Because it's going too fast!
Seriously, where has the semester gone?!? Only four more days of class (and two pesky little exams in the way) before Spring Break is here! After that, only three more weeks until Easter and the end of semester classes. I do NOT feel ready to face the fact that I'm almost 1/4 of the way to a DVM. I don't know enough yet...
School is rolling along, but it's not even funny how "out of love" I am with anatomy right now. Last semester, yes, it was a pain in the neck sometimes to be learning all of these itty bitty pieces of animal and how they connect and where they go. But it was bearable. It was still very new, sometimes interesting, and usually only mildly painful (ahem, neuroanatomy). This semester? Ouch. I'm so, so, so sick of that class. I'm sick of sitting in lab for eight hours. I'm sick of cramming my brain with a bunch of teeny details that I know I won't remember next year or use in practice. I'm sick of the smell of moldy cadavers. I'm sick of hugely ridiculous exams that are worth two credit hours a piece. Don't get me wrong, it's still kind of fun to joke around with labmates and learn some of the really weird or cool bits of anatomy, but overall? I'm over it.
/end whiny rant.
Ooooother than that, same old, same old. Immunology and renal physio exams this week which, hopefully, will go okay. We just about wanted to kiss our current physio teacher because she decided to make the test multiple choice - a first for the semester in any of our classes and a huge load off! It's probably bad, but I definitely study for a multiple choice test differently than for an essay test. My brain is slightly fried, and I'm excited that recognition and recall rather than regurgitation and comprehension is the name of the game on Thursday.
After that, I get to pack up and head home for a few days to see my mom and puppy dogs! Hoping to visit a few friends in the area and get some nights of good sleep before then flying out to Omaha to spend a weekend with the boy at his new project site (how's that for an exotic vacation locale?). As much as I don't want to...I probably will have to do some work over break seeing as how we have an exam the Wednesday we come back. Ugggggh.
I also got word that I got a position in the research program here for the summer! I'll be doing work on respiratory epithelial cell transitions that occur during fibrosis, which is pretty nifty. Hope to learn a lot!
And, in happier news, I'll be on a baking frenzy this week for the many bakesales at school. On the docket? Pumpkin pie bars, white chocolate coconut blondies, and cinnamon rolls. Tasty!
P.S. I want a dog. Bad. *sigh*
Showing posts with label anatomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anatomy. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Oh, Wenckebach.
This will likely not even be amusing to anyone not in the medical fields, but we got to watch it during cardio physiology the other day and couldn't stop laughing. It's describing a phenomenon called Wenckebach or AV Block Second Degree. Basically what happens is your atria depolarize normally but sometimes the conduction to the ventricles gets skipped and you lose ventricular depolarization for that cardiac cycle.
Cardio is great - I'm really enjoying it overall, and it makes a whole lot of sense (which is a relief since the exam is next week!).
Anatomy is still messy and gushy as always - we're now in the abdominal cavities of our cadavers and are comparing GI tracts which are very different from each other as well as the dog and cat. The ruminants (goats and calves) have huge multi-chambered stomachs and a very looooong jejunum and large intestine. The large intestine even does this awesome coil at one point! The horse is just weird and has an expanded cecum and long, torturous, winding large intestine which makes you realize why they colic so much (10% of horses annually!). Also, our goat is pregnant so we're really excited to start the reproductive tract dissections in a few weeks to see the placentation of the uterus.
The class is chugging along as a whole. The consensus is that immunology isn't the greatest class ever - it's way too condensed and chopped for the density of information. Some things (like biochemistry or immuno) are actually easier to understand if you have to learn and memorize a ton of details. It makes everything clearer in the end. This course is being taught as a very broad overview of a lot of things and it isn't going to have that nice neat moment of clarity at the end. Oh well. Exam also is coming up early next week, so this weekend will involve a lot of book-time.
On a non-class related note, I'm trying to eat a little better this semester and stick with salad every night for dinner when possible. I don't care much for the three or four pounds I've gained since vet school. I wish I had the willpower to give up the lunch meetings but it's one of my favorite things during the day!
Cardio is great - I'm really enjoying it overall, and it makes a whole lot of sense (which is a relief since the exam is next week!).
Anatomy is still messy and gushy as always - we're now in the abdominal cavities of our cadavers and are comparing GI tracts which are very different from each other as well as the dog and cat. The ruminants (goats and calves) have huge multi-chambered stomachs and a very looooong jejunum and large intestine. The large intestine even does this awesome coil at one point! The horse is just weird and has an expanded cecum and long, torturous, winding large intestine which makes you realize why they colic so much (10% of horses annually!). Also, our goat is pregnant so we're really excited to start the reproductive tract dissections in a few weeks to see the placentation of the uterus.
The class is chugging along as a whole. The consensus is that immunology isn't the greatest class ever - it's way too condensed and chopped for the density of information. Some things (like biochemistry or immuno) are actually easier to understand if you have to learn and memorize a ton of details. It makes everything clearer in the end. This course is being taught as a very broad overview of a lot of things and it isn't going to have that nice neat moment of clarity at the end. Oh well. Exam also is coming up early next week, so this weekend will involve a lot of book-time.
On a non-class related note, I'm trying to eat a little better this semester and stick with salad every night for dinner when possible. I don't care much for the three or four pounds I've gained since vet school. I wish I had the willpower to give up the lunch meetings but it's one of my favorite things during the day!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Pathology?
We had a pretty informative lunch meeting today for the PathHeads club about summer job opportunities and externships in the pathology field. Really would love to get one of those for the coming summer break. There's the chance to work in the clinical pathology lab at the vet school, which would be helpful no matter what career I enter. Think that'll be on my short-list of applications this year.
Pathology is pretty freaking cool and something I'm seriously interested in exploring as a possible career. Just being able to see how everything fits together in a case and either be instrumental in designing the best possible treatment plan (if you're in clinical path) or figuring out what happened in a case post mortem (if you're in anatomical path) is amazing. The fact that disease follows a set, almost regimented, series of steps and that hardly anything is random or unexplainable in the body is amazing, and pathologists are lucky enough to be the ones who put all the pieces and steps together in a logical order.
I still am so unsure of what I want to do, but this avenue for my future career appeals to me more every time I hear and learn about it. There's also a dinner talk coming up with hospital interns and residencies about pursuing further training after completing a veterinary degree. We heard from an admissions committee member a few weeks ago in our careers class, and that was a frightening and sobering talk. I'd love to hear more about the process of getting there and the experience of being there from doctors who are just now in the middle of it. I'm sure it'll still be overwhelming to think about, but hopefully some good information will come out of it.
And on the subject of stuff involving live animals, my TAU group had our dairy cattle lab today. I LOVE dairy medicine. Like, a lot. You can't get much better than a cow for a patient, and they really are incredible animals. Next time you're near an adult Holstein cow (meaning female, already had at least one baby), take a look at the abdomen. You'll see these big pipe-like ripples running through the skin. Those are veins and arteries that are supplying the udder! To produce an average of 23,000 pounds of milk per year (seriously!!!) they have to send an enormous amount of blood to the udder all day, every day. Amazing, amazing stuff. But anyway, we got to cast the cows (meaning, pull them down with ropes to do a physical exam with them prone), halter them, and practice bleeding from the tail veins. That class is sooooo much fun - getting to be outside, working with live animals in beautiful fall weather, and learning about hands-on veterinary care is a blast.
This weekend is going to be consumed with huge amounts of studying. The anatomy exam on Wednesday is going to eat up the majority of my time, but I'd like to squeeze some bacteriology in there as well...seeing as how we have a quiz on Tuesday. Anatomy is pretty amazing. Seeing how everything fits together, how form and function are so meshed, and how species can be both incredibly similar but vastly different is lots of fun. However, being in the lab for 10+ hours per week, plunging your hands into a plastic tub to pull out a male reproductive tract specimen (testes and all), and opening your locker to smell a big whiff of formalin can make it lose some of its charm.
Once this exam is over and I can enjoy Fall Break, I think I'll be refreshed and ready to finish up the last weeks of the semester. Until then, I'll see you in the lab.
Pathology is pretty freaking cool and something I'm seriously interested in exploring as a possible career. Just being able to see how everything fits together in a case and either be instrumental in designing the best possible treatment plan (if you're in clinical path) or figuring out what happened in a case post mortem (if you're in anatomical path) is amazing. The fact that disease follows a set, almost regimented, series of steps and that hardly anything is random or unexplainable in the body is amazing, and pathologists are lucky enough to be the ones who put all the pieces and steps together in a logical order.
I still am so unsure of what I want to do, but this avenue for my future career appeals to me more every time I hear and learn about it. There's also a dinner talk coming up with hospital interns and residencies about pursuing further training after completing a veterinary degree. We heard from an admissions committee member a few weeks ago in our careers class, and that was a frightening and sobering talk. I'd love to hear more about the process of getting there and the experience of being there from doctors who are just now in the middle of it. I'm sure it'll still be overwhelming to think about, but hopefully some good information will come out of it.
And on the subject of stuff involving live animals, my TAU group had our dairy cattle lab today. I LOVE dairy medicine. Like, a lot. You can't get much better than a cow for a patient, and they really are incredible animals. Next time you're near an adult Holstein cow (meaning female, already had at least one baby), take a look at the abdomen. You'll see these big pipe-like ripples running through the skin. Those are veins and arteries that are supplying the udder! To produce an average of 23,000 pounds of milk per year (seriously!!!) they have to send an enormous amount of blood to the udder all day, every day. Amazing, amazing stuff. But anyway, we got to cast the cows (meaning, pull them down with ropes to do a physical exam with them prone), halter them, and practice bleeding from the tail veins. That class is sooooo much fun - getting to be outside, working with live animals in beautiful fall weather, and learning about hands-on veterinary care is a blast.
This weekend is going to be consumed with huge amounts of studying. The anatomy exam on Wednesday is going to eat up the majority of my time, but I'd like to squeeze some bacteriology in there as well...seeing as how we have a quiz on Tuesday. Anatomy is pretty amazing. Seeing how everything fits together, how form and function are so meshed, and how species can be both incredibly similar but vastly different is lots of fun. However, being in the lab for 10+ hours per week, plunging your hands into a plastic tub to pull out a male reproductive tract specimen (testes and all), and opening your locker to smell a big whiff of formalin can make it lose some of its charm.
Once this exam is over and I can enjoy Fall Break, I think I'll be refreshed and ready to finish up the last weeks of the semester. Until then, I'll see you in the lab.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
When in doubt, it's diarrhea.
Subject line? That's in reference to the number of times I have read, heard, written, or thought about diarrhea over the past few days in preparation for our bacteriology quiz today. It covered E. coli, Salmonella, and a few other random genera of bacteria. And pretty much all of them cause some sort of diarrheal process. Fun!
Even though it was just a few days ago that we took our anatomy and physiology exams, it feels like weeks have already gone by. And our next round is starting up very soon. The first histology exam is this coming Monday, and our first anatomy quiz is on Thursday. I'm not too worried about histology - everything is pretty straightforward as long as your understand the function and structures of the different tissues and how they will look when stained. It'll be a long test, but hopefully it'll go well.
Anatomy is definitely switching gears. We were just settling into our pattern of memorizing muscles, attachments, innervations, etc. and now we're working on the thoracic and abdominal cavities. We started with the axial muscles attached to the spine, neck, and ribs and took a look at some of the blood vessels and nerves associated with those areas. Today we actually cracked into the thoracic cavity of our group's cat to start with the components of that cavity - the heart, lungs, vessels, etc. It's a very different type of information to learn and absorb, and I think it will require some rethinking of how to get it all in my head. Not to mention that this next exam isn't for practically a month and will cover the spinal muscles, vertebrae, thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities and all of the associated blood supply and innervation. Woof.
And have I mentioned lately how awful dissecting a cat is? Everything is this homogeneous clay-like color, so it's tough to easily differentiate anything. Plus, all of the nerves and vessels are tiny, thread-like, and very friable, so it's a little frustrating. Comparing a cat's thorax to that of a 70 pound dog emphasize how much more challenging the cat insists on being.
Also got my second anatomy exam back today and did exactly the same as I did on the first (to the point), so at least I'm consistent! If I can pull that grade on the third massive one, I'll be super-thrilled. We're supposed to get our physiology exams back tomorrow, so hopefully that'll have some good news attached.
Plus...less than two days until my next visit with my guy! :)
Even though it was just a few days ago that we took our anatomy and physiology exams, it feels like weeks have already gone by. And our next round is starting up very soon. The first histology exam is this coming Monday, and our first anatomy quiz is on Thursday. I'm not too worried about histology - everything is pretty straightforward as long as your understand the function and structures of the different tissues and how they will look when stained. It'll be a long test, but hopefully it'll go well.
Anatomy is definitely switching gears. We were just settling into our pattern of memorizing muscles, attachments, innervations, etc. and now we're working on the thoracic and abdominal cavities. We started with the axial muscles attached to the spine, neck, and ribs and took a look at some of the blood vessels and nerves associated with those areas. Today we actually cracked into the thoracic cavity of our group's cat to start with the components of that cavity - the heart, lungs, vessels, etc. It's a very different type of information to learn and absorb, and I think it will require some rethinking of how to get it all in my head. Not to mention that this next exam isn't for practically a month and will cover the spinal muscles, vertebrae, thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities and all of the associated blood supply and innervation. Woof.
And have I mentioned lately how awful dissecting a cat is? Everything is this homogeneous clay-like color, so it's tough to easily differentiate anything. Plus, all of the nerves and vessels are tiny, thread-like, and very friable, so it's a little frustrating. Comparing a cat's thorax to that of a 70 pound dog emphasize how much more challenging the cat insists on being.
Also got my second anatomy exam back today and did exactly the same as I did on the first (to the point), so at least I'm consistent! If I can pull that grade on the third massive one, I'll be super-thrilled. We're supposed to get our physiology exams back tomorrow, so hopefully that'll have some good news attached.
Plus...less than two days until my next visit with my guy! :)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
First Exam
First exam of vet school tomorrow - anatomy of the thoracic limb including bones, muscles, blood supply, and innervation.
My brain is totally full, and I don't think I'm going to study for very much longer. Another quick review of my notes, and off to bed in the next hour or so. Either I know it at this point or I don't...and I really feel confident that I know it. Hopefully it'll come out the right way on the exam and my brain doesn't decide to abandon me halfway through the practical.
Over and out.
My brain is totally full, and I don't think I'm going to study for very much longer. Another quick review of my notes, and off to bed in the next hour or so. Either I know it at this point or I don't...and I really feel confident that I know it. Hopefully it'll come out the right way on the exam and my brain doesn't decide to abandon me halfway through the practical.
Over and out.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The arm bone's connected to the hand bone...
Whew! It was great sleeping in for an hour or two today, but I'm still exhausted!
Was out with a few classmates until about 10:00 last night and had a blast. Six of us met up for dinner and spent the whole time talking about (naturally) vet school. I sometimes wish I had more to discuss or share other than that subject, but school really does consume my whole life from sun-up to sun-down. And so far, I like it that way. :) We were a little gossipy and compared notes on teachers and studying and classmates and who was going to be first in class and who the cliques would be, etc. We all seemed to be having really great experiences with our other classmates and hope that it turns out to be a low-drama class. Med and vet schools have reputations for becoming a little like high school. When you spend every single day with the same 80 people, everyone knows everyone's business sooner or later. And when you add in stress and a lot of type-A personalities, conflict always arises. But so far, so good in our class! *knock on wood*
Today I skipped out on going to lab in favor of staying in the apartment and drilling bones, muscles, nerves, and arteries of the forelimb. I feel pretty good with most of it though there are a few random pieces that my brain can't seem to retain. I think tomorrow I'm setting the alarm to go to lab in the morning and look at the models and cadavers and hopefully cement the studying I did today. Now that I know the paths of the arteries and nerves pretty well, I think it'll be easier to trace them in the cadavers and understand how they work.
I'm also meeting up for lunch tomorrow with a Penn State friend who is starting school at UNC this fall - it'll be great to see a familiar face from closer to home! I have to remember to make a grocery run on my way home - I love cereal for dinner, but I'm even running out of that! My freezer is stocked with tons of individually-boxed dishes I made before school started, but I hate to tap into that so early in the semester. I think I'll also pick up an extra Pyrex measuring cup. At school there are several microwaves in the cafeteria for our use, so I think I'll store the measuring cup along with tea bags and a travel mug in my locker - it'd be nice to have the ability to make some tea for evening or weekend study sessions.
Time to go do my dishes, wait for the boy to call (he's out camping this weekend), then head to bed. Can't believe so much sitting can get you this tired. :)
Was out with a few classmates until about 10:00 last night and had a blast. Six of us met up for dinner and spent the whole time talking about (naturally) vet school. I sometimes wish I had more to discuss or share other than that subject, but school really does consume my whole life from sun-up to sun-down. And so far, I like it that way. :) We were a little gossipy and compared notes on teachers and studying and classmates and who was going to be first in class and who the cliques would be, etc. We all seemed to be having really great experiences with our other classmates and hope that it turns out to be a low-drama class. Med and vet schools have reputations for becoming a little like high school. When you spend every single day with the same 80 people, everyone knows everyone's business sooner or later. And when you add in stress and a lot of type-A personalities, conflict always arises. But so far, so good in our class! *knock on wood*
Today I skipped out on going to lab in favor of staying in the apartment and drilling bones, muscles, nerves, and arteries of the forelimb. I feel pretty good with most of it though there are a few random pieces that my brain can't seem to retain. I think tomorrow I'm setting the alarm to go to lab in the morning and look at the models and cadavers and hopefully cement the studying I did today. Now that I know the paths of the arteries and nerves pretty well, I think it'll be easier to trace them in the cadavers and understand how they work.
I'm also meeting up for lunch tomorrow with a Penn State friend who is starting school at UNC this fall - it'll be great to see a familiar face from closer to home! I have to remember to make a grocery run on my way home - I love cereal for dinner, but I'm even running out of that! My freezer is stocked with tons of individually-boxed dishes I made before school started, but I hate to tap into that so early in the semester. I think I'll also pick up an extra Pyrex measuring cup. At school there are several microwaves in the cafeteria for our use, so I think I'll store the measuring cup along with tea bags and a travel mug in my locker - it'd be nice to have the ability to make some tea for evening or weekend study sessions.
Time to go do my dishes, wait for the boy to call (he's out camping this weekend), then head to bed. Can't believe so much sitting can get you this tired. :)
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Omotransversarius = Gay Dinosaur
The title of the post is from one of the lab group's way of remembering one of the muscles in the neck. It's not a mnemonic I use to remember the muscle, but it sure is funny! And indicative of how demented we already are as a group.
Bacteriology today was incredibly boring. I looooved my undergrad micro class and lab, but the professor we have this semester teaching us is...not so great. The upper classes warned us that he would be the "dud" of the semester, and so far I have to agree. He's very nice but extremely disorganized and inefficient in class. He skimmed through a whole section about environmental requirements for bacteria by dismissing it as "boring", which doesn't really help me on an exam or later in clinics. Lab was also kind of a waste. We had a twenty minute talk on how to do a gram stain and streak a plate (headdesk) and THEN had to watch him complete one of each in front of us - another ten minutes. Again, he's a super nice, sweet guy but just not the best teacher. And this is only our third class with him? Eeep.
Our lab groups in anatomy switched it up today. Unfortunately. My group very reluctantly gave up our pit gal Maude for one of the nasty rotting cats. And let me just say that while I didn't envy the people dissecting cats for the musculoskeletal system of the forelimb, I feel even worse for us that are now stuck dissecting them for the veins, arteries, and nerves! Holy crap, they're tiny! It's like trying to dig out these little blue, white, and pink threads from a mass of congealing, cottony playdoh. Oh, and the whole thing is so incredibly friable that the muscles are falling apart and shredding left and right. Identifying stuff for the next week is going to be a nightmare.
But we did get to practice live palpation on dogs today! We are using the dogs from the animal research lab on campus - today we had two incredibly sweet shepherd mixes named Chloe and Libra assisting us. And boy did it feel great to snuggle with a real live animal during class and also learn skills that will, you know, be practical in the field. I can now locate superficial cervical lymph nodes, the spine and acromion of the scapula, and most of the major bones in the brachium, antebrachium, and carpus. Saweet! Too bad I don't have a dog of my own here with me to practice.
Definitely miss Jesse and Ginger. I know that they're not getting nearly as much love and attention without me around. My dad loves them but he's so busy and not even home half the time. My mom could hardly care less about them. Wish I could bring them here to live with me but my apartment's so small and very few places allow GSDs, so Jesse's out. And I'm really reluctant to separate them or move Ginger now that she's pushing twelve years old. She's so used to going outside whenever she wants, strolling around the yard, and having a big house to explore and call her own. *sad face*
Oh, and it's T-minus seven days until our first anatomy exam. Already feeling slightly nauseous...
Bacteriology today was incredibly boring. I looooved my undergrad micro class and lab, but the professor we have this semester teaching us is...not so great. The upper classes warned us that he would be the "dud" of the semester, and so far I have to agree. He's very nice but extremely disorganized and inefficient in class. He skimmed through a whole section about environmental requirements for bacteria by dismissing it as "boring", which doesn't really help me on an exam or later in clinics. Lab was also kind of a waste. We had a twenty minute talk on how to do a gram stain and streak a plate (headdesk) and THEN had to watch him complete one of each in front of us - another ten minutes. Again, he's a super nice, sweet guy but just not the best teacher. And this is only our third class with him? Eeep.
Our lab groups in anatomy switched it up today. Unfortunately. My group very reluctantly gave up our pit gal Maude for one of the nasty rotting cats. And let me just say that while I didn't envy the people dissecting cats for the musculoskeletal system of the forelimb, I feel even worse for us that are now stuck dissecting them for the veins, arteries, and nerves! Holy crap, they're tiny! It's like trying to dig out these little blue, white, and pink threads from a mass of congealing, cottony playdoh. Oh, and the whole thing is so incredibly friable that the muscles are falling apart and shredding left and right. Identifying stuff for the next week is going to be a nightmare.
But we did get to practice live palpation on dogs today! We are using the dogs from the animal research lab on campus - today we had two incredibly sweet shepherd mixes named Chloe and Libra assisting us. And boy did it feel great to snuggle with a real live animal during class and also learn skills that will, you know, be practical in the field. I can now locate superficial cervical lymph nodes, the spine and acromion of the scapula, and most of the major bones in the brachium, antebrachium, and carpus. Saweet! Too bad I don't have a dog of my own here with me to practice.
Definitely miss Jesse and Ginger. I know that they're not getting nearly as much love and attention without me around. My dad loves them but he's so busy and not even home half the time. My mom could hardly care less about them. Wish I could bring them here to live with me but my apartment's so small and very few places allow GSDs, so Jesse's out. And I'm really reluctant to separate them or move Ginger now that she's pushing twelve years old. She's so used to going outside whenever she wants, strolling around the yard, and having a big house to explore and call her own. *sad face*
Oh, and it's T-minus seven days until our first anatomy exam. Already feeling slightly nauseous...
Monday, August 16, 2010
"When you touch yourself, you are soft and pliable..."
Words straight from our histology/cytology professor today. He was trying to explain the flexibility of the microtubules and filaments in the skin, and it came out a little awkwardly. But he also made a "Seinfeld" reference and had "Calvin and Hobbes" comics throughout his Powerpoint, so I was totally okay with it.
First Monday of the first full week of school, and I feel surprisingly rested and awake and ready to conquer my classes. Good thing since we learned about a dozen new muscles in anatomy and start blood vessels and nerves tomorrow! I feel like anatomy is the ONLY class I talk about, but it's only because the others are still review at this point - thank goodness! Gives me plenty of time to figure out how best to study for the class and absorb all of the information. My lab group has done a freaking beautiful job of the dissection so far (if I do say so myself). Our pit bull specimen, Maude, is looking great despite the skin being missing and numerous muscle transections on her left shoulder, chest, and forelimb. This week we're also starting some other anatomy aspects in lab including radiology (x-ray) interpretation and live palpation skills...meaning we actually get to touch a dog that isn't soaked in formalin!
Histology is actually a lot of fun, too. The professor (see above) is very sweet, energetic, and thorough. I've looked at cells under the microscope dozens upon dozens of times, but he's amazing at explaining exactly what we're seeing. Lab is a good mix of turning us loose with our partners and slide boxes and getting plenty of helpful feedback and hints on how to interpret the slide fields. It's really the way a class like that needs to be taught.
Okay, and there is a huuuge perk to vet school. We get butt-tons of free stuff thrown at us. Including meals! Almost every single day there's a lunch meeting you can choose to attend during lunch hour, usually put on by different clubs featuring a speaker or presentation. All you have to do is RSVP, show up, and chow down while learning lots of awesome stuff. Today the VMBA (Veterinary Medical Business Association) invited a local mobile surgery vet to speak with us about starting her practice.
Mobile care is nothing that I've really thought about before, but she was really, really interesting. She's a board-certified surgeon (4 years vet school + 1 year internship + 3 year residency + 2 year fellowship!) and has a mobile practice where she travels to about thirty to forty local hospitals to perform the surgeries that the general practitioners don't feel comfortable doing. A lot of cruciate repairs (TPLO) and other orthopedic surgeries with some additional soft tissue and critical care surgeries thrown in. Really cool idea for a practice without worrying about the "running a huge business with overhead, dozens of employees, etc." model. Something I've never thought about before, but it's really fascinating.
That's the blessing and the curse of veterinary medicine. The variety of things you can do with your degree is ENDLESS. General practice or specialization. Rural or urban. Large or small animal. Zoo medicine or pocket pet exotics. Academia or research. Conservation medicine or pharmaceuticals. Industry or public health. There's no excuse to be bored - I mean, you can do anything with that degree!
And that's the downside as well. I'm fairly undecided about what I want to do, and every speaker or lecturer gets me excited about the possibility of yet another asset to the field. Unfortunately, you have to decide what to do when you grow up at some point. :(
First Monday of the first full week of school, and I feel surprisingly rested and awake and ready to conquer my classes. Good thing since we learned about a dozen new muscles in anatomy and start blood vessels and nerves tomorrow! I feel like anatomy is the ONLY class I talk about, but it's only because the others are still review at this point - thank goodness! Gives me plenty of time to figure out how best to study for the class and absorb all of the information. My lab group has done a freaking beautiful job of the dissection so far (if I do say so myself). Our pit bull specimen, Maude, is looking great despite the skin being missing and numerous muscle transections on her left shoulder, chest, and forelimb. This week we're also starting some other anatomy aspects in lab including radiology (x-ray) interpretation and live palpation skills...meaning we actually get to touch a dog that isn't soaked in formalin!
Histology is actually a lot of fun, too. The professor (see above) is very sweet, energetic, and thorough. I've looked at cells under the microscope dozens upon dozens of times, but he's amazing at explaining exactly what we're seeing. Lab is a good mix of turning us loose with our partners and slide boxes and getting plenty of helpful feedback and hints on how to interpret the slide fields. It's really the way a class like that needs to be taught.
Okay, and there is a huuuge perk to vet school. We get butt-tons of free stuff thrown at us. Including meals! Almost every single day there's a lunch meeting you can choose to attend during lunch hour, usually put on by different clubs featuring a speaker or presentation. All you have to do is RSVP, show up, and chow down while learning lots of awesome stuff. Today the VMBA (Veterinary Medical Business Association) invited a local mobile surgery vet to speak with us about starting her practice.
Mobile care is nothing that I've really thought about before, but she was really, really interesting. She's a board-certified surgeon (4 years vet school + 1 year internship + 3 year residency + 2 year fellowship!) and has a mobile practice where she travels to about thirty to forty local hospitals to perform the surgeries that the general practitioners don't feel comfortable doing. A lot of cruciate repairs (TPLO) and other orthopedic surgeries with some additional soft tissue and critical care surgeries thrown in. Really cool idea for a practice without worrying about the "running a huge business with overhead, dozens of employees, etc." model. Something I've never thought about before, but it's really fascinating.
That's the blessing and the curse of veterinary medicine. The variety of things you can do with your degree is ENDLESS. General practice or specialization. Rural or urban. Large or small animal. Zoo medicine or pocket pet exotics. Academia or research. Conservation medicine or pharmaceuticals. Industry or public health. There's no excuse to be bored - I mean, you can do anything with that degree!
And that's the downside as well. I'm fairly undecided about what I want to do, and every speaker or lecturer gets me excited about the possibility of yet another asset to the field. Unfortunately, you have to decide what to do when you grow up at some point. :(
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Vegging...
So I wasn't nearly as productive today as I wanted to or thought I was going to be, but I feel pretty okay with it. I'm comfortable enough with the material that stress or panic are the last things I'm feeling. But who knows, maybe I'm utterly fooling myself.
Yesterday was a pretty quiet study day. First weekend of vet school, and I found myself studying on a Saturday. Which will probably become fairly typical. I spent several hours in the afternoon reading through the bones and muscles of the thoracic limb, quizzing myself on bone parts, and memorizing muscle insertions, origins, and actions. Honestly, while a few bits and pieces weren't quite in my head yet, I felt confident in my level of understanding thus far.
Treated myself to an Arby's dinner (yum!) before going into the anatomy lab to study. Yup. Saturday night in lab. BUT I wasn't alone! There were a half dozen other students there, and we had a lot of fun poking through one of the cadavers, coming up with mnemonic devices - some of them are remembering the omotransversarius muscle as "the gay dinosaur" if that gives you any indication - and laughing quite a bit. Studying in groups is something that, while fun, I don't get a ton of benefit from. I need to really study stuff on my own to get it to stick. I do a lot of talking myself through material, repetition, and sketching to understand it, and it just doesn't tend to work for me in groups. Also, I'm not a crazy-competitive person or anything, but when others I'm studying with are a bit faster at naming a fact or a bit more specific in their answers, I start to get worried that I don't know my stuff nearly as well as I should. It's usually a morale killer for me. However, I like reviewing with others once I'm sure I understand and know my material; it's a good affirmation that I'm in an okay spot for the test but I'm not actively learning new things by that point.
Anyway, we quit studying by 9:30 and went to see "Prince of Persia" at the dollar theater. Which was appropriately brainless fun with some great cheesy moments. Recommended if you don't want to think too hard. Or remember the freaking awesome computer game from when you were in second grade!
Got up early this morning and headed into lab at 9:00. I was crossing my fingers that I'd be by myself - and I was! Had the whole place to me, myself, and I! Dragged out one of the cadavers and one of the sample bone sets and quizzed myself for two whole hours before the next students came in to practice. It was great to go at my own pace, focus on the things I needed to review, and nail down some more specific facts I was missing. A bunch of us then went to the welcome picnic put on by SCAVMA (Student Chapter of the American Veterinary Medical Association) this afternoon. The best part? There was an open dog invitation so there were about two dozen dogs of all shapes and sizes running around, playing, begging for food, and waiting to be cuddled. Such great therapy when I would kill to have a dog of my own here with me.
I should have studied more when I got home today. But I didn't. I vegged all night and don't even know what I spent most of my time on. Oh well! Tomorrow morning is my first Monday of my first full week of vet school! I have a feeling I'll be pooped by Friday afternoon.
Yesterday was a pretty quiet study day. First weekend of vet school, and I found myself studying on a Saturday. Which will probably become fairly typical. I spent several hours in the afternoon reading through the bones and muscles of the thoracic limb, quizzing myself on bone parts, and memorizing muscle insertions, origins, and actions. Honestly, while a few bits and pieces weren't quite in my head yet, I felt confident in my level of understanding thus far.
Treated myself to an Arby's dinner (yum!) before going into the anatomy lab to study. Yup. Saturday night in lab. BUT I wasn't alone! There were a half dozen other students there, and we had a lot of fun poking through one of the cadavers, coming up with mnemonic devices - some of them are remembering the omotransversarius muscle as "the gay dinosaur" if that gives you any indication - and laughing quite a bit. Studying in groups is something that, while fun, I don't get a ton of benefit from. I need to really study stuff on my own to get it to stick. I do a lot of talking myself through material, repetition, and sketching to understand it, and it just doesn't tend to work for me in groups. Also, I'm not a crazy-competitive person or anything, but when others I'm studying with are a bit faster at naming a fact or a bit more specific in their answers, I start to get worried that I don't know my stuff nearly as well as I should. It's usually a morale killer for me. However, I like reviewing with others once I'm sure I understand and know my material; it's a good affirmation that I'm in an okay spot for the test but I'm not actively learning new things by that point.
Anyway, we quit studying by 9:30 and went to see "Prince of Persia" at the dollar theater. Which was appropriately brainless fun with some great cheesy moments. Recommended if you don't want to think too hard. Or remember the freaking awesome computer game from when you were in second grade!
Got up early this morning and headed into lab at 9:00. I was crossing my fingers that I'd be by myself - and I was! Had the whole place to me, myself, and I! Dragged out one of the cadavers and one of the sample bone sets and quizzed myself for two whole hours before the next students came in to practice. It was great to go at my own pace, focus on the things I needed to review, and nail down some more specific facts I was missing. A bunch of us then went to the welcome picnic put on by SCAVMA (Student Chapter of the American Veterinary Medical Association) this afternoon. The best part? There was an open dog invitation so there were about two dozen dogs of all shapes and sizes running around, playing, begging for food, and waiting to be cuddled. Such great therapy when I would kill to have a dog of my own here with me.
I should have studied more when I got home today. But I didn't. I vegged all night and don't even know what I spent most of my time on. Oh well! Tomorrow morning is my first Monday of my first full week of vet school! I have a feeling I'll be pooped by Friday afternoon.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Who knew?
Having never taken an anatomy course before now, I had no idea that every single bone isn't just a single bone. They each have about two dozen crests and fossae and processes that comprise it and allow it to perform its function. And just learning the parts of the bones of the forelimb is keeping me majorly busy! It's only the second day of anatomy lab (again, totally foreign material for the most part) and dissecting our cadaver and then comparing it with models and readings at night really is helping everything come together. I definitely understand now what we were warned about - it's not the innate difficulty of the material but the sheer volume we have to learn.
Each bone has multiple parts. Each part attaches to one or multiple muscles or articulates with another bone in a joint. Each muscle attaches to another bone and performs a certain function in a certain location. Each of these muscles corresponds to a nerve and blood supply. And each of these components have long Latin or Greek names that must be spelled correctly.
Oy.
So far, challenging and a little overwhelming but fun. Our other classes - bacteriology, histology, and physiology - are still in review stage for me, so it's giving me a little break to ease into the groove (intertubercular groove?) of anatomy.
I'm also thinking about what clubs and activities I would like to join. I'll apply for small animal treatment crew, which is a paid commitment of 2 shifts of 2 hours per month - it's competitive, so I'm not sure I'll even get it. Club-wise I'll be joining PathHeads (pathology), the small ruminant club, internal medicine club, and critical care club; club members get preference for wet labs but the time commitment outside of that isn't huge. SCAVMA, of course, will be getting my money so I can join said organizations. And I'm also thinking about running for some sort of SCAVMA or student government position...but we'll see.
Also, I felt like utter crap today. Sore, tired, achy, even some tummy-ache this morning. Hoping that this means that I'll be skipping the next bug to go around closer to exam time! Tomorrow we get an intro to our evidence-based medicine class where we break into small groups and discuss, research, and analyze individual cases. I'm hoping that it helps lots of different concepts "gel" into a concrete example that's easy to remember and understand. I don't think I could handle a whole curriculum of it, but a small amount might help more difficult concepts come into focus.
Each bone has multiple parts. Each part attaches to one or multiple muscles or articulates with another bone in a joint. Each muscle attaches to another bone and performs a certain function in a certain location. Each of these muscles corresponds to a nerve and blood supply. And each of these components have long Latin or Greek names that must be spelled correctly.
Oy.
So far, challenging and a little overwhelming but fun. Our other classes - bacteriology, histology, and physiology - are still in review stage for me, so it's giving me a little break to ease into the groove (intertubercular groove?) of anatomy.
I'm also thinking about what clubs and activities I would like to join. I'll apply for small animal treatment crew, which is a paid commitment of 2 shifts of 2 hours per month - it's competitive, so I'm not sure I'll even get it. Club-wise I'll be joining PathHeads (pathology), the small ruminant club, internal medicine club, and critical care club; club members get preference for wet labs but the time commitment outside of that isn't huge. SCAVMA, of course, will be getting my money so I can join said organizations. And I'm also thinking about running for some sort of SCAVMA or student government position...but we'll see.
Also, I felt like utter crap today. Sore, tired, achy, even some tummy-ache this morning. Hoping that this means that I'll be skipping the next bug to go around closer to exam time! Tomorrow we get an intro to our evidence-based medicine class where we break into small groups and discuss, research, and analyze individual cases. I'm hoping that it helps lots of different concepts "gel" into a concrete example that's easy to remember and understand. I don't think I could handle a whole curriculum of it, but a small amount might help more difficult concepts come into focus.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
First Day...done!
It's only the end of our first day, and I'm already exhausted! But I do think I'm coming down with a cold, so I'll write it off as one of the side effects of that.
Today was kind of a blur - physiology lecture (NOT on the exam!) about the rapid pace of biotechnology evolution, histology/cytology lecture (starting in with basic cell bio review), histology lab, anatomy lecture (thoracic limb), and anatomy lab.
The only one that concerns me right now is anatomy. We've kind of been thrown into it without an idea of what to do. The depth of the notes versus the dissection guide is pretty inconsistent...so I'm not quite sure just how many of those tubercles, fossae, and edges I should really worry about. I'm guessing all of them (or at least as many as will fit into my head). Our first exam is in two weeks and will cover bones and muscles of the limb. It's a bit smaller just to ease us into testing.
Our group has two dogs (male and female) and a cat. We started today with just removing the skin from the left cranial sides of the animals, extending from the mandible down to the umbilicus. Tomorrow we'll get more into identifying actual muscles, insertions and origins, actions, etc.
Going off now to study a bit more of the forelimb bones before I get too far behind! And then...glorious sleep! :)
Today was kind of a blur - physiology lecture (NOT on the exam!) about the rapid pace of biotechnology evolution, histology/cytology lecture (starting in with basic cell bio review), histology lab, anatomy lecture (thoracic limb), and anatomy lab.
The only one that concerns me right now is anatomy. We've kind of been thrown into it without an idea of what to do. The depth of the notes versus the dissection guide is pretty inconsistent...so I'm not quite sure just how many of those tubercles, fossae, and edges I should really worry about. I'm guessing all of them (or at least as many as will fit into my head). Our first exam is in two weeks and will cover bones and muscles of the limb. It's a bit smaller just to ease us into testing.
Our group has two dogs (male and female) and a cat. We started today with just removing the skin from the left cranial sides of the animals, extending from the mandible down to the umbilicus. Tomorrow we'll get more into identifying actual muscles, insertions and origins, actions, etc.
Going off now to study a bit more of the forelimb bones before I get too far behind! And then...glorious sleep! :)
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