of my classmates, which was such a good time! I made a funfetti cake to bring (because you can't have a birthday party without a cake, right?) and had a great time. I met a couple of first years (oh yeah, I also met my little sib--he's pretty awesome and I'd like to hang out with him more) and just had a great time socializing. I noticed that I kept coming back to the same few people, and that makes me really happy--I really have vet school friends!
Saturday morning I did my first 5k (after running for the first time in months the day before..maybe not the greatest idea, but shhh). I decided at literally the last minute to go and was probably the last one to register (AS they were lining up already). It was a "zoo zoom" to benefit cheetah conservation, and one of my classmates posted about it on our class facebook. My time was 33 minutes, which I'm actually quite proud of. And I was in the top 100 (...out of 141, and only counting females. But still. Shhh). Then that afternoon (ALL afternoon, tbh) was Homes for Hounds--a Purina-sponsored doghouse painting contest we did in groups of 4. Our house was "Batdog" themed, with colorful houses like New Orleans shotgun houses. And we won...4th place, which is the highest place you can get without getting a prize. Ah well--they called our team name at least. Raise the Ruff!
And then Sunday was Spay Day. I worked anaesthesia this time since I've never done that before and am not 100% comfortable cat wrangling. I didn't actually end up wrangling many, though, mostly weighing and pulling up drugs, though I did inject a couple and hold one. I did a great stick on one in a squeeze cage--and completely failed at a different one, twice, so I guess it evens out. After that, I realized how tiring my insanely busy weekend was! I still spent a few hours that night studying pharmacology with my friends though. That's the class I'm most worried about--one of my classmates had been a year above me until she failed pharmacology.
This week is pretty darn busy too. The club fair is on Friday, so I've had to do a lot of work with both path and DIC to prepare for those, including making the board for DIC. The things I was supposed to have Monday got cancelled due to immense amounts of rain, which was kind of a relief--after the weekend, I kind of needed the time to recharge. Last night I went to the Doctor Who viewing group to see the new episode (the first one with the 12th doctor). It was really good!
Friday is also our first Fridays in the Courtyard, and a Vet Fit relay. I might not be able to do that anymore though...I think 3 of our 5 group members backed out. Tomorrow I'm hopefully doing a group chat with my undergrad friends--and tonight I have a riding lesson! I'm super excited. I haven't been able to ride in a year, and I really miss it.
At this point, I don't think this weekend is going to be too busy, but who knows. Last Friday I thought this week would be quiet, too!
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Nearly done...
Hi there; Birdie here!
I just got out of my pathology final, so all I have left is a bunch of meetings of my elective, bacteriology final Friday, and I'm done! Literally, that's all I have left; there's not even any bacteriology class left. Technically there's class time for it, but I already finished the last lab so I just need to do whatever they need us to do do close out. Of course, I still need to start studying bacteriology since I've been focused on path...luckily it's not a particularly difficult course and I have really good resources from previous years.
Last Thursday we had our multihead microscope wetlab. It was really cool. One of my classmates who came brought a slide of a biopsy from a mammary mass on her cat, and we looked at a bunch of blood smears. This stuff is even cooler now that I've actually had a bit of pathology and know somewhat what we're talking about. And I was actually really good at doing the blood smears (which was surprising since I wasn't last time). Then that evening I Google-hangout'd with a bunch of my friends from undergrad, which was nice. I hope we continue to do that.
On Friday I went to the scholarship and awards ceremony. I got to see some of my classmates and also my roommate get awards, but I didn't get anything. In future years, I won't show up unless I get an email that says I'm getting something. We weren't sure whether they'd been sent out this year, so I went anyway. Plus my friend said she was going (she didn't wind up getting anything either). At least there was a reception afterwards.
Saturday was the Josh Project crawfish boil/powderpuff football game, which I was sort of involved with setting up (I made the fliers and made announcements to my class). I didn't go, though, even to help set up. What I did instead was play Pathfinder. It was kind of frustrating how useless I was in combat, so after the session we talked about how to make my character better. It helped a lot when I found out I was supposed to be adding my +2 dex to hit, which means I didn't need to miss as much as I did. We also changed one of my feats and one of my discoveries, so I should be much more useful next time. I also liked that they pointed out how useful I am outside of combat--I have basically all the knowledge skills so I can roll to find out about pretty much anything, and I prepared a new extract that lets me identify magic items (which means we don't have to pay the guy in town to do it, and also we can start using things immediately without worrying about whether they're cursed or something). Altogether, it makes me feel much better and I'm really looking forward to this Saturday (which will be the last weekend I'm here for 4 weeks at least if not the whole summer).
Then on Sunday I did an ophthamology wetlab with surgery club, which was AWESOME. I highly recommend surgery club wetlabs, you learn a ton. The cadavers we used were the heads from cadavers that had been used in one of the electives (skin). We did corneal debridement and grid and punctate keratotomies--if an animal has an ulcer that's not healing because the attachments of epithelium to basement membrane are messed up, you remove all the unattached epithelium (and keep going until it all comes off), and then create little divots in the basement membrane so the epithelium will go in and adhere. The clinician said that punctate ones are better because the grid ones cause more vision distortion. This procedure you can do under just sedation or local anaesthetic (when you're comfortable with it); it doesn't need general anaesthesia. We also did temporary tarsorrahpy, so if an eye pops out of a dogs head (this happens sometimes with small brachycephalic breeds where the eyes are already bulging, even just with restraint) you decrease the size of the palpebral opening to hold it in for a while. This meant suturing, and marks the second time I've sutured, so that was a significant learning experience. The second years in the wetlab with me were really helpful with that, too. Then we did an eyelid mass removal, with a figure-8 suture to close. I took a few tries, but I'm really proud of how I finished that. Then we finished up with an enucleation--eyeball removal. I was the second one to get my eye out. I didn't get much out of the closure for that one though since 1) I was kind of in a hurry to get out of there because that was 4+ hours I didn't spend studying pathology and 2) I'm not really sure of the Correct way to do a simple continuous suture and I don't want to put a bunch of effort into learning the wrong thing. But anyway, we did a lot, I learned a lot, and it was 110% worth the studying time lost.
Yesterday I met with the dean of students (for the third attempt) to get flight reservations for my trip to VLE. The timing is kind of a mess since the cheapest flights don't get in until after 2, when the last shuttle from the airport to the "camp" or wherever where the experience is actually held. I'm hoping we get to fly on United since I get reward miles with them, but they are not the cheapest (even if I did manage to find flights that work great for not TOO much more expensive than the state will pay for...but more expensive is more expensive). So that's still a work in progress.
I just got out of my pathology final, so all I have left is a bunch of meetings of my elective, bacteriology final Friday, and I'm done! Literally, that's all I have left; there's not even any bacteriology class left. Technically there's class time for it, but I already finished the last lab so I just need to do whatever they need us to do do close out. Of course, I still need to start studying bacteriology since I've been focused on path...luckily it's not a particularly difficult course and I have really good resources from previous years.
Last Thursday we had our multihead microscope wetlab. It was really cool. One of my classmates who came brought a slide of a biopsy from a mammary mass on her cat, and we looked at a bunch of blood smears. This stuff is even cooler now that I've actually had a bit of pathology and know somewhat what we're talking about. And I was actually really good at doing the blood smears (which was surprising since I wasn't last time). Then that evening I Google-hangout'd with a bunch of my friends from undergrad, which was nice. I hope we continue to do that.
On Friday I went to the scholarship and awards ceremony. I got to see some of my classmates and also my roommate get awards, but I didn't get anything. In future years, I won't show up unless I get an email that says I'm getting something. We weren't sure whether they'd been sent out this year, so I went anyway. Plus my friend said she was going (she didn't wind up getting anything either). At least there was a reception afterwards.
Saturday was the Josh Project crawfish boil/powderpuff football game, which I was sort of involved with setting up (I made the fliers and made announcements to my class). I didn't go, though, even to help set up. What I did instead was play Pathfinder. It was kind of frustrating how useless I was in combat, so after the session we talked about how to make my character better. It helped a lot when I found out I was supposed to be adding my +2 dex to hit, which means I didn't need to miss as much as I did. We also changed one of my feats and one of my discoveries, so I should be much more useful next time. I also liked that they pointed out how useful I am outside of combat--I have basically all the knowledge skills so I can roll to find out about pretty much anything, and I prepared a new extract that lets me identify magic items (which means we don't have to pay the guy in town to do it, and also we can start using things immediately without worrying about whether they're cursed or something). Altogether, it makes me feel much better and I'm really looking forward to this Saturday (which will be the last weekend I'm here for 4 weeks at least if not the whole summer).
Then on Sunday I did an ophthamology wetlab with surgery club, which was AWESOME. I highly recommend surgery club wetlabs, you learn a ton. The cadavers we used were the heads from cadavers that had been used in one of the electives (skin). We did corneal debridement and grid and punctate keratotomies--if an animal has an ulcer that's not healing because the attachments of epithelium to basement membrane are messed up, you remove all the unattached epithelium (and keep going until it all comes off), and then create little divots in the basement membrane so the epithelium will go in and adhere. The clinician said that punctate ones are better because the grid ones cause more vision distortion. This procedure you can do under just sedation or local anaesthetic (when you're comfortable with it); it doesn't need general anaesthesia. We also did temporary tarsorrahpy, so if an eye pops out of a dogs head (this happens sometimes with small brachycephalic breeds where the eyes are already bulging, even just with restraint) you decrease the size of the palpebral opening to hold it in for a while. This meant suturing, and marks the second time I've sutured, so that was a significant learning experience. The second years in the wetlab with me were really helpful with that, too. Then we did an eyelid mass removal, with a figure-8 suture to close. I took a few tries, but I'm really proud of how I finished that. Then we finished up with an enucleation--eyeball removal. I was the second one to get my eye out. I didn't get much out of the closure for that one though since 1) I was kind of in a hurry to get out of there because that was 4+ hours I didn't spend studying pathology and 2) I'm not really sure of the Correct way to do a simple continuous suture and I don't want to put a bunch of effort into learning the wrong thing. But anyway, we did a lot, I learned a lot, and it was 110% worth the studying time lost.
Yesterday I met with the dean of students (for the third attempt) to get flight reservations for my trip to VLE. The timing is kind of a mess since the cheapest flights don't get in until after 2, when the last shuttle from the airport to the "camp" or wherever where the experience is actually held. I'm hoping we get to fly on United since I get reward miles with them, but they are not the cheapest (even if I did manage to find flights that work great for not TOO much more expensive than the state will pay for...but more expensive is more expensive). So that's still a work in progress.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Crazy busy
Hi there; Birdie here!
I am now two weeks from being 1/4 a DVM. Pathology final next Tuesday, then bacteriology on Friday, and then I'm done with first year!
On the minus side, I got my third and final summer rejection, for the Banfield summer job program. I'm really not excited about sending out emails and talking to clinics and maybe thinking about trying to get a paying job. But honestly I'd only be available for like 10 weeks, and no one's gonna hire me for that when I was more available last summer and still got rejected for that reason. Really quite disappointed about the whole not making money thing.
Integrative med was a pretty cool class. I really liked having labs every day. I don't think I learned that much useful stuff in it though since you pretty much need a whole certification course to be able to do any of that stuff. I'm not really sure whether I'm up for that. Some of the stuff was interesting (like the community practice day, and the massage lab was great since I can actually just do that on my own pets), but some of it was a lot more detail about traditional Chinese medicine and why it's great than I need since I'm not going to practice it. What I got out of that bit was that it's a thing I can refer for. I'm starting my other elective today, and we already got an assignment--to bring in two articles for class. I'm pretty excited about this class, and hoping there will be more I get out of it to actually use in practice.
Remember how last Friday was the dance I decided not to go to? Well, my good friend decided not to go too (her boyfriend had hurt his foot and wasn't really up for dress shoes/standing up all night at a dance), so I spent the evening playing video games at there house, which was a ton of fun. I enjoyed it much more than I would have enjoyed the drunkfest that the dance was.
Saturday we had the feline necropsy wetlab. Once again I am not good at necropsy wetlabs. I'm totally fine when I'm doing it, but when we're just standing around in front of a dead animal talking about it I start feeling not-good and need to sit down. It didn't even smell that bad! It was cool though to actually do it. We worked in pairs, and the cat I was working on had multifocal tiny pale lesions in his liver that the residents said were probably parasite migration. We didn't see the same lesions in the kidneys, but they might have been there microscopically. We actually took out the brain this time (for the dog last semester, I took of the head but didn't get the brain out) and there now exists a picture of me triumphantly holding a cat brain. It might also be my officer picture for path club. Some other people were joking around and said that my partner wanted to keep the brain, so one of the residents actually put it in a bag with fixative for her to take home! I will admit, if I knew that was an option I might have asked to keep the brain. We're having our last multihead microscope wetlab tomorrow, and it's blood focused and we might even get to practice making blood smears.
Then Saturday night I went to a friend (and Pathfinder groupmate)'s birthday party. I made macaroni and cheese in "collaboration" with my neighbor friend, but then let her take credit for that (she didn't really, but I said she could) because I also made a coca-cola cake. I thought I was showing off with putting roses on it, but I got totally shown up by a cream cheese-chocolate covered strawberry cake, with cream-cheese filled chocolate-covered strawberries to go with it. It was a lot of fun and involved a lot of playing with kitties, and I only left early (right before they started playing Cards Against Humanity) because I got a text from my sister and went to meet her and her muppet. We hung out at a coffeeshop for a while before heading to a bar where they had some really cool firedancers. I was impressed. So basically that night was pretty great.
Sunday of course was Pathfinder day since I had the wetlab Saturday. I continued to be pretty useless in combat, but my alchemist character got to do some science! There were a couple of pools of water (one rimmed with skulls) that I dipped a series of things in to try and figure out what they did. I took samples, too. I'm still not sure what they did, actually (one cleaned stuff and the other just made stuff wet, but I'm convinced there's more to it). It was really fun, and we get to level up! It's a little higher optimization than I'm used to though and I didn't really like when the things I wanted (because they're cool) got shut down because they weren't practical enough. It's DnD--I can literally make magic fire, why do I have to be practical? Plus I thought the thing I wanted was a really good thing given the way our last adventure went. But whatever.
Monday there was a lab animal club meeting at lunch, which I attended because free food. The speaker was the first boarded lab animal vet I've met who I actually liked, but I was still kind of turned off by the way she talked about private practice as boring and kind of lesser. It annoys me when people promoting alternative vet med paths rag on private practice because that's what I want to do and there's nothing wrong with that...sometimes listening to them it's hard to remember that though.
Other than that I've basically been studying pathology, though last night I did make dinner for my study buddy and her boyfriend (plus her/kind of our since I hang out there all the time tutor). It was chicken and sausage jambalaya, and it was pretty awesome.
This weekend I was going to do the ultrasound thing, but...there were 3 timeslots, and they put me in the one that conflicts with Pathfinder. Since there's only 1 or 2 weekends left before summer and I'm not sure whether we'll play at all then, I picked that instead. There were like a dozen people ready to take my place though, so I don't mind. I'm not leaving them shorthanded (it's a volunteer/experience thing, kinda like spay day but with ultrasound CE as far as I can tell). I'm still doing an ophthamology wetlab on Sunday though! I'm kind of glad the ultrasound thing fell through, it would have been a lot for this weekend. Especially when I have to study for my 2 finals.
I am now two weeks from being 1/4 a DVM. Pathology final next Tuesday, then bacteriology on Friday, and then I'm done with first year!
On the minus side, I got my third and final summer rejection, for the Banfield summer job program. I'm really not excited about sending out emails and talking to clinics and maybe thinking about trying to get a paying job. But honestly I'd only be available for like 10 weeks, and no one's gonna hire me for that when I was more available last summer and still got rejected for that reason. Really quite disappointed about the whole not making money thing.
Integrative med was a pretty cool class. I really liked having labs every day. I don't think I learned that much useful stuff in it though since you pretty much need a whole certification course to be able to do any of that stuff. I'm not really sure whether I'm up for that. Some of the stuff was interesting (like the community practice day, and the massage lab was great since I can actually just do that on my own pets), but some of it was a lot more detail about traditional Chinese medicine and why it's great than I need since I'm not going to practice it. What I got out of that bit was that it's a thing I can refer for. I'm starting my other elective today, and we already got an assignment--to bring in two articles for class. I'm pretty excited about this class, and hoping there will be more I get out of it to actually use in practice.
Remember how last Friday was the dance I decided not to go to? Well, my good friend decided not to go too (her boyfriend had hurt his foot and wasn't really up for dress shoes/standing up all night at a dance), so I spent the evening playing video games at there house, which was a ton of fun. I enjoyed it much more than I would have enjoyed the drunkfest that the dance was.
Saturday we had the feline necropsy wetlab. Once again I am not good at necropsy wetlabs. I'm totally fine when I'm doing it, but when we're just standing around in front of a dead animal talking about it I start feeling not-good and need to sit down. It didn't even smell that bad! It was cool though to actually do it. We worked in pairs, and the cat I was working on had multifocal tiny pale lesions in his liver that the residents said were probably parasite migration. We didn't see the same lesions in the kidneys, but they might have been there microscopically. We actually took out the brain this time (for the dog last semester, I took of the head but didn't get the brain out) and there now exists a picture of me triumphantly holding a cat brain. It might also be my officer picture for path club. Some other people were joking around and said that my partner wanted to keep the brain, so one of the residents actually put it in a bag with fixative for her to take home! I will admit, if I knew that was an option I might have asked to keep the brain. We're having our last multihead microscope wetlab tomorrow, and it's blood focused and we might even get to practice making blood smears.
Then Saturday night I went to a friend (and Pathfinder groupmate)'s birthday party. I made macaroni and cheese in "collaboration" with my neighbor friend, but then let her take credit for that (she didn't really, but I said she could) because I also made a coca-cola cake. I thought I was showing off with putting roses on it, but I got totally shown up by a cream cheese-chocolate covered strawberry cake, with cream-cheese filled chocolate-covered strawberries to go with it. It was a lot of fun and involved a lot of playing with kitties, and I only left early (right before they started playing Cards Against Humanity) because I got a text from my sister and went to meet her and her muppet. We hung out at a coffeeshop for a while before heading to a bar where they had some really cool firedancers. I was impressed. So basically that night was pretty great.
Sunday of course was Pathfinder day since I had the wetlab Saturday. I continued to be pretty useless in combat, but my alchemist character got to do some science! There were a couple of pools of water (one rimmed with skulls) that I dipped a series of things in to try and figure out what they did. I took samples, too. I'm still not sure what they did, actually (one cleaned stuff and the other just made stuff wet, but I'm convinced there's more to it). It was really fun, and we get to level up! It's a little higher optimization than I'm used to though and I didn't really like when the things I wanted (because they're cool) got shut down because they weren't practical enough. It's DnD--I can literally make magic fire, why do I have to be practical? Plus I thought the thing I wanted was a really good thing given the way our last adventure went. But whatever.
Monday there was a lab animal club meeting at lunch, which I attended because free food. The speaker was the first boarded lab animal vet I've met who I actually liked, but I was still kind of turned off by the way she talked about private practice as boring and kind of lesser. It annoys me when people promoting alternative vet med paths rag on private practice because that's what I want to do and there's nothing wrong with that...sometimes listening to them it's hard to remember that though.
Other than that I've basically been studying pathology, though last night I did make dinner for my study buddy and her boyfriend (plus her/kind of our since I hang out there all the time tutor). It was chicken and sausage jambalaya, and it was pretty awesome.
This weekend I was going to do the ultrasound thing, but...there were 3 timeslots, and they put me in the one that conflicts with Pathfinder. Since there's only 1 or 2 weekends left before summer and I'm not sure whether we'll play at all then, I picked that instead. There were like a dozen people ready to take my place though, so I don't mind. I'm not leaving them shorthanded (it's a volunteer/experience thing, kinda like spay day but with ultrasound CE as far as I can tell). I'm still doing an ophthamology wetlab on Sunday though! I'm kind of glad the ultrasound thing fell through, it would have been a lot for this weekend. Especially when I have to study for my 2 finals.
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