Anatomy is the biggest class we have this semester. It’s something like 9 credit hours, and it consists of a constant barrage of anatomical information, plus a semester-long dog dissection. Skin, muscles, bones, gaits, tendons, ligaments, OH MY!
I think, though, that it’ll also be the coolest class…
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So, honestly, I’d intended to write a blog entry on my very first day of vet school. And my second. And here it is the third, and it seems like I’ve already been in school for three weeks. My head is going to EXPLODE! I mean that in a good way. 
Our first day started out with Dr. Fails’ anatomy class, and let me tell you, I don’t think there is a better person to have welcomed us to our very first class in veterinary school than Dr. Fails. She was enthusiastic, empathetic, funny, well-spoken… just, wow. She really made me excited for the coming four years, and indeed my entire new career.
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School hasn’t even started yet, and already I am TIIIIRRRRREEEEEDDDD.
Last week was 5 1/2 days of orientation. But before I tell you about that, I should mention that the week before was spent painting for three days, moving furniture, running errands, buying groceries, setting up my new room, etc. And then it was time for orientation:
Day 1: Listen to a bunch of introductions and overviews, plus a two-hour seminar on personal finance that was utterly useless to non-trad students. Well, any non-trad student with their act together, that is. It covered things like building credit, automatic investing, loan repayment strategies, etc. I was bored. So was the 40-some woman sitting next to me. But it probably would have been moderately useful to a non-non-trad. (That’s just more fun than saying “traditional.”)
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Seriously? Why am I having these dreams? I haven’t even started yet!
Last night’s dream featured a multiple choice test, along with people interrupting me every ten seconds to make comments under their breath or to ask a question. Consequently, I couldn’t ever fully read through a question, and had to keep starting each question over. I had about twenty questions left in the last five minutes…grr!
Unfortunately, this scenario isn’t too far from reality. I discovered something very interesting about myself at the beginning of last school year, when I was taking my first Mammalian Physiology exam. There were so many people in the room, and my grasp on the material was fairly tenuous, and I was really nervous… Every. Little. Thing. Distracted me. A person moving their leg, a pencil hitting the table, the clock–any of these would fully remove my attention from the test, and then I would have to start reading through the question all over again.
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T minus three days to vet school (well, vet school orientation), and already I am having trouble with the first assignment.
The assignment is this: “Please bring an object, small enough to be held in your hand, which represents or symbolizes for you the meaning of veterinary medicine in your life.”
First, some background. CSU’s vet school orientation lasts one week, and three days/two nights of that week are spent at Pingree Park, the school’s mountain campus. So, sorta like summer camp. Pingree is supposed to be a bonding experience for the incoming class, and everyone I’ve talked to either loved it… or hated it.
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Not vet school–that isn’t for another two weeks. Nope, I’m talking about the vet school nightmares, those of the naked-in-class-forgot-to-study variety.
Last night I had my first, and hopefully last, of these lovely dreams.
Mine went something like this:
My anatomy lab partner and I went into the lab late one night to work on our dog dissection. For some reason, our dog had been cryogenically frozen while still alive, so when we took her out to dissect her, she started to wake up as she thawed!
Thinking quickly, my lab partner decided to cut her jugular vein, which proceeded to flop around, cartoon-style, like a garden hose on full blast when no one’s holding it. We were both covered in blood. Lovely. But we had a lot to do, so we ignored the blood and worked late into the night.
Lo and behold, our first anatomy exam was the next day. Because I’d been in the lab so late, I didn’t manage to look at the study guide until right before the test. The study guide included an entire year’s worth of material, and I recognized about three words on it. Great.
When I went in to take the test, there were various stations set up, each of which had a note card with a question on it. Instead of writing my answers on my answer sheet, I managed to write all my answers on the cards, for everyone else to see. Really, this dream was not going well.
Fortunately, I was spared further humiliation because I woke up at that point.
Egads. Let’s hope there are no more of these…
Aug 04, 2010 | 2 | MiscellanyA mere three weeks stand between me and my first day of vet school. I imagine, perhaps incorrectly, that the majority of my classmates are in “I’m so excited for vet school!” mode. That is, thinking about classes, buying new shoes, and generally having vet school on the brain. I should be too, but I’m not.
Instead, I am in freak out mode. I’m not freaking out about starting vet school, though–I’m freaking out about how much crap I have to do between now and then. Vet school is the furthest thing from my mind.
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Just discovered this blog, written by six new grad vets somewhere Down Under.
Just managed to burn through an hour reading old posts.
I laughed, cried, and thought deep thoughts.
Good stuff.
Jul 03, 2010 | 2 | Miscellany
Mr. Bones was a wire-haired Vizsla, with a tuft of golden hair atop his head, expressive green eyes, and a whiskery beard that gave him the look of a wise old man. He was a bit timid, but it didn’t take him long to warm up to you and when he did, he would dole out tentative little dog kisses with his warm, wet tongue.
He spent his last two days on death row.
Mr. Bones’ only crime was having had one too many staph infections. When his owner also came down with a life-threatening staph infection, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to jump to the conclusion that Mr. Bones might be the carrier of an horrific strain of bacteria. Read the rest of this entry »
Jun 20, 2010 | 2 | Animal Tales
It seems really, really hard to make a massive career change in one’s mid-thirties. That’s because it is really, really easy to come up with 101 excuses not to change, not because it’s actually hard! I mean, it’s not like I had to scale Everest or anything, I just had to apply to go back to school.
Here are some of the excuses that stood in between me and vet school, and here are the ways I got past these excuses.
1) I’m too old.
I’ll be done with vet school when I’m forty. My handsome other half will be well into his fifties. It seems a little silly to be making a career change at this point, plus incurring a lot of debt. The thing that I found most helpful in getting around the age thing was advice from a woman who’d become a vet in her early forties (and who is now a well-known holistic vet). She said, “You can be forty and a vet, or you can be plain old forty.”
2) It costs too much, and I have a mortgage to pay.
This was, and is, the most daunting thing about this process. I still freak out about it sometimes. So far, after two years of prerequisites/grad school, I still have my house and still manage to feed myself and my cats. The student loans are enough to cover my basic expenses. I will graduate with a boatload of debt, but I calculated my life expectancy and amortized the debt over the years I supposedly have left. It’s definitely worth $3500 a year to me to be a vet. Read the rest of this entry »
Jun 19, 2010 | 5 | How I Got Here, Non-Traditional Students