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First of all, yet another apology for not updating this blog very often. I’m really busy with school, blah, blah, blah…you get the picture. I’ll try to update more often, but no promises.
And yes, vet school is back in full force. I thought the days of solid lectures from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ended with second year, but, sadly, that’s not the case. It seems that my schedule this year is packed even more solid than last year. But part of that is my fault. We had a wider choice of electives this semester, which, being electives, we were of course pefectly free to pass up. But I just couldn’t pass on them. They all either seemed really interesting, or were applicable to my “track” which is “mixed animal” (meaning large (horses, cows, camelids, sheep, goats, etc.) and small (dogs, cats, house pets) animals. And so, while lots of other people didn’t have to come in until 10 a.m. on Monday mornings, for example, I had to be there at 8 to participate in the equine reproductive elective.
Not all classes run a full semester in vet school, so even though we are just over two months into the semester, I have already completed five courses. There is still plenty more to go, of course, but there is a certain satisfaction knowing that you’ve already “knocked off” a few things. The downside is that typically when one course ends, a new one begins.
So other than the long days, how does third year compare with the first two years of vet school? First off, it is kind of surreal in that it’s hard to believe that we’ve come so far in only two years. Seeing the freshmen start out and remembering what that was like seems like decades ago. And it’s also interesting to think that in two short years we’ve gone from the wide-eyed, clueless people who walked through the doors to the somewhat sophisticated, seasoned vet school students we all are now. And although it’s true that we still have a year to go after this, we are pretty much at the top of the heap right now as far as our vet school academic carreer goes. That’s because as fourth years we scatter off into clinical rotations and externships and we won’t really be together as a class anymore. So this is it - the pinnacle of our classroom learning as vets in the making.
Third year classes range from very interesting to run-of-the-mill dull. Last week we had our gastrointestinal surgical labs which involved various GI surgeries on dogs. I love surgery, but I hate anesthesia which, of course, goes hand-in-hand with surgery. I had to patiently plod through two hours of anesthesia before I could get to do a surgery, but I guess I’m finding that the more you do anesthesia, the less nerve-racking it becomes.
I’ve also had plenty of both bovine and equine palpation labs, so my arms have spent considerable time inside of rectums this semester. Of the two I find I’m much more comfortable and capable with horse palpations which is probably fortunate because I’d much rather work with horses than cows.
And just to make sure we keep our eyes on the prize, they made us plan out our entire fourth year by the end of this September. We had to submit all of our rotation and externship requests by that date and once the computer and a few select humans have their way with them, I should know exactly what I’ll be doing and where until May, 2011. Although we have to have our externship dates blocked off, we don’t really need to figure out what and where those externships are going to be - at least for a little while. So far I have two externships definitively set up. I will be spending two weeks at Rood and Riddle equine hospital in Lexington, Kentucky in October next year. In March of 2011, I’ll be spending two weeks with a vet in Oregon going on farm calls to alpaca and llama farms. That leaves two externships unfilled, but I should know about them soon - if all goes well, of course.
But for now I have to study for an oncology final… sigh.