Today was lots and lots of studying for the physiology exam tomorrow. I woke up and studied. And made cookies. Took the cookies to the vet school for some of the other students who showed up for the review. The professor came in for a couple of hours of review. And I found out my score on the histology exam--83. Not so good. There weren't many things I was dead wrong on, but a lot of little missteps. Most frustrating are the answers where you cross out your first answer, and it turns out you had it right. But they don't give you credit for that sort of thing.
I took a break afterward to go biking, since it has been insanely beautiful outside, and very warm today. I biked to Vilas zoo and saw some of the animals, including the giraffes. There's LOTS of interesting things we've learned about giraffes, since they're physiological marvels in a couple of ways. Big hearts and very long nerves. The baby (okay, not really a baby, he's definitely over a year old) was trying to trip his mom. He looked just like the calves when they stand under their moms' necks and bop their heads up and down. Only in this case the calf was 10 feet tall and the mom even taller. Very cute.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Kidney complexity
Today was the first day on the renal system. Our professor obviously found the subject material fascinating. The teachers get a certain light in their eyes when they talk about their favorite subject. She was able to communicate her enthusiasm, too, which not all of the professors can manage. The kidneys win as the strangest organs in the body.
The heart, which we recently started learning about in anatomy, is beautifully simple, whereas kidneys just get more complex as you go. They have teensy arteries in glorious profusion, but ordered too. Long straight branches of blood vessels that hand off tiny bunches of capillaries. Like trees. Or like an orchard, with a bundle of capillaries hanging off the branches of every tree. Then within the capillary bundles are podocytes, cells that look like centipedes stretched along the surfaces. Very, very strange.
The heart, which we recently started learning about in anatomy, is beautifully simple, whereas kidneys just get more complex as you go. They have teensy arteries in glorious profusion, but ordered too. Long straight branches of blood vessels that hand off tiny bunches of capillaries. Like trees. Or like an orchard, with a bundle of capillaries hanging off the branches of every tree. Then within the capillary bundles are podocytes, cells that look like centipedes stretched along the surfaces. Very, very strange.
(There's a picture of a podocyte on this webpage: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/ransom.lab/the_glomerular_podocyte)
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Meltdown
It's funny, but I can now manage to have panic attacks both when I am studying and when I am not studying.
Yesterday, in histo lab, I was working my way through the slides, with that sort of emotionally neutral contentedness that accompanies good lab time. Then the student next to me started talking with the professor about how worried she was about the exam. She said she'd been looking at old exams, and the level of detail they had, and she just didn't know how she was going to manage it. She sounded pretty freaked out. And this student spends way more time studying in lab than I do. So by the time the professor had reassured her, I was starting to feel freaked out. Working through the slides only emphasized how much we have to know by next week, so studying became this battle of nerves.
Then today. I was at home on the farm and had to check on cows this morning, and I spent time with the dogs and cats too. Then there was this chest of drawers to go pick up...The ENTIRE afternoon was spent between thrift stores and the other farm, with no chance to study. As I got more stressed out at time passing, my ever-so-supportive family was sympathetic and worried--but not particularly helpful in letting me go study.
Now I've been sitting at the computer the last half hour being really stressed out, paralyzed by the prospect of trying to study tonight and still get to the scheduled events that, y'know, it would be nice to be at. Outside, the light's gone all rosy and imminent-twilightish, which is a good indication that it's time for me to log off and get around to important things.
Like, oh, studying comes to mind.
Yesterday, in histo lab, I was working my way through the slides, with that sort of emotionally neutral contentedness that accompanies good lab time. Then the student next to me started talking with the professor about how worried she was about the exam. She said she'd been looking at old exams, and the level of detail they had, and she just didn't know how she was going to manage it. She sounded pretty freaked out. And this student spends way more time studying in lab than I do. So by the time the professor had reassured her, I was starting to feel freaked out. Working through the slides only emphasized how much we have to know by next week, so studying became this battle of nerves.
Then today. I was at home on the farm and had to check on cows this morning, and I spent time with the dogs and cats too. Then there was this chest of drawers to go pick up...The ENTIRE afternoon was spent between thrift stores and the other farm, with no chance to study. As I got more stressed out at time passing, my ever-so-supportive family was sympathetic and worried--but not particularly helpful in letting me go study.
Now I've been sitting at the computer the last half hour being really stressed out, paralyzed by the prospect of trying to study tonight and still get to the scheduled events that, y'know, it would be nice to be at. Outside, the light's gone all rosy and imminent-twilightish, which is a good indication that it's time for me to log off and get around to important things.
Like, oh, studying comes to mind.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Total Expiration
The way our physiology professor describes a breathing test (like you'd do for asthma) is all in a sort of monotone voice and goes like this: "Breathe in. No, all the way, don't be wimp. Now breathe out, keep going, stop being a wimp..."
Vet school is a little like that. "Learn this, all of it, don't be a wimp, here's some more."
In the past, the thought crossed my mind that there's a lot of medicine that, to be honest, isn't that hard. I've tubed lambs and vaccinated cows, even helped set a few broken legs, and none of that was really challenging once you get the hang of it. So what in med school is worth thousands of dollars a year? What sort of information is so hard to get at, and so valuable, that only doctors have it?
The word exhaustive comes to mind. (ex. drug interactions, though that's a topic for another day)
Anatomy lab is a pretty unique thing. It's not so hard, maybe, to get a dog that died and dissected it. But it's hard to learn every muscle as you go along, and it's definitely hard to get two dozen dog cadavers together and look at all of them. But we do that. It's incredibly expensive to make the special stained slides of two hundred different tissues that we put under microscopes for histology, but every student gets a box of those for the year too. When I get home I try to tell the most interesting things I learned to whatever family or hapless friends are around, but it doesn't do it justice. There's the facts, and there's the facts that I'll remember. In undergrad, I maybe retained half of what my classes presented (hopefully the right half). In vet school, it's all important, and it just keeps adding up. Learning the muscles is like learning the alphabet: yes, you have to know all of the letters.
And in many ways, that makes it easier to learn. It has a purpose, it has a direction. I've been advised to read James Herriot once in a while, after class, to remind me what I'm going to class for. It's not to take tests. Tests are a means to an end, to learn what still needs to be learned. In the end, it comes back to the animals and the people they are important to.
Incidentally, a fun thing about being a vet student: you can walk up to random people who are out with their dog and say, "Hi, I just noticed your beautiful dog {dachsund/wolfhound/mutt). Would it be okay if I pet him? I'm a vet student!"
I mean, not that you couldn't randomly pet strangers' dogs anyway. It just gives you a really good excuse :)
One month in (almost), and some other lessons I've learned:
1. There's no such thing as eating half a donut at the morning lecture.
2. Looking at cells through a microscope is more fun than it sounds like.
3. Intervertebral disks have the prettiest cartilage. (it dyes electric blue!)
4. One hour in lab equals two hours of studying, because one hour in lab can feel like THREE hours of studying.
5. There are more parts to a bone than you ever knew.
5.a. And you have to know all of them.
5.b. Ditto for muscles.
6. Radiology is NOT nap time.
6.a. But that ten minutes between classes IS.
7. Free pizza lunch lectures don't come with dessert. Stock your locker with cookies.
8. And for my boyfriend: you know you're with a vet student when she wants to hold your hand...so she can practice identifying muscle attachments.
Vet school is a little like that. "Learn this, all of it, don't be a wimp, here's some more."
In the past, the thought crossed my mind that there's a lot of medicine that, to be honest, isn't that hard. I've tubed lambs and vaccinated cows, even helped set a few broken legs, and none of that was really challenging once you get the hang of it. So what in med school is worth thousands of dollars a year? What sort of information is so hard to get at, and so valuable, that only doctors have it?
The word exhaustive comes to mind. (ex. drug interactions, though that's a topic for another day)
Anatomy lab is a pretty unique thing. It's not so hard, maybe, to get a dog that died and dissected it. But it's hard to learn every muscle as you go along, and it's definitely hard to get two dozen dog cadavers together and look at all of them. But we do that. It's incredibly expensive to make the special stained slides of two hundred different tissues that we put under microscopes for histology, but every student gets a box of those for the year too. When I get home I try to tell the most interesting things I learned to whatever family or hapless friends are around, but it doesn't do it justice. There's the facts, and there's the facts that I'll remember. In undergrad, I maybe retained half of what my classes presented (hopefully the right half). In vet school, it's all important, and it just keeps adding up. Learning the muscles is like learning the alphabet: yes, you have to know all of the letters.
And in many ways, that makes it easier to learn. It has a purpose, it has a direction. I've been advised to read James Herriot once in a while, after class, to remind me what I'm going to class for. It's not to take tests. Tests are a means to an end, to learn what still needs to be learned. In the end, it comes back to the animals and the people they are important to.
Incidentally, a fun thing about being a vet student: you can walk up to random people who are out with their dog and say, "Hi, I just noticed your beautiful dog {dachsund/wolfhound/mutt). Would it be okay if I pet him? I'm a vet student!"
I mean, not that you couldn't randomly pet strangers' dogs anyway. It just gives you a really good excuse :)
One month in (almost), and some other lessons I've learned:
1. There's no such thing as eating half a donut at the morning lecture.
2. Looking at cells through a microscope is more fun than it sounds like.
3. Intervertebral disks have the prettiest cartilage. (it dyes electric blue!)
4. One hour in lab equals two hours of studying, because one hour in lab can feel like THREE hours of studying.
5. There are more parts to a bone than you ever knew.
5.a. And you have to know all of them.
5.b. Ditto for muscles.
6. Radiology is NOT nap time.
6.a. But that ten minutes between classes IS.
7. Free pizza lunch lectures don't come with dessert. Stock your locker with cookies.
8. And for my boyfriend: you know you're with a vet student when she wants to hold your hand...so she can practice identifying muscle attachments.
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