It's finally starting to feel more like fall here in Raleigh - got to spend the morning outside in the cool air wrangling some beef cattle for my last TAU course of the semester. Our group did some basic herding and handling, and we all practiced using a head chute. The clinician and a few older students did pregnancy checks for each of the cows, so it was pretty cool to feel like our work was actually helping in some way.
Today we had our first quiz after break - histology - and I think it went pretty well for us as a class. Since the last exam we've been going through organs and organ systems and doing identification work for each. This quiz covered the GI tract and some of the accessory organs (liver, pancreas, gall bladder), and we started some work on the eye today. Pretty cool stuff! It's amazing to see how everything in your body fits together so well to do everything it needs to.
Anatomy has been kind of a pain since the last exam. We've started in with all of the head and cranial stuff, and geez - there is a LOT to learn! I have one of our group's dog skulls sitting on my table now, and I think I'll be practicing the skull bones and parts tonight. We spent this week doing the dissection of the bones, muscles, mouth, eye, nose, etc., and we start right in with the cranial nerves on Monday, which is supposed to be the beastliest part of the course. I think that's the case in just about any vet school for some reason! Since we're dealing with such a small part of the anatomy (literally JUST the head itself), you can imagine that every nerve, blood vessel, muscle, fossa, and foramen is just as tiny. I can't help but feel like I'm blatantly missing a lot of things during our lab period, which could be a problem come exam-time. Plus our group is working on the cat right now, which doesn't help the whole visualization thing at all - thank goodness we switch cadavers in a few days!
In both good and bad news, we only have 2 1/2 weeks of class left before our finals week starts. Pretty cool that the first semester is almost finished but pretty scary that I'm expected to be ready for a half dozen exams in that amount of time. Eeep. Gotta get cracking!
Buuuuut this weekend does hold some quality distractions in store. Tomorrow morning I get to head back into school for Saturday necropsy! It's the first one I signed up for, and I'm pretty excited to see gross dissection of some pathologies. Getting my car inspected right after, and tomorrow night is the annual vet school Halloween party. Every year I promise myself I'll start planning an awesome costume really early and every year I fail. So I'm re-using my Hermione Granger costume again this year. I already have all the parts, it's comfy, and I can decently pull it off. Works for me!
Gotta start being productive between all of that stuff because the boy is coming up for a visit next weekend, and I don't get nearly as much done when he's here. I think I have some pretty good ideas of things to do while he's here, which I'm not sharing in case he's reading this! His birthday is coming up soon, and I feel like there's not many things I can get for him, so I'll treat him to a few fun days instead.
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