We have so many classes this semester: systemic pathology, clinical pathology, parasitology, toxicology, pharmacology, anesthesia (to switch over to surgery midway through the semester), and at some point, infectious disease recitation. Eek! I checked out half a dozen textbooks from the library, so I can figure out which ones I might actually need to buy and scribble all over. Pharm and pathology have returned to haunt me; I barely scraped through the first iteration of those classes. I considered checking out Goodman and Gilman, but the fact it's as large as a breadbox dissuaded me. Instead I found a "Quick Look Series" workbook on pharmacology, which actually is remarkably clear and relevant.
My schedule is doubly complicated by the trips I'm already committed to taking. Fortunately they're in these first weeks of school, so in theory I won't be able to fall too far behind. However...it turns out that the Western Veterinary Conference is the same week I have three exams in a row. And I'm taking a red-eye flight back, to arrive half an hour before the first exam is supposed to start. Um. Perhaps I can take that one a week early? How much can they really cover in the two intervening lectures anyway?
On the plus side, the boyfriend is going to be studying abroad all semester. This doesn't sound too great from the stand point of back rubs and needing someone to remind me not to panic; but, at least I get lots of evenings free to study.
Showing posts with label vet school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vet school. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
A difference between year 1 and year 2
First year, I was so delighted to be in vet school that it took until second semester for me to have the days where you say, "I hate vet school."
I'm not having those days yet, two weeks into second year, but the quality of joy when I think "I'm in vet school" is definitely tinged by near-panic. When sitting in lecture, the thought hangs over me: "They expect us to know this stuff." Worse, I expect myself to know it. Not for the test, because the test is just the tool to see if I know it. No, I expect the facts and outlines to magically transmute themselves into usable knowledge sometime between now and fourth year.
Actually, that was last year. Last year I got to be a clueless first year, and all the mysteries would unveil themselves at the proper time. Now it looks like the mysteries like it right where they are, thank you very much, and shouldn't I be studying the five billion ways a carcinoma can occur? And spending afternoons in the clinic, so that I see how real medicine makes use of that knowledge? And practicing people skills, because it's not all scientific jargon that makes a vet?
Excuse me, I have to go panic. I mean, study.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Horses
For large animal, they send us to the university's teaching facility and we spend a couple of hours every week learning how to love the smell of cows and horses. The logistics of getting there are never fun, since there's not much public transportation in the middle of the day. But it's surprisingly enjoyable to spend time leaning on dusty cow flanks listening to rumen sounds.
As is typical, the hang-ups come not from the animals but from the people in charge of them.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Back to school
But first, a diverting experience with stomach flu! Diverting thanks to online episodes of television I would otherwise never watch. Not to mention real-life experience with gastrointestinal nervous system. It's nice to go over that sort of thing in lecture the same day it happens to you. And everyone else in the country, apparently. Turns out there's been a lot of stomach pain on both coasts, and in the middle. No pun intended.
The nifty thing this semester is that there's light when we get out of class at 4:30 now, even if it's currently gray. Gray sky, gray smokestacks, and massive heaps of snow. Makes being inside all the time seem okay. Classes aren't quite so riveting as last semester, though. The first semester of vet school they gave us the best professors, and we were learning anatomy and physiology finally at the level of detail that I suspected might exist but rarely found in undergrad. Plus we had histology, and how cool is that?
The un-nifty thing is a weekly trip to the local cow&horse facility. That would be okay, the part that is sad is that they aren't offering any help at all as far as transportation goes. Whee, carpooling. (Not much enthusiasm here, although that might have something to do with the hour long lecture on "horses come in different colors!")
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.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Scalpels are fun!
So far things are working today...I woke up, ate breakfast and rushed to class. I hold that I got there exactly on time, but realistically I was probably ten seconds late. And it was anatomy, too, which starts promptly and doesn't slow down until every last nanosecond has been eked out of the 50 minutes.
Histology doesn't have this problem. Histology, the professors just blithely keep going until they've finished whatever they're talking about, and graciously allow us to be late for lab. Since it's the lab for histology, they can do that.
Two labs today, wherein we learned that
1. As long as you are doing something interesting, like slicing away the cobwebby connective tissue (fascia) between muscles, you CAN survive a three hour lab.*
2. Histology lab is nice. It's clean, it's peaceful, you get a comfy swivel chair to sit on.
3. Your locker will smell forevermore of formaldehyde once you leave your labcoat in there.
Yesterday I learned that I officially know nothing about anatomy. I was good up until I had to identify the greater tubercle of the humerus. "The what-of-the--oh, I'm supposed to know that?" It had never occurred to me that I would be foiled by the complexity of a single bone. The darn thing has, like, a dozen parts! And it's the easy one.
It looks like, for the most part, people are done with excessive sociability. The first few days, you have to introduce yourself to everyone and try to remember horribly difficult things, like what their names are. Now that the classes are starting, we have more important things to remember. Like, when is lunch? Socializing now entails only knowing enough about your lab partners to remember which one has the bone box.
And the last new thing today: the joy of a nat across the road. Finally, reaching the place of exercise takes less time than the exercise itself. I went swimming. It was good. It wiped out the formaldehyde smell.
*EDIT: Four years later I now know I was having some major health issues at this time that made it physically challenging to stand for an hour, but their onset had been so subtle I hadn't realized when I wrote this that three hours, while not easy, was not leaving my classmates pale, weak and wondering how they were going to survive the semester. That was all the other classes.
Histology doesn't have this problem. Histology, the professors just blithely keep going until they've finished whatever they're talking about, and graciously allow us to be late for lab. Since it's the lab for histology, they can do that.
Two labs today, wherein we learned that
1. As long as you are doing something interesting, like slicing away the cobwebby connective tissue (fascia) between muscles, you CAN survive a three hour lab.*
2. Histology lab is nice. It's clean, it's peaceful, you get a comfy swivel chair to sit on.
3. Your locker will smell forevermore of formaldehyde once you leave your labcoat in there.
Yesterday I learned that I officially know nothing about anatomy. I was good up until I had to identify the greater tubercle of the humerus. "The what-of-the--oh, I'm supposed to know that?" It had never occurred to me that I would be foiled by the complexity of a single bone. The darn thing has, like, a dozen parts! And it's the easy one.
It looks like, for the most part, people are done with excessive sociability. The first few days, you have to introduce yourself to everyone and try to remember horribly difficult things, like what their names are. Now that the classes are starting, we have more important things to remember. Like, when is lunch? Socializing now entails only knowing enough about your lab partners to remember which one has the bone box.
And the last new thing today: the joy of a nat across the road. Finally, reaching the place of exercise takes less time than the exercise itself. I went swimming. It was good. It wiped out the formaldehyde smell.
*EDIT: Four years later I now know I was having some major health issues at this time that made it physically challenging to stand for an hour, but their onset had been so subtle I hadn't realized when I wrote this that three hours, while not easy, was not leaving my classmates pale, weak and wondering how they were going to survive the semester. That was all the other classes.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Letter to a Fourth Year
Dear Vet Student Self:
In a few years, you will start your final year of school, and with that will come rotations. You will be one of those blue-garbed, stethoscope-carrying people of authority. It will probably be very cool and utterly exhausting, and your brain will be so full of medical miscellany that the fact you can still walk in a straight line will amaze us all. Actually, walking in a straight line may be a bit of a stretch, but we can always hope.
In any case, you won't be in any condition to remember the poor, downtrodden kennel workers. This letter is to remind you of the things that us downtrodden kennel workers would like all fourth year students to do while they're garnering clinic experience.
1. Thou shalt mark it on the cage card when thou hast fed thy caseload.
2. Thou shalt arrive early enough to take your patient out before he hath an accident.
Double-plus bonus: we can clean while you walk him, and we don't have to clean as much. And the kennels won't smell like dog poo. We're talking 7 am here.
3. Thou shalt give thy patient enough blankets, but not too many (three is good).
If thou bringest in thy own dog for days in a row, leave a card saying "save" and maybe clean that kennel on your own time. It's not that we mind the pets, it's just...there's sometimes a lot of kennels to clean.
4. Thou shalt clean up after exceptionally messy patients (optional).
This one just makes the kennel crew like you.
5. Thou shalt explain thy patient's bizarre health conditions to the curious kennel workers.
Half of us are pre-vets. We LIKE gory detail. Oo, and you knowing who we are is also cool.
6. Thou shalt occasionally thank the kennel crew for their hard work.
It's not usually all that hard, but it is messy and smelly and necessary.
Other things come to mind, such as
the nice people in CCU who consolidate the overnight garbage from all the bins;
picking up the poo from your patient out on dogwalk;
noting that you the student will feed a dog that needs special handfeeding;
piling the bags of soiled laundry along the wall, rather than in the mop room doorway.
But those are little things. The main things are getting here early enough to take the dog on a walk before its bladder fails, and marking whether you have fed (or will feed) your patient.
On behalf of kennel workers, thank you! And (when you get there) enjoy your last year of vet school!
Sincerely,
Your kennel worker self.
In a few years, you will start your final year of school, and with that will come rotations. You will be one of those blue-garbed, stethoscope-carrying people of authority. It will probably be very cool and utterly exhausting, and your brain will be so full of medical miscellany that the fact you can still walk in a straight line will amaze us all. Actually, walking in a straight line may be a bit of a stretch, but we can always hope.
In any case, you won't be in any condition to remember the poor, downtrodden kennel workers. This letter is to remind you of the things that us downtrodden kennel workers would like all fourth year students to do while they're garnering clinic experience.
1. Thou shalt mark it on the cage card when thou hast fed thy caseload.
We don't mind feeding the dogs in the morning (it makes them like us, after all), but we'd rather not have you pop in two minutes later, gasp, and say "But I already fed him, and if he eats any more his colon will explode!"
2. Thou shalt arrive early enough to take your patient out before he hath an accident.
Double-plus bonus: we can clean while you walk him, and we don't have to clean as much. And the kennels won't smell like dog poo. We're talking 7 am here.
3. Thou shalt give thy patient enough blankets, but not too many (three is good).
If thou bringest in thy own dog for days in a row, leave a card saying "save" and maybe clean that kennel on your own time. It's not that we mind the pets, it's just...there's sometimes a lot of kennels to clean.
4. Thou shalt clean up after exceptionally messy patients (optional).
This one just makes the kennel crew like you.
5. Thou shalt explain thy patient's bizarre health conditions to the curious kennel workers.
Half of us are pre-vets. We LIKE gory detail. Oo, and you knowing who we are is also cool.
6. Thou shalt occasionally thank the kennel crew for their hard work.
It's not usually all that hard, but it is messy and smelly and necessary.
Other things come to mind, such as
the nice people in CCU who consolidate the overnight garbage from all the bins;
picking up the poo from your patient out on dogwalk;
noting that you the student will feed a dog that needs special handfeeding;
piling the bags of soiled laundry along the wall, rather than in the mop room doorway.
But those are little things. The main things are getting here early enough to take the dog on a walk before its bladder fails, and marking whether you have fed (or will feed) your patient.
On behalf of kennel workers, thank you! And (when you get there) enjoy your last year of vet school!
Sincerely,
Your kennel worker self.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Leisure days
Switching back and forth between work and home has been...unenviable. After about a day at home, I hate to leave. The farm is quiet, expansive, everything is growing--the garden needs some more weeding--and I like knowing what the weather is just by taking two steps out the door. In town, houses and roads break the great outdoors into tiny bits. Even once I go outside, it's still like peering through a keyhole.
And then I spend a day in town, and coming home to collapsed sheds and weeds and cows just scraping by on our scant pasture is depressing as all get out. So. I start school in two and a half weeks, which will spell the end of all my current lifestyle quandaries. I'll have new ones instead! Like, are my boyfriend and I actually compatible in the same apartment? And will I be around enough for it to matter?
I worked out an allocation of my hours for a typical week. Start with 168 hours in a week. Take out 56 for sleeping (8 hours a night) and 50 for the time I'm in classes or labs. That leaves me with 62 hours. Going with the 2-5 hours study time per 1 hour class time (class, no labs, equals about 25 hours a week), means that I need to spend a minimum of 50 hours a week studying. There's not enough time in the week for a higher average than 2.5 hours per class. Scary. As it is, I maybe get an hour a day to eat, travel, exercise, and maintain cordial relations with Mr. Roommate. And maybe an extra hour off on Saturday for good behavior. I know--I'll go grocery shopping!
Needless to say, my real schedule will be far more chaotic and haphazard. But I am looking forward to it, even while I'm fully appreciating my current leisure.
I'm gonna miss my dog, I know. I wish I could take him to school with me, but this is out of the question because: 1. He is a psychotic border collie with no house training. And 2. My apartment doesn't let me keep dogs anyway. Too bad in some ways--according to past vet students, pets are great for studying anatomy on a live animal. Ah, well. Perhaps I can schedule in regular visits to home if I count them as study time for anatomy.
But currently on the schedule: leisure time, so long as "leisure" includes things like weeding the squash, yelling at the dogs when they transgress the garden boundaries, moving fences, moving cows, cleaning kennels, and, this afternoon, shopping for school supplies with my mom! And eating equal quantities of watermelon and zucchini brownies. And cherry tomatoes. Nothing in the world is quite as awesome as fresh garden tomatoes. They're like steak with seeds. Juicy, savory, a little sweet.
I can hear the chickens squawking. Probably time to go yell at the dogs again. The sheer number of chicks seems to have bewildered them out of catching any, but they still try.
Hmm, can't hear the hawk today, though. There's a young hawk living in one of the oaks, who likes to fly the air currents and yells the whole time. From dawn to dark, you can hear him: "Eee! Eee! Mom, lookitme, I'm flying!"
And then I spend a day in town, and coming home to collapsed sheds and weeds and cows just scraping by on our scant pasture is depressing as all get out. So. I start school in two and a half weeks, which will spell the end of all my current lifestyle quandaries. I'll have new ones instead! Like, are my boyfriend and I actually compatible in the same apartment? And will I be around enough for it to matter?
I worked out an allocation of my hours for a typical week. Start with 168 hours in a week. Take out 56 for sleeping (8 hours a night) and 50 for the time I'm in classes or labs. That leaves me with 62 hours. Going with the 2-5 hours study time per 1 hour class time (class, no labs, equals about 25 hours a week), means that I need to spend a minimum of 50 hours a week studying. There's not enough time in the week for a higher average than 2.5 hours per class. Scary. As it is, I maybe get an hour a day to eat, travel, exercise, and maintain cordial relations with Mr. Roommate. And maybe an extra hour off on Saturday for good behavior. I know--I'll go grocery shopping!
Needless to say, my real schedule will be far more chaotic and haphazard. But I am looking forward to it, even while I'm fully appreciating my current leisure.
I'm gonna miss my dog, I know. I wish I could take him to school with me, but this is out of the question because: 1. He is a psychotic border collie with no house training. And 2. My apartment doesn't let me keep dogs anyway. Too bad in some ways--according to past vet students, pets are great for studying anatomy on a live animal. Ah, well. Perhaps I can schedule in regular visits to home if I count them as study time for anatomy.
But currently on the schedule: leisure time, so long as "leisure" includes things like weeding the squash, yelling at the dogs when they transgress the garden boundaries, moving fences, moving cows, cleaning kennels, and, this afternoon, shopping for school supplies with my mom! And eating equal quantities of watermelon and zucchini brownies. And cherry tomatoes. Nothing in the world is quite as awesome as fresh garden tomatoes. They're like steak with seeds. Juicy, savory, a little sweet.
I can hear the chickens squawking. Probably time to go yell at the dogs again. The sheer number of chicks seems to have bewildered them out of catching any, but they still try.
Hmm, can't hear the hawk today, though. There's a young hawk living in one of the oaks, who likes to fly the air currents and yells the whole time. From dawn to dark, you can hear him: "Eee! Eee! Mom, lookitme, I'm flying!"
Monday, August 4, 2008
When lambs calve, and other oddities
Vet school starts in two and a half weeks, and I've entered the giddy contemplation stage. Attendant to this is a compulsion to read blogs by vet students, and once I did that there was nothing for it but I must have one for my own. Yes! I too shall blog. Consistently, even, maybe. Though let's not be hasty. Let us remember what happened to the food blog (three entries total).
But anyway. The cows are out in the pasture where they're supposed to be, the calves are more or less on the right side of the fence with the cows. The dogs are hassling the chickens again. I have had to rethink my stance on broody hens. I hate tossing a mound of eggs out when I have no clue how close to hatching they are...but as a result we have a serious infestation of chicks. Thirty? Forty? Even Danny's getting tired of chasing them, and he's an obsessive compulsive Border Collie! Every now and then I hear a squawk from outside and have to run out, scream "DANNY!!" and wait until he bounces into view and sees me: "What?!"
But anyway. The cows are out in the pasture where they're supposed to be, the calves are more or less on the right side of the fence with the cows. The dogs are hassling the chickens again. I have had to rethink my stance on broody hens. I hate tossing a mound of eggs out when I have no clue how close to hatching they are...but as a result we have a serious infestation of chicks. Thirty? Forty? Even Danny's getting tired of chasing them, and he's an obsessive compulsive Border Collie! Every now and then I hear a squawk from outside and have to run out, scream "DANNY!!" and wait until he bounces into view and sees me: "What?!"
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