School Update

I figure it’s time for a <key up music> VET SCHOOL UPDATE! I’m in Clin Med now, which is a fun class. Currently our guest lecturer is making fun of our professor and classmates. Nice to start the lesson off with a laugh. This semester has been a lot of fun.  Our normal professor is sitting here crocheting, so I don’t feel bad writing this.

I’ll admit, I am not the best student. I don’t always pay attention in lecture (like this, for example). But this semester we have some lecturers I really like. There is also the chance they might pick on people, so I tend to pay attention. Yeah, Dr. C said she’s never going to pick on someone sleeping in her class cause she’s been here, but I’d rather not take the chance. Plus, I really hate sleeping in class. Incredibly disrespectful. I have done it before, and didn’t like it. (Sorry Dr. K- your voice and subject often made me tired.) Thus why I bring my computer to class- may not be paying attention, but not asleep!

Anyway, classes- this semester we have a handful. My favorites are Introduction to Clinical Medicine, Avian, Exotics, and Fish, and Intro to Surgical Skills. Clin Med is designed to get us thinking like doctors. A lot of the material we learned in other classes, now time to think of it in a clinical setting. Dr. C is awesome too, even if she likes to scare us. Shares her clinical experience, so we will remember and hopefully not send a dog to a specialist for rocks in the prepuce. 

Surgical Skills- do I need to explain why that’s fun? Learning how to sew things up right now (mostly pieces of rubber/foam) really makes me feel like I will be a doctor some day. I will be doing surgeries. I will need to know this stuff forever. I did have some trouble at first- I’m a lefty. But I wanted to do everything with both hands. Turns out, that’s a bad idea, cause I have to stop to think about things. For tests, I want to be able to whip those knots out. Also, Dr. P is fantastic and I love having her as a professor.

Avian/Exotics- I like to know stuff I will probably not need to use everyday. I will probably not have any pet reptiles or birds. Too much work, and not cuddly. I like cuddly pets. But Dr. R is great, and also has lots of clinical experience. She was one of the vets in New York when West Nile first started showing up there. I’m learning a lot about reptiles, amphibians and birds. Most of it has cemented my decision not to own one of them as a pet.

Other classes: Epidemiology and Public Health are two separate 1 credit classes taught by the same woman. Not bad, just not interesting.  Anesthesia is partly pharmacology 3, at this point. We’ll get into things for different species, considerations of individual animals and such as well. Important class, as our DES tutor has pounded into our head. You can kill things with this. People have, and do. This is a class I really need to buckle down and learn, because pharm was tough for me. Pathology 2 is pathology 1 all over again but on new topics. By that I mean similar professors, just a continuation of part 1. Though Dr B started it off, he was new to us. Great notes, knows his stuff. Test yesterday was a bit tougher than expected, but not unbearable.

That’s it for the term, just those 6. A nice schedule, 4 classes a morning from 8:30 to 12:20, then anywhere from 1-3 afternoons a week for labs, usually about 2 hours each. This month and next are the busier weeks, with 3 labs a week.

We’re doing opthalmology, which is part of the reason I chose to write this now. Eye pictures creep me out. Unhealthy eyes are really difficult for me to look at.Healthy eyes, fine. Eyes with KCS? <shiver> At lease my teacher is the same. She had to look away when he showed some of the pictures.

Ve school quotes of the day:

If you can’t remember [the negative] the figures that give you the lens are in red. Like your bank balance.

Herpes is forever. That’s my line for you guys cause I care.