It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

Okay, so I'm putting off studying for my FINAL EXAM OF FIRST YEAR (yeah, I needed to write that in capitals). I ordered a hoodie, since my class was selling printed and embroidered clothes as a fundraiser. After all, only natural to want to show off your school and what you do, right? Especially when you worked this hard to get it.

I ordered a red hoodie, with the veterinary medicine logo on the front, and "Real doctors treat more than one species" on the back. Logos on the front of things typically go on the left chest, right? So I figured all I needed to write on the order form was "front".

I was mistaken.

I got exactly what I ordered.

Oh well. I kind of like the superhero-esque effect.

No middle ground

That basically describes how I feel while studying. All day, I've been reviewing off and on for my anatomy final (!!!) on Monday. My confidence level in the material seems to pendulum. I vary between "Hey, I got this! External iliac, semitendinosus, hyopharyngeus! Yessiree-bob (okay, no I don't say "yessiree-bob") I'm gonna ace this!" and "OMGWTFBBQ!! What is this stuff?!?! "Femoropatellar joint pouch"?! What the hell is that!? No one's ever mentioned that before!! WAHHHH! I'M GONNA FAIL AND HAVE TO WORK RETAIL FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!"

Okay, that last part is kind of hyperbole, but you get the picture. I have no "Yeah, I'll be okay" setting. I mean, I do. I know logically if I'm swinging wildly between those two settings, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Past experience has shown me that if I put in the time (which I have) I'll be all right.

It doesn't help that I've got a nagging headache. I'm heading to bed early tonight (as soon as the Sens/Rangers game is over) in the hopes of making it go away. In my headache/tired/drug induced brain fog, I misread my notes today, and the cranial nerves of "sensation" suddenly became the cranial nerves that were "sensational". I don't remember which nerves those are now, but they must be marvelous! (I have a mental block with the cranial nerves in that I have to go down the various dirty mnemonic devices to figure out which is which and what they do.)

Just 13 more days!

Verified: Competent

Today I had the first of nine exams that I'll write over the next 17 days. It was for Clinical Orientation - we have to show what we know so they call it a verification of competence. How to use various pieces of equipment, how to restrain animals for different procedures, identification of ages, breeds, sexes, etc. I breezed through the large animal written section and bovine handling and restraint (including getting one hand full of you-know-what while demonstrating a tail jack). And then I came to small ruminant and swine. I did okay with the sheep. They mostly just stood in a corner and were more or less cooperative.

But swine... Oh dear. I'm not comfortable with pigs. I respect them as highly intelligent animals and they're cute as hell as babies. But I'm really only comfortable with swine when they're on my plate. So I put on my big girl rubber boots and in I go with the two 3 month old pigs as the doctor watches me. First, I almost left the gate open, because it looked like the doctor was going to close it (she was reaching for it), but she didn't, and pointed it out to me. I grab the pig board and guide the smaller pig into a corner to show I know how to use it. She asks me where to make an IM injection and I show her. She hands me a hog snare and asks me how to use it (I don't actually have to demonstrate on the pig). Meanwhile, the big pig is CHEWING ON MY LAB COAT. And my boots. And at one point, my legs. Do you have any idea how hard it is to seem composed and intelligent while you're being chewed on by a pig?? I swear that was the longest 3 minutes of my life. I was ecstatic to finally get to the equine station.It was like being rescued by my comrades after being stuck behind enemy lines.

We did small animal next. I came across like an idiot for lab animal. I know the material for lab animal, I can perform the skills, but she mostly wanted me to explain it, and I'm not so good at verbalizing this stuff. Everything else went smoothly. I passed small animal, and as far as I know, I passed large animal. So I'm officially verified as competent. Woo. Just eight more exams to go!

People always complain about anatomy

First year students seem to ubiquitously complain about anatomy. I don't get it, personally. It's just a bunch of names, but there's nothing tricky about anatomy. It's a lot of material, but it's basically straight memorization. If you know any Latin and Greek word roots, you can usually make some sense of the names too. Plus there's all the dirty acronyms for nerves and blood vessels. And dissection is just, well, it's fun. For a given value of fun, mind you. I kind of like it. I have a solid group to work with and we laugh and joke (especially when we're doing the reproductive system....). Anyway, my point is that the people that complain about anatomy have it all wrong. They're wasting their time.

What they need to be complaining about is embryology.

Good lord. All I can say is that I've never had a class suck the life out of me the way embryology does. We had the midterm today, and we're all just praying we passed. I don't know, maybe at other vet schools, embryology isn't as bad. I swear if everyone had to pass an embryology class before being allowed to procreate, we'd have world overpopulation solved. After the test, you could look at my class and truthfully wonder if you'd stumbled onto the set of some zombie movie. Angry zombies ranting about "Who cares where the thyroid cells originate from!?" mind you, but zombies nonetheless.

I've mostly gotten through first year thinking, "Well this isn't too bad..." But embryology? Woo, boy, they saved the best for last, obviously. Just in case you get cocky thinking you can cruise your way into second year. To reference hockey, I feel like I almost had a win, then the other team tied it up late in the third and now we have to go to overtime.

About halfway through

Not the semester - we passed the halfway mark there awhile ago. No, I mean in tests. Between quizzes, midterms and exams, we write 20 of the buggers this semester. This week when we write our third Parasitology test, we'll have written 10 so far. Which means that we have another 10 crammed into the next six weeks. This is both not as bad and worse than it sounds. Seven of those are in the last two weeks during finals (four during the first week, three during the second). The other three are between now and then, so a little more manageable. Our Parasitology professor put it best - studying in vet school is triage. You deal with whatever is on the horizon next. When that's done, you move on to the next thing.

I wrote my make-up/post-poned anatomy midterm yesterday. Some of those specimens aren't holding up very well. There was a rotting horse gastrointestinal tract we had to identify parts of. (Note: This actually was the best specimen possible that they had to use for that particular part of the body.) And a rotting horse gastrointestinal tract smells more or less exactly what you think it smells like. I will swear up and down that vet students have some of the strongest stomachs (or worst senses of smell) you find anywhere. A word of advice to future vet students: Learn the gastrointestinal tract really well so that you don't have to spend a lot of time poking it in anatomy lab.

We're also creative writers. We don't mean to be, we just forget things. I have a friend (an online friend, but a friend nonetheless) who when faced with an anatomy specimen he couldn't identify, wrote down "os penis of the stegosaurus". I wasn't that creative, but I tend to make up names based on what I see. Sometimes I'm sort of right. Another note to future vet students: Take up etymology as a hobby (that's etymology, not entomology, though the latter might help you with parasitology). Knowing some Greek and Latin root words is hugely helpful, both in taking the GRE to get into vet school, and in learning anatomy and pathology. "Omohyoideus" makes a lot more sense when you know that "omo" means "shoulder" and "hyoid" refers to the hyoid bone of the skull.

The midterm was pretty good overall. I took it with another girl who missed it and it was pretty relaxed. And the professor gave us each a couple Hershey's kisses. Can't complain about that!

Hazards of the job

Okay, there's really no denying that vet med is a high risk field (depending on what you're doing, of course - epidemiologists only problem is possible carpal tunnel and pathologists biggest risk is accidentally cutting themselves while gleefully hacking at a post mortem). Your patients will bite you, scratch you, step on you, shove you into walls...

Today, I have a sore neck. Did I strain something picking up a Saint Bernard? Did a cow hit me in the head? Maybe a python tried to choke me?

No, no, and no.

I got a cramp while studying for my histology final. I was typing up notes and going back and forth between the paper notes and online images. The book is to my left. So I spent a large amount of time yesterday looking down and to the left. Hence, the left side of my neck now hurts.

Worst. Injury. Ever.

(Before I get hate mail, I love epidemiologists and pathologists. I kid because I love.)

Treading water

It's a reality of any demanding academic program. Med school, dentistry, vet school, law... There will be times when you feel like "Oh, I just want to pass!" Admittedly, this is a major psychological shift for most people in these programs. If you're in vet school, it's because your academics were good enough that you rarely "just passed" in undergrad. But when you put all those high achievers in one room, the average goes up.

Admittedly, I've been doing very well. I've learned how much I need to study to keep me in the 80s and above the average, and sometimes I get a pleasant surprise in the form of a 90+. But we all falter. I've got four exams right now that I really just want to pass. Anything above a 50 is icing on the cake. Now I didn't miss much time for my father's death - I was only out 3 days. But in those 3 days, I missed two exams, and lost a lot of study time, so I opted to reschedule another one. This means I have 3 exams to write in 3 days. This is not going to be my best work. Hence the title of this post. If I keep my head above water, that's good enough right now. Hopefully, I get back on track by the end of next week. On the bright side, these are only midterms, and I have room to redeem my grade (and myself) at the end of the semester.

Which reminds me: End of first year is just 8 long/short weeks away. Six more weeks of classes, two weeks of exams and we're out. Yes! Hard to believe. I got a job interview working with the Department of Health Management studying disease in dairy cattle. Really hoping to land that, or to work in the teaching hospital over the summer.

*looks outside at the snow drifts*

*sighs*

Yeah, summer. I think it still exists. Although right now I'm convinced that if all the snow melts, Charlottetown will become the new Atlantis and disappear under the water.