Monday, Monday

Another Monday and the start of another week - yay!

More anatomy, such a shocker.  A lot of people are freaking about the first exam coming up on Wednesday - it covers the entire thoracic limb and includes both a practical and written portion.  After some pretty low-key studying this weekend, a few extra hours in lab on Sunday morning, and another hour of review tonight, I feel pretty good.  As in, I think I could take this tomorrow and do okay.  It's a really nice feeling so I hope I'm not just underselling the difficulty of the material.

In undergrad, I was a high-stress studier and learner my first two or three semesters.  Lots of crying over notes, wringing of hands, anxiety, etc.  And I did okay but not great.  Something kicked into gear during my second year, and I stopped a lot of that pretty quickly.  Maybe it was survival mode for organic chemistry, but I started telling myself to just study until I knew it, stop worrying so much, and take what I could get on the exams without losing sleep or tears.  And I did better as a result.  I put less work into it and got a ton more out. 

I think this mindset and method of studying is going to serve me well in veterinary school.  So far, the other classes I have are still in the simple, easy-to-digest stage which is letting me focus on anatomy for the most part.  There will come a time this semester when I have too much information to learn and not enough time to do it, and I need to learn to be okay with that.  And the way that I've learned to think about my schoolwork and how to approach it and interact with it will - hopefully - let me adopt that mindset fairly easily.  As far as anatomy goes, my study habits and the way I digest information has let me reach my personal "saturation level" with the subject a full day before the test.

I know it and I feel comfortable with it.  It's a really good feeling.  Hopefully it plays out on the test.

Other than that, there's a bacteriology quiz tomorrow that I haven't done too much review for.  The professor has released the past quizzes to us, and none of them seemed too tough.  His questions also were pretty continuous from year to year, so they should be a good basis from which to study.

And in other news, I've also tentatively submitted my name for class president and secretary runnings.  I have to decide if I reeeeally want to go for it and submit a blurb by Friday.  Honestly, the classmate also running for prez will have a strong backing, so I'll likely get creamed.  But you don't know until you try!