In on a Friday!

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.

Three more weeks (give or take a few days)

Break was fantastic...but way too short as most school breaks tend to be.  I got to spend a lot of time hanging out at my veterinary hospital back at home - helped, observed, caught up with friends.  Also read a few books, walked the puppies a half dozen times, and spent some time with my family (well, parents but no siblings).  One of the dogs broke with ringworm while I was home, so taking care of that was a joy.  She looks incredibly goofy now with a shaved patch on her back.  On Thursday I picked the boy up from his day at work, and we drove to his place in Pittsburgh for the weekend.  We didn't have very much time together since I had to drive back east then get to the Philly airport on Sunday, but it was still great seeing him (as always).  He'll be out here for a visit not this weekend but the one after.  Can't wait!

I was really hoping that break would get me all excited and refreshed to come back to school and power through the last few weeks of the semester.  But mostly it spoiled me and made me not want to do much yesterday after school.

Tonight has been more productive so far but I'm definitely looking at a steep hill of information to climb before this is all over.

There's a histology quiz coming up on Friday, but I'm not super-concerned about that one.  We started the skull/cranium/head in anatomy and holy cow is there a lot of stuff to learn.  About two dozen bones, three dozen little holes and divots, random muscles and papillae, and things that like to run in and out of said holes and papilla.  Yikes.  I also have paid zero attention to physiology stuff outside of class since the last exam, so I need to buckle down and start studying for the final in a few weeks.  And that class has been involving a lot of pathways and endocrinology, so it's definitely not light material.  Lots and lots to do.  We only have six quizzes to worry about until finals week, but there isn't a whole lot of grace time until that rolls around.  I have a feeling the next few weeks are going to fly by.

Still haven't found or come up with a Halloween costume yet...hope I have time to pull something together before the vet school party on Saturday!

And before I get too comfortable with this "study break", back to my notes.

Best study music? "Battlestar Galactica" soundtracks.

Two on the list are done!  Histology quiz was finished on Friday, and we had our quiz on the anatomy of the pelvic cavity today.  Tomorrow is the bacteriology quiz...for which I'm sorely under prepared.  The class has turned into a dangerous game of recognition rather than recalling information.  I wish it wasn't that way, but there just isn't enough time in the day or week to do everything right all the time.  My grade in that class is good so far, and the quiz tomorrow is something I'm letting slip a little.  I mean, I've studied, but I don't know everything as well as I should. 

Definitely have my mind focused more on the humongous anatomy exam on Wednesday. 

As far as that one goes, I already feel like I've reached my "saturation point" with the material where no matter what other studying I do, I know it as well as I will for the exam.  Still have two hours of lab time tomorrow to review (probably will focus on practicing reading radiographs) and tomorrow night to finish up any loose ends.  Can't freaking wait to finish that exam and walk out of school on Wednesday afternoon.  I plan on doing NOTHING that night...and ideally every night until we come back from Fall Break.

I was talking to one of my vet school friends today, and we were comparing notes on our relations with family and friends right now.  We both agreed that we've become incredibly...boring since school started.  Nothing really changes day to day, and unless I have a TAU lesson with live animals or learn some really weird or bizarre fact in class, I have nothing to report.  Ever.  I talk to my boyfriend every night on the phone, and while he always has something to tell me about his travels or his work day or the movie he saw that night or hanging out with friends, I don't have much to share in return.  Whenever he asks, "How did your day go?  What'd you do this weekend?  What'd you do for fun?", the answer is always, "It was okay.  I stayed in and studied.  I went to lab and studied.  I didn't really do anything fun...but I did open a new box of cereal!"  It's the same with when I talk to my family or other friends. 

While I love school (except for getting really tired of studying sometimes), love that I'm here, love my new friends, and love that I get to pursue this career...the day-to-day aspects of first year are really pretty boring if we're being honest with each other.  School 8-4:30 pm each day, home to relax for an hour or two, dinner by myself, study for two or three hours, call the boy, bed.  Repeat. 

I think it'll get more thrilling as time goes on and we break out of the basic into more applied sciences.  At least I know that our clinical year will be exciting if worse comes to worst! :)  Well, back to studying.  Don't know if I can remember these Streptococcal secreted factors any better, but I'll try.

Fall Break - Two Weeks!

And man, break couldn't get here soon enough.  All of us feel like we've been in school forever, even though it's only been about two months.  Time goes by soooooo fast but we've also done so much in that time that having a break is going to feel amazing.

I had the boy here for a visit this weekend, so I didn't get a whole lot of school stuff done.  There was an anatomy quiz today that I had to study for but that was about it on the immediate horizon - think it went okay, and now I'm switching gears to the huuuuge exam next Wednesday on everything but the head.  There are 90 practical questions and a double-length written portion.  And it's cumulative. Yuck.

Anyway, it was a great weekend and a fun visit.  We grabbed some dinner on Friday at this awesome bistro with huge pieces of cake - 8" by 8" by 4"!  Yes, everything comes back to food for me.  Cake was good - we ended up ordering it first since the kitchen was taking a while - and then we ended with dinner.  Relaxed for the rest of the night before spending Saturday in Pinehurst with his dad and grandparents (he was down visiting them for a few days after a business trip in Virginia).  We met them at a town-wide flea market and spent a few hours walking around and enjoying the weather before heading to their place for dinner.  His family is a lot of fun, and it's nice to be able to spend time with people who aren't talking about some aspect of school during every waking moment.  And I'm 110% guilty of that too when I'm with my classmates.  You can't help it!  Sunday we did some more lounging around, movies, shopped for a class gift for one of our anatomy instructors, and split the apartment for a few hours that night so we could both get some work done. 

Even though we didn't really do much, I was freaking exhausted today.  He stays up later than I do, (I'm in bed by 11:00 at the latest, he pushes it until 12:30) and that forces me into staying up to a later hour as well.  Then, since I still need to get some sort of work done on the weekends, I usually get up at 6:30 or 7:00 am to squeeze in two or three hours of school stuff before getting him out of bed.  Six hours of sleep a night isn't bad during the week, but when I don't have that weekend to sleep in a bit and recover from school, I feel a little groggy.  Plus, he heads out early on Monday, so I was up this morning to see him off at 5.  Felt so tired all day, so even though I really ought to get some work done, I'm going to bed early tonight.  Won't be able to make it through this week in a productive manner if I'm majorly sleepy.

Figure I'll try to make it up by being extra-good at studying each night!  We'll see how that goes...

Should I really care about the thorax?

Sitting in the library on a lovely Tuesday afternoon - no bacteriology lab today, so a ton of classmates headed home right at lunch.  Unfortunately, my hopes of an early day home were quashed but by all good things!  First, I had a lunch meeting (supplemented with palpation team's bake sale goodies) discussing feline diabetes, which was pretty informative.  Second, met up with my evidence-based medicine group to discuss our case of the week, a young foal with a bad case of rhodococcus.  Third, finally got around to putting up our class bulletin board.  Fourth, waiting until 4:30 when I have an awesome wet lab scheduled.  I got picked to be one of the participants in the SCACVIM lab detailing thoracocentesis, urinary catheter placement, and venous cutdown!  Very cool, and I can't wait to do something outside of the gross anatomy realm!

Until then, I'm spending the next hour or so chilling at the library and catching up on some schoolwork.  We have our first anatomy quiz on Thursday on the thoracic cavity, spine, and spinal/neck muscles.  And I'm definitely not ready for that one.  But I'm slightly more worried that we have bacteriology and physiology midterms next week for which I also have some major studying to do.  Yikes.  Hopefully I'm in a super productive mood in the next week!

Not too much else is new.  The boy headed out to work early Monday morning, and we had a really great visit.  Didn't get too much work or studying done over the weekend as a result, but I think the histology exam on Monday went pretty well all the same.  He'll be back again in two weeks and then I take a drive to see him for part of Fall Break (which is in less than a month!).

Other than that, our anatomy group finally got rid of the cat and are back to a rotation with the dog.  We had the cat for the past two weeks of lab and it was terrible.  So glad to have a cadaver that has good staining and, ya know, humongous everything!

"Love your anatomy dog!"

Dog Olympics was a huge success yesterday!  The weather was great, everything ran smoothly and on time, and we were jam-packed with visitors and their canine friends all day!

I worked the morning shift until about 1:30 pm at the winner's circle and prize booth.  Meaning, I got to give medals to all of the dog winners of the events and help them take pictures as they stood on the gold, silver, and bronze stands. :)  Also helped out with selling raffle tickets to spectators and got to know plenty of cute puppies while I worked.

Some of the events that we ran included a wiener toss, best trick, best howler, Frisbee catch, musical sit, and a look-alike contest, among others.  There was also an adorable paraolympics event that we held for all of the dogs who showed up in braces and wheelchairs.  A lot of them were daschunds, but there was a lab and cocker spaniel also zipping around...I think that it was the cutest thing I may have ever seen.  It was amazing to see some of the bonds that the pets and owners have formed as well as how much enjoyment both animal and people got out of the day.  Could not have been more proud or happy to be attached to the vet school then that day; it was great to feel a sense of involvement with the community through their animals.

Also had a great time hanging out with vet school friends last night.  Lots of laughing and swapping stories, and we ended up randomly watching "Jurassic Park III" while maintaining a pretty critical and non-serious running commentary.  It's times like that - just having tons of fun with people that I met only a month ago - that make me LOVE vet school all the more.

Today I got bit of work done - read anatomy and took a look at the vertebral column from my bone box.  We just started the spine and the axial muscles, and I can't decide if they're easier or harder to learn than the limbs.  There's less information for each piece, but finding them and discerning their role is much less intuitive.  I also worked on some bacteriology, which I've definitely been neglecting.  We have our second quiz of that class on Tuesday, and it will cover several families and genera of bacteria along with some info on molecular techniques and antibiotics.  I definitely don't know the specifics of everything, but honestly, I might not even need to for the quiz.

I have a stack of dishes in the sink and a pretty cluttered apartment that I'm going to tend to before going to bed.  Another Monday starts tomorrow! :)

Sleeeeepy...

Even though we're already two days into the week (seeing as how Monday was a holiday), I'm still already exhausted! 

I had a great and pretty unproductive weekend hanging out with the boy.  It was definitely worth sacrificing a few points on the upcoming exams to spend time with him, even if we did nothing of consequence.  Lots of lazing around in pajamas, cooking some tasty dinners, watching about half a season of "Fringe" (which is freaking fantastic, by the way!), etc.  He did have a nasty allergic reaction to something in my apartment where his sclera got all swollen; he actually formed a fluid bubble under the upper layer of his eye.  Grooooss, and I don't know what caused it.  He swears it must be cat allergens since that's one of the only things that he's allergic to, but my family hasn't had a cat in about eight years, and we've deep-cleaned the couch since then.  Oh well.  He survived - even though he was out cold after two tabs of Benadryl!

We also took a drive to Greensboro on Saturday to visit his grandmother for lunch.  His mom was also in town, so we got to catch up with her as well.  They are both incredibly adorable and fun to talk to.  And his mom was pretty amazed that he actually ironed his own shirts and helped with the dishes the night before.  Like I'd have it any other way!

I got a few hours of studying in while he was here by waking up in the morning while he dozed...wasn't too effective but at least it was something!  I also cranked out a really decent morning and afternoon on Saturday before he arrived and two or three hours last night while he caught up on his own work and packed.  Despite the lack of quality study time, I feel okay for anatomy after some final reviewing tonight.  I might not do as well as the first time, but I think it'll go just fine - and this one isn't cumulative, which is a HUGE help!  I also have the first physiology exam on Thursday, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about that one.  I feel like I know the information in my notes and flashcards, but I mess up some of the sample questions he went over in class.  It's the wording that the professor uses to ask the questions that keeps confusing me, so I have some more work to do for that one tomorrow.

The whole class is still wary of each other since the 24 hour plague is still in the air - another few classmates were struck down yesterday night and today.  Praying I don't catch it before Thursday afternoon!

Off to bed.  Sooooo tired, and I've only been in class a day this week.

Long weekend, ahoy!

This week has been a very tiring blur.  I thought high school went fast until I got to Penn State.  Then I thought undergrad went fast until I worked at my vet hospital last year.  That flew by.  And now, vet school is going faster than any of those.  From the time I wake up on Monday morning to when I walk out of histology lab on Friday afternoon, it's one big, fuzzy, long, hazy period of time.  Time kind of loses its conventional meaning and passes in big chunks.  From when I wake up to when I leave the apartment.  Then from when I get to school to when I leave school.  Then from when I get home and study to when I get too tired and go to bed.  What the exact hour is doesn't really matter - as long as I'm at school on time, I don't have any other appointments or schedules to keep.  It's sad but true that school and the occasional night out with friends are my only commitments.

I love school, and even when I'm stressed, I'm very happy, but it is really, really going by in a blur.

There's an incredibly nasty stomach bug going around school right now.  It hit like a freight train yesterday evening and has taken out about ten or twelve students in each class overnight.  Really, really hoping I've been spared because getting sick on a intensive studying and boy-visit weekend would be the WORST.  I feel okay, but I bought some Saltines and Sprite juuuuust in case.

Studying tomorrow as much as I can before the boy lands at RDU in the afternoon.  I'm planning on sleeping in until 7:00 then heading in for a few hours of anatomy lab, short study break and lunch, then to the library to work on physiology for the rest of the time.  I think the weekend plan will be to get up at 7:00 on Sunday and Monday and study for a few hours in the morning before waking up the guy to start the day. 

Also, you're reading the blog of the new Secretary of the Class of 2014!  Woot!  Really excited to contribute to this year and get to work more intensively with a lot of different students.  Loved my clubs and activities in high school and college, and I'm really pumped to do the same here in vet school.

Time to clean and do some dishes...because it's looking a little cluttered in here...

Dynamo time.

Busy, busy, busy.  See last post for all of the stuff I have coming up in the next few days, and you'll see why I've been spending a solid four to five hours a night studying.  Ugh.  Hope it all pays off soon!

Had a histology review after class today and that put my mind at ease.  I think I can probably look over my stuff one last time and do fine on the quiz.  The bacteriology quiz on Tuesday will also not be too bad (I hope!).  We have practice materials for that class, which will help, and there are only a few big concepts to remember for the Enterobacteriacea family.

Bigger ones?  Physiology is my last one...and I think it'll be doable.  It's all stuff that I've had before - action potentials and neurotransmission, muscles, genetics/genomics, etc. - so hopefully it's just a matter of putting in some solid time and "re-learning" it.  I've made some study sheets and flashcards, and that'll be the big piece to tackle this weekend.  Anatomy is in a week, and I HOPE that'll work out well.  For some reason I'm having a really tough time getting the muscle attachments on the os coxae (pelvis) to stick in my head and the artery names are also slightly confusing.  But there are less parts overall than for the thoracic limb, so I have confidence that it'll just take a little time and motivation to learn it.  Plus, I aced my first exam, so I'm really pulling for a repeat on this one!

Complicating factor?  Hoping to cram as much as humanly possible into the next few days so I'm not doing too much catch-up work on Sunday and Monday when the boy is here.  At least it's a good motivating factor! :)

Goodbye blue jeans...

Well I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted to tonight, but I have a decent reason or two.

I went to do laundry tonight and used some of that "color-safe" bleach on my lab coat to get the formalin out.  I figured, what the heck, I'll add some to my other load to get it extra clean.  Nooooot such a good idea.  Don't know if I did something wrong, but the bleach totally ruined two pairs of jeans and a shirt and ate up my pillowcases.  Grrrrr!

I kept the jeans to use for barn work or something, and the pillowcases will just look pretty pathetic when they're on the bed.  So then I had to go out for an emergency trip to Ross and find a few new pairs to fill out my wardrobe since I didn't have more than a half dozen pairs of jeans to begin with (and one of them is really too short and another is getting holes in the butt area).  Quickest shopping trip for pants EVER, but I found three pairs for $50, which I charged to one of my Christmas gift cards.  Lame way to spend an hour (and holiday money) that you don't have to spare!

Today in class we started the pelvic limb dissection and lectures, and it already seems like going through this process the second time won't be nearly as bad.  We know the language a little bit better, and we've done it before.  It's old hat by now!  I was really hoping to get some studying for histo and physiology in tonight, but writing out my little mini-speeches for class positions ate up my time, and I didn't get much done.  Tomorrow I don't have TAU lab, so I have a 3 hour break during the school day!  I think I'll be holing up in the library to do some catch-up work with that time.

About to go pack for my trip to see the boy this weekend.  It's been three weeks since he was here for the White Coat Ceremony, and I can't wait to see him.  I think we'll be bums for most of the time and hang around the apartment and do nothing...which is just fine with me!  I have a feeling I'm going to be exhausted next week, though.  I'm catching a plane at 7 pm tomorrow night, landing at 11, then departing on Sunday at 5:30 to get here by 10:30.  Lots of traveling but it'll be worth it.

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!

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. :)