Everybody Hurts...

So you all know that Ru's head was broken a few weeks ago and now she's finally back to normal. I figured I would update you all about with some pictures that she sent me.

Speaking of injuries everybody in our class is getting hurt lately. So first it was vines trying to kill Ru, then Belinda tripped up the stairs at school and tore her knee open to the point where you could see her patellar ligament which was so cool and everything, then Alex got sick and has had a fever for weeks, etc, etc. So of course I had to be the next one to injure myself, it was only a matter of time. I guess the universe decided it had to be now rather than later. So Thursday, yes it was Thanksgiving Day, but considering I'm no longer in the United States that doesn't mean anything and we still had classes. I was minding my own business walking between the two gravel parking lots at school when I tripped and fell on the gravel. Well everything was fine until I was hit with an intense pain in my right knee and I looked down and saw a rock lodged in my knee and blood gushing everywhere. Did I mention I was in the middle of the road? Well I was. Without really thinking I grabbed the rock out of my knee and threw it down as even more blood gushed out of the wound. Thank God Nicole was with me as I had no motivation to move ever again. Like I said I was in the middle of the road...I kind of felt like a poor helpless animal about to become road kill, hit once and ready to take on death. Haha, I told Nicole that I couldn't get up, but she convinced me to make it to the car so at least I could sit down while she got the nurse. My neighbor Tracey was close by so she stayed with me and made sure I didn't pass out from the pain while Nicole ran to get the nurse. Unfortunately the nurse said I would need stitches even though I begged her not to make me get them and even asked if one of the vets at the teaching hospital could do it. Of course she responded with a no, but she called a local doctor instead of making me go to the hospital. So I received my first stitches in St. Kitt's. This whole vet school thing really is full of new experiences, although most of them have nothing to do with school. The past couple of days I haven't been able to move and it is the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced. Even more frustrating than packing to get to this island, which those of you who remember what I went through should realize just how frustrating it's been for me. I don't have any pictures of my injury for you b/c it's really not that cool looking and I refuse to have my picture taken when I look so bad, lol. Let's just say I can't wait for this semester to be over. Oh and did I mention that last night I got a call from another classmate, my friend Liz saying, "Hey do you still have those crutches and do you really need them? I blew out my knee and I can't really move!". Just another injury...my class seems cursed!

It’s been a long week.

I'm sorry I've been neglecting you all again, but if you haven't heard about my horrible week I'll share with you some highlights. Mind you it wasn't incredibly terrible, just a wee bit stressful and frustrating. So let's start back to last Sunday. Emily and a bunch of other people went on a hike and I had the morning to myself with a still recovering Tucker. Well everything was fine until my friend Kat calls me and says that Emily fell on the hike and cut her head open. So I find out later that Emily was trying to avoid the water on the trail and grabbed a vine that snapped leaving her to fall roughly 5 ft on her face. Owwww! So she was in no shape to do anything and while I worried about her I tried to study for my Nutrition exam. By the way I ended doing fine on the exam, but still between Sunday and my exam on Wednesday it didn't seem like that would be the case. My Sunday night Tucker was all better and Emily was trying to sleep off her injury. By Tuesday both Tucker and Emily weren't feeling so hot again which was great news for me. Kat and I forced Emily to see the nurse because her swelling was bad and of course the nurse sent her to the doctor who gave her meds that her a little loopy. (This part of the week was very amusing). So anyway on Tuesday night Tucker decided it was time to get sick again and he started throwing up. Emily stayed home from school and so she was able to keep an eye on him Wednesday, but by Wednesday night he was coughing and wheezing so I decided that I would contact PAWS to take him into the clinic. On top of all of this on my way home on Wednesday I got a flat tire! Emily and I got our neighbors Josh, Kevin, and Sean to help us change the tire, but unfortunately the spare was also flat. So then I had to call Ross Security (apparently they help with tire situations) to have them come and take me and the tire to get repaired. After about an hour outside of this pretty sketchy shack called Tony's Tires the tire was patched and seemed good as new. Our game plan for the next morning was to go to anatomy, take the anatomy quiz that was scheduled for 9, and then go get two new tires put on the car. That didn't exactly go as planned because I finally heard back from the PAWS medical coordinator and she said to bring Tucker into the clinic. After the anatomy quiz I drove home, picked up the puppy, drove back to campus (mind you the tire is already low on air at this point), and run into the clinic. I planned to just drop him off but I had to be there because they thought he could have parvovirus. Good thing he didn't and upon a physical exam no one could find anything wrong with him, but the vet wanted to do an ultrasound, blood work, and x-rays. Since we had to wait for PAWS to approve any medical treatment I left the puppy there with plans to pick him up after classes for the day. Finally I was free to get those tires so Emily and I drove into town to a place our friend used recently to get tires. We were pretty much lost, but luckily a nice worker helped us determine what size tire we needed and they put them on. That took about 45 minutes so we moved on to the next task which was picking up Emily's package from the post office. After trying all three doors that led into (what appeared on the outside) as the same building we found the area where we were supposed to go to pick up packages. They have to open all of the packages in front of you to determine how much you owe in customs fees so something that should take 5 minutes ended up taking a while. In all fairness we made it back to campus with two new tires, Emily's packages, and the two of us in time for us to grab food before our next class, so that mission was a success. After classes I went back to the clinic to get Tucker and of course they weren't ready. They were finishing up the ultrasound when I got there and I waited for them to tell me they found nothing and decided they didn't have to do the blood work or the x-rays. It was a little crazy because three people were telling me different things, but eventually they gave Tucker antibiotics and deworming medicine. He's all better now so hopefully that is helping some. Unfortunately the day after Tucker started feeling better I got sick. What started on Thursday night as a sore throat has turned into a full blown head cold/sinus infection type thing. I'm feeling slightly better today which is why I can actually put glasses on my face and write this blog, but all and all I'm still feeling crappy. My excitement for the day was obedience training class with the kennel dogs and oh yeah bringing my trash to the dumpster and finding a random guy just sitting inside. Let me just say it was extremely creepy!!! Along with this post I'll uploading some awesome pictures of yesterday's weather. Who else can say they saw a funnel cloud and a rainbow in the same day? (Well except those that saw it with me!).

Ride, Sally, Ride!

Ok so I know I haven't posted in a really long time and I apologize for that, but you see this whole vet school + exam week + puppy really isn't leaving me with much time. Anyway it's Saturday and I'm 75% done with Exam Round II so I'll take the time to catch you up a little about what's been happening in my very "interesting" life. So as many of you know I still have my foster puppy and I renamed him Tucker. He's very cute but unfortunately eats not only my socks, but also my time. I have a ton of stuff to catch you up on since it is November 6^th and my last post was something like 15 days ago! Wow have I been slacking…ok so the same weekend I got the puppy Emily and I finally got our car! She is a lovely "green" '96 Nissan Sentra and we decided that her name is Sally. Sally has been treating us very well for thus far so fingers crossed that they'll be no major problems. Of course no car on this island is perfect and Sally has her little quirks for instance she doesn't understand the concept of headlights, they are bright or they are not on...those are the only two options. Sally doesn't really like to tell us what speed we're going so we like to pretend we are going the speed limit as Reich would say, "all of the time". Haha she also isn't fond of having her back end (trunk) opened with a key, but can you really blame her? I don't think so. Luckily the trunk lever inside the car works just fine. Driving on the island has been somewhat of an adventure, but I think we are doing a pretty good job. Note to self: you need to look to the right before you look to the left before pulling onto a road! Both Emily and I will be driving on the wrong side of the road when we get home so be careful! Transferring the car into our names and getting insurance was quite the adventure. We had to go the police station to transfer the ownership over to us which was a huge hassle because the police women want to be completely unhelpful. Apparently we had the engine number wrong and the only help they would give us was to say to go to a mechanic and have him read it for us. So of course the person selling the car to us went to her mechanic and he wrote down a number and of course when we brought it into the station it was wrong, however only two numbers were reversed so the police woman finally helped us out and just did it. So after that we went into town to get insurance which was a very long and drawn out process but the lady was very nice and she assured us that the best way to live life is to "just hold fast" so from now on Emily and I are holding fast.

Anyway this round of exams was a hell of a lot harder than the first round but luckily I passed everything so as of now I'm still on my way to becoming a veterinarian! As our anatomy professors pointed out we are now just about 75% done with our first semester; however, the piece representing how much we've completed of our vet school career was minuscule. One step at a time I suppose. I've been a little home sick lately and just a little burnt out, but I'm trying to work through it. I think the most depressing thing is the lack of seasons. I cannot believe its November, I mean seriously! Halloween came and went and I would have been none the wiser if it weren't for a certain anatomy professor painting half her body as a skeleton and half as muscle and the little kids who came around trick-or-treating in the classrooms. The weekend before Halloween Emily and I carved a pumpkin which was cool, but that was the extent of our celebration. It's weird to think that most of you back home are wearing winter coats and walking around with long sleeves and pants right about now.


I have had a lot to deal with lately and on top of everything the puppy is sick today with a fever so of course my mind is not in study mode. I'll try to keep you updated more frequently, but these days life is keeping me extremely busy!

Puppy Breath!

So I've been really down lately and just a little lonely so I decided that I really, really needed to make a friend of the canine variety! Yesterday I contacted the Foster Coordinator of PAWS (People for Animal Welfare on St.Kitts) to see if I could foster a dog or puppy (if that's all they had). If you remember be mentioning the pregnant dog, Princess Buttercup, well she had her puppies on my first day of vet school (which for some reason I find significant). Her puppies are now almost 8 weeks old, but 2 of them still don't have permanent homes. My friend Kendra is fostering one of them and I'm fostering the other. The third one that's left is being adopted this weekend. So anyway he is very cute and yay I have a puppy! Here are some cute pics of him. They named him Eric, but I refuse to call a dog Eric so yeah he doesn't really have a name right now!

The Bad Thing About Rape Is…

Today (Thursday) was a rather uneventful day being the day after our last exam of round 1 everyone was just waiting for the weekend. As I mentioned the other day I baked a cake to celebrate the ending our exam round 1 and of course I brought it into school to share with everyone! I was trying to play "catch-up" all day with the classes that I moved to the side to study for my exams and that sort of worked. I studied anatomy for a while so at least I know what's going on in the pelvic limb now. Histology is still a mystery to me, but I'll figure it out and I finally understand what afterload is so physiology is coming slowly (Don't you dare make a "that's what she said…" joke!) The most eventful class today would hands-down go to Nutrition. As you recall I dedicated a post a few days ago to my hilarious Nutrition professors, well here's another one for you. As we are discussing different feed stuffs we get to canola or also known as the rape plant. In the words of Dr. Naylor, "I assure you rape is not a sexually deviant little plant, but the problem with rape is it…". Of course he was drowned out by laughter, but if you are actually interested in the scientific reason why the rape PLANT is bad it's because it contains an acid which can be toxic to the animals that eat it. If you are really interested the difference between canola and rape isn't just a name difference to make canola seem more appealing, it's the fact that the canola plant has been modified to not contain this toxin. Yep this is the stuff I learn in nutrition! Also in case you were wondering, "the problem with Canada is that they can't grow soybeans, but they can produce a TON of rape". Haha, ok on a more serious note (not really), did you know that hay bales can spontaneously combust? I guess if you've worked on a farm you would, but I had no idea. Pretty cool! Anyway a good life lesson, don't let a wet hay bale play with the other hay bales in the barn unless you could be without a barn!

Another Sunset And On To A New Day

Today marks a very special day because it was the last day in my first round of examinations. I can now proudly say that I've conquered the beginnings of each class in my first semester of vet school without dying (although I came close a few times, LOL). With that said, I have a very long road ahead of me involving a TON of work on my part. I'm confident in that I deserve to be here now as I am extremely confident that I deserved an A in Biochem with ATW (just saying). With all of that in the past I now need to convince myself to keep up the momentum and continue to do well. My goal for the next round of exams is to NOT stress out so much before and mainly AFTER the exam. Note: this is a lot harder to accomplish (as I'm sure many of you already know) than it seems. Thank you to all of you for your continued support and a special thanks to all of those who "believe in me" you know who you are! Today was all in all a good day! I did well on Nutrition (well the exam…I can't say my food intake was spectacular today), my refrigerator was fixed (yay!), and I baked a cake which I am more than happy to share with anyone who comes to find me in school tomorrow! Anyway on that note I have a TON to catch up on tomorrow but hopefully I'll find something hilarious to post about soon!

Nuances of Nutrition

So I have an Animal Nutrition exam on Wednesday and in studying I've rediscovered all of the wonderful quotes said in lecture by both Professor Reich and Professor Naylor. Now I've already mentioned quite a few of Reich's best and you most likely, "don't give a flying fandango", but I'm going to share with you some more of the ridiculous, sometimes hilarious things these two professors have said in the course of lecture. I'm not sure if I've told you before, but "LIVER = GOD". There is no greater being in the entire body (although I would have to disagree and say that the liver can't possibly be God because it is constantly listening to that insanely bossy insulin as well as the hormones that occupy the lesser managerial positions). Also thanks to Reich I will never ever forget that the nucleus in adipocytes is pressed up against the membrane like a squashed fly on a windshield in case you were wondering. Also for those of you that LOVE cats, did you know that "the lion is the King of Parasites" and here you thought he was just the King of the Jungle! What I think Reich meant was that instead of hunting for food a lot of times lions will scavenge for food and steal food from other hunters. Personally I love lions and I don't blame them for stealing food when they are starving and there just aren't enough gazelle on the Savannah. I mean really who actually likes those hackling hyenas anyway? Remember when pancreatic lipase breaks down triacylglycerol it doesn't want to be inappropriate and you give you the middle finger so only 2 fatty acids are removed and you are left with monoacylglycerol. Always, always remember that if there is not enough bile, or fat absorption fails for some other reason you will be left with that stinky, slimy, shimmery, silvery, shiny, slithery, steatorrhea!

Now Professor Naylor isn't quite as vivacious as Dr. Reich, but in his own British way he can be quite entertaining. I'm afraid that most people don't really understand his British sense of humor, but he can be funny at times especially when he's comparing our class to a herd of cattle. Yep, he's done that a number of occasions. One time in particular we were discussing overcrowding in cattle and he said, "well you all should understand that quite well". We are the largest class so far at Ross so I understood his sentiment, but my classmate next to me turns to me and exclaims, "Did he just compare us to cattle?". Apparently Dr. Naylor doesn't always use his head. He recounted a story for us in lecture while we were discussing supplemental mineral blocks for cattle and horses and the like. Pointing to a picture of a colorful wall of mineral blocks he says, "This is in Mexico and look at all of those pretty blocks. I have NO idea what was in them, but I made the awful mistake of licking one and got very, very sick"! I can't imagine what would possess the man to actually lick a mineral block out in the middle Mexico meant for animals, but clearly it was a terrible idea. While today's lecture is not covered on my exam I will share with you anyway the funny moment of today's nutrition lecture. The question was, "Can you make US Whiskey out of Ryegrass? Yes or No." The answer was No and right around 68% of the class got it wrong so Dr Naylor says, "Here's a fun slide with a serious message: Drink Scotch!" Regardless we later learned that the answer was in fact no because rye grain and ryegrass are completely different and while you can make alcoholic beverages such as whiskey and beer from rye grain you cannot use ryegrass. Now you know!!!

OH and before I forget, Did you know that most common domestic animals do NOT need to consume Vitamin C because they can synthesize it??? I bet you didn't! Of course this is not true for animals like rabbits and guinea pigs, but I ask you, "When's the last time you fed your cat an orange?" On that note I leave you until after my nutrition exam, wish me luck!!!

The Week of Rain

Sorry I haven't updated you guys in a while but I've been busy with exams and the hassles of rain storms that make hurricanes look like fun! Last time I wrote in here was before my exams so just an update on that end of things: Even though I freaked out about both anatomy and physiology I ended up with grades that I am proud of. Now I'm in the homestretch of these first set of exams with only Animal Nutrition left on Wednesday! Besides the exams we've had a hard week with the storms. On Tuesday the roads were so bad that people were stuck on campus after midnight or even overnight. It was crazy. Good thing I never leave my apartment once I'm home, LOL. Anyway the rain just kept coming which was bad news for my clothes on the dry line! Ru and I had some adventures hanging our clothes all over the house so we had something to wear to school the next day! Seriously, we need a dryer! After our Physiology exam on Wednesday we actually had time to clean our apartment. The dishes were piling up and the fridge smelled really bad and the floor was kind of gritty. So anyway you get the picture. Ru took dishes and I started on the rest finishing sweeping and mopping all of the floors and cleaning the bathroom before she finished the last dish. Now you would think in such a messy apartment bugs would be a huge issue. Well you would be wrong, because as soon as the apartment was sparkling clean we were inundated with ants. They were EVERYWHERE. Lesson 1: Rain brings even more bugs inside! Speaking of bugs we had another centipede incident! It was tiny, but still gross just hanging out on the living room floor like that. So now I present you with the following:

Katee's Sure Method of Killing Centipedes:

Step 1: Grab a large, heavy, useless book and throw it down on the centipede. (Note: Dorland's Medical Dictionary or Small Animal Clinical Nutrition work best)

Step 2: Quickly step onto the book to ensure the centipede does not crawl out from underneath

Step 3: Jump on the book

Step 4: While still standing on the book pretend you are doing the twist so that the book moves from side to side

Step 5: Pick up the book slowly to ensure that the centipede is in fact dead!

As you can tell these buggers are very hard to kill! Please note that this method is much safer than using ½ a can of BOP on the centipede!!!!

On Friday afternoon the sun finally came out so in case you were wondering the Caribbean is the Caribbean again! Ciao for now!!!

Early Mornings and Late Nights!

Sorry I haven't been able to post in a few days, but as some of you know I have an anatomy exam coming up on Monday and a Physiology exam that Wednesday. So anyway, I've just been really, really, really busy. Yesterday morning (Wednesday) I got to school at 6AM to walk the colony dogs, which meant I got up somewhere around 5AM in the dark. I don't know what Ru and I were thinking when we signed up to walk the dogs, but we made the best of it. As part of the AOCC (Animals on Campus Club) we walk the dogs for the second semester students when they have exams. I was excited because this meant I got to spend more time with Digger, the dog I really want to adopt (but we'll see how things work out). Anyway we got to campus at 6 and were responsible to walk/let out all of the kennel dogs. Only three people (including Ru and I) from AOCC and one other upper semester showed up to walk about 30 dogs. We had to just let a lot of them out into the grassy gated areas, but each of us walked around 4 dogs. They are supposed to be out for 15 minutes each so we barely made it to the anatomy lab for our first class on time. Unfortunately one of the dogs jumped on Ru and got poop all over her so "next time" we'll have to remember to bring a change of clothes! It was a really stressful event, but I'm happy that I did it because it helps the dogs so much (and who doesn't like playing with dogs bright and early). As the school day started it felt like it should have been over and I was pretty tired for the whole day. Wednesday was also our last day of Animal Nutrition with Dr. Reich as Dr. Naylor's part of the course started today. I liked Dr. Reich, but I'm sure I won't like his test questions as that's what all the upper semesters keep telling us. For the past few days I've been getting home around 4-5 and going back to the Anatomy lab to study from like 7:30-9:30. Today I just stayed on campus for a radiology review and to study more anatomy and we tried to get a horse to study large animal palpation. We tried to use Bosanova and he was not having it. Apparently he had been in a stall all day and was already on crossties when we got there so he just wanted to go back into the pasture. We tried our best to locate the Spine of the Scapula, the Greater Tubercle of the Humerus, the Deltoid Tuberosity of the Humerus, etc, etc, etc. We were getting frustrated and he was getting antsy so we put him back and that was that. Anyway, I'm slowly learning all of the muscle attachments and actions as well as all the ligaments, tendons, bursas, retinaculums, etc. that I need to learn for this anatomy exam. Off to study physiology because I can't forget about that! Hopefully you'll hear from me soon, but for now here's a beautiful sunrise picture for you!

Survived and Conquered!

So today was a very exciting day because I totally rocked my first exam of vet school! As I've mentioned previously my first exam was in MicroAnatomy & Embryology (in other words Histology). I went in extremely nervous and unsure of myself, but I survived and came out with an A. As many of you know I was not expecting that since A's in a cell based biology course have been a rarity for me since my days in high school. Thanks to all of you who believe in me!!! Studying pays off big time and at least I know I'm not doing all of this work for nothing. For my classmates out there who may not have gotten the grade you were hoping for just let it fuel your ambition to succeed AND remember if you passed that's ALL that matters. I'm hoping I can muster up enough ability to pass these next few exams coming up as it seems we have one or more a week for the rest of the semester. Right now I have to get on the ball and finally learn all those damn muscle attachments and actions in the canine thoracic limb, and oh yeah learn all of the parts in the large animal (equine and bovine) limb…Hooray!!! Since I don't have any pictures pertaining to my exam I'll share another adorable picture of Julie Kitty J.

Kittens, Cars, Oh My!

Yesterday was a great day for everything but studying, LOL. As you all know I have a test coming up tomorrow so this really isn't a good thing, but such is life. Yesterday was the PAWS (People for Animal Welfare on St.Kitts) Adoption Day. A bunch of us decided to walk over there just to look at the puppies and kittens that were up for adoption. I planned on talking to PAWS about fostering, but instead Ru fell in love with a kitten and decided to adopt her. This might be my fault since I told her in the car that I wasn't taking anything home, but she was a big girl and could make her own decisions. So now there's a beautiful little kitten living in my apartment. I think Ru has decided that her name is Julie (Jules for short), but she's been calling her Babes so we'll see what happens. The Julie is ADORABLE! The pictures on facebook and the one I'll put up her do not do her justice. She is so tiny with a big bushy tail and she's so elegant looking. She's most likely part Turkish Van because she has similar markings and she is super soft. So instead of studying all day yesterday Ru and I went to the store to get stuff for Julie and back to the apartment to get her settled in. She hid inside the plastic of the box spring of both of our beds for the good majority of the day, but I got her to purr for me so I was happy. Saturday afternoon we decided to test drive a car that Ru had seen for sale. This was our first driving experience on the island so I was really nervous, but we are both still alive!!! The car is a black '94 Honda Integra and let's face it like all of the cars on the island it's a piece of crap. However, the car drives really well and we test drove it up the hill so it is definitely good enough. The radio, speakers, and antennae were ripped out of the car by the previous owner because the system didn't work, you have to rev the engine in order to start it up, the passenger window doesn't have a motor so it doesn't roll down, one of the tail lights is broken, and the body kit is falling off the car. Those are the problems, but the car does run smoothly so we'll see. I think the asking price is a little high at $4500, but it's still a possibility. We are going to test drive another car today and see how that one runs so everything is still up in the air. On the way back from our test drive we found a lost sheep on our street. She belonged up on the hill with her heard so Alex just picked her up and brought her back up. I couldn't resist taking a picture. It was an exciting day of new experiences. After our fun we started studying for our microanatomy exam and we went through the TA mock exam and knew most of the questions. I've got a lot more studying to do today, but I think we'll be fine. I'll update you on how the Julie is getting along since right now she is still sleeping with Ru in her room!

Puppy Therapy :)

Full Moon

Well school is really starting to pick up and if I thought I was studying hard before, now it's just overwhelming. The past few days have been kind of a blur since it was only a four day week I've been kind of confused as to what day it is and where I'm supposed to be all week. I would be lying if I said that I didn't have time to write some new posts in the past few days, but I wouldn't be lying if I told you that I didn't really have that much to talk about. You heard all about my Tuesday in my last post so as you can see the week didn't start off that great. Wednesday wasn't especially exciting either. For anatomy I had radiology which is never interesting and Dr. B has started to teach histology for the next two weeks and I can't say I'm a huge fan. The afternoon was sort of eventful as Dr. Reich (professor for Nutrition) decided it would be cool to do a demonstration to start class. We were discussing ingestion of lipids and so in his confident fashion he takes a big spoonful of butter and pops into his mouth and disgustingly "chews" it for the next minute or so before he swallowed. Pure lipids right there and according to Reich the heart loves lipids (which it does since it can burn them for energy), unfortunately I don't know if his arteries feel the same way! In case you were wondering excessively fatty poop is known as, Steatorrhea. That's right I taught you all a big veterinarian word! Stinky, Slimy, Slithery, Silvery, Shimmery, Steatorrhea! Since I don't really remember Thursday I'm just going to say that it was probably just uneventful. There is only so much one can remember before everything just fades into a big blob. The only thing I remember about Thursday is Dr. Reich's pep talk which was much needed. Basically he told us that the Admissions Committee, which he is a part of, chose each and every one of us because they know that we are capable of doing the work necessary to succeed. The motivation to do that work is up to me of course, but at least they believe in me :).

Today was a great day because I had small animal palpation first thing in the morning and while we do learn important skills and information in this class it is also pure puppy therapy time. I've mentioned this before, but one of the most awesome things here at Ross is that the university has a dog colony which we have access to starting our very first semester. These dogs are used for palpation and other various educational things throughout all of the semesters. Today I worked with Digger who is an amazing shepherd mix. He's probably a little over a year old and he's such a good dog. I'm sort of in love. Anyway we went through and just felt around the thoracic limb as we are learning the basics of a physical exam. Most island dogs have gigantic lymph nodes because there are a lot of tick-borne diseases on the island, but Digger's were fairly normal and closer to what you would feel in a healthy dog back in the States. Anyway my favorite day of the week from now on will probably be palpation so expect to hear a lot about these dogs. On top of that I went to the first meeting of the Animals on Campus Club (AOCC) which is focused on taking care of the dog colony by doing obedience training, agility training, enrichment exercises, fundraising, and coordinating adoptions when the dogs are released from the colony. Did I mention that Digger is up for adoption in December? Yeah, so anyway these dogs make excellent patients and fantastic pets because they are worked with so much. Through AOCC hopefully I'll get to play with the puppies even more through training and walking the dogs while the second semester students have their exams. (The second semester students are responsible for taking the dogs on a 15 minute walk twice a day so on exam days AOCC volunteers to walk to the dogs so they still get their walks and the students get to study). I'm really excited about working with the dogs so expect to hear more about it soon!

In other news I have my first exam of veterinary school on Monday at 10:00AM. I'm a little nervous, but at this point I just have to buckle down and study!!! Anyway that's all for now I'll probably post again sometime this weekend or after my test on Monday.

The Tuesday of Technical Difficulties

Photo Courtesy of Ru :)

So today was a Tuesday of technological failures and waiting. Waiting for what you asked? Well I was waiting for something important information to be bestowed upon me. Unfortunately it was a day of tedious and boring lectures about nothing. This morning we had anatomy lecture where we covered how to use our clicker devices for answering questions for an hour and 20 minutes. This was totally unnecessary and such a waste of time. Seriously something that could have taken 20 minutes turned into a huge fiasco that ended up making us late for the second half of anatomy. For the lecture on the thoracic limb of the horse we were supposed to be in classroom 1 which is a little bit away from the anatomy lab. We were late to begin with so by the time everyone was settled we already had a late start, but to make matters worse all the technology around us started to die. The projector wasn't getting a signal from the computer, the computer wouldn't restart, the microphone wouldn't turn on- it was just a mess! After about 15-20 minutes everything was working again and the professor rushed through the lecture but she didn't finish. Apparently in vet school when professors aren't where they want to be at the end of a lecture they can schedule extra lecture time whenever is "convenient" for the entire class. I can understand why we had to make up our Nutrition lecture which was a whole hour, but 15 minutes, seriously?! Not only do we have to make up these 15 minutes, but the lecture ran until a few minutes 10am when the class really ends at 9:50 so technically they owe me time back in my opinion. After rushing to histology lab with literally a 6 minute break we find out that Dr. B decides to start 2 minutes early since he has, "200 slides to get through today". Of course this class couldn't be free from technical difficulties so Dr. B's mic decided that it wanted to sound like a terrible tape recording complete with loads of static. He pressed on with the lecture after figuring out that he could not fix the sound quality and we just had to put up with the horrible noise for the 2 hours of lecture. To make matters worse he went through the lecture at lightning speed so I'm not really sure what we covered since it was hard to keep up. After a frustrating morning we had our lunch break which was without mishaps, but I was still waiting for there to be some information that I actually cared about learning today. I was sorely disappointed with a full afternoon of Intro to Vet Med. One of the very nice professors gave a lecture on what to expect over these next 4 years and beyond, but really I felt that it was added stress that I didn't really need to focus on right now (stuff like the board exams, and foreign equivalencies, and internships, etc). From there we split up into 4 groups and my group had "Ethical Skills Lab". To be honest it wasn't that bad, but it was fairly straightforward and I think it took longer than it really needed to. I would have liked there to be more time actually spent discussing ethics rather than going step by painstaking step through the two ethical case studies we looked at. Anyway we were all done with school for the day and Alex drove Ru and I home. I talked to my mom on the phone for a little while and then got to work on some physiology. Today was a long day and I was so tired of studying after physiology I tried to motivate myself to continue, but I ended up making some black beans and rice for dinner instead. After dinner Ru and decided to read through the Palpation Guide and we continued to study for histology. We were getting a little silly towards the end so we finally decided to stop for tonight and that is that. Sorry for the whiny, boring post, but sometimes we all just have these days… I know you were all waiting to hear something amusing or whimsical, or compelling, but you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. To quote a t-shirt, "Vet School: It's hard…That's what she said".

Three Day Weekend :)

Contrary to popular belief my life really isn't all that exciting even though I'm on a beautiful Caribbean island, but I will continue to bore you with existence here. So the weekend is here and I'm pretty excited about that, but it also means that I have some down time to start missing people and stuff from home. After class on Friday we went to the port to walk around and then we went grocery shopping. I got to see the baby monkeys that the local people steal from the mothers and put in diapers all day so that they can convince people to take pictures with them for $20 US. Yeah the monkeys were really, really cute, but I feel bad for them and wish my first up close monkey citing was of wild monkeys. Ru got to hold a baby monkey while we were there and it bit her, but it was just a little nibble. I saw a monkey here one other time, but we were driving in the car so I don't count it. I'm still waiting to see wild monkeys! I'm getting a little tired of the food shopping situation here...everything is just so expensive and I can never find what I actually want. I spent Saturday on campus in the anatomy lab studying all of the muscles in the thoracic limb and tried to learn the attachments. Anatomy is a slow and arduous process, but hopefully I'll have time to go tomorrow and solidify everything I've gone over so far. I also had a histology TA session where our TA taught us all about "point and shoot", which is a great way to remember that the parasympathetic nervous system controls erection and the sympathetic nervous system controls ejaculation. We all found that amusing so I thought I would share it with you. After the TA session Alex drove Ru and I home and we studying histology for awhile before Ru was falling asleep and I decided to make some dinner. We had rice in the fridge so I decided to experiment and make some chicken fried rice. It ended up taking a little longer than expected and was only mediocre at best, but it was edible. As we were about to sit down to eat our neighbors Josh, Tracy, and their friend Heather bombarded our doorway and asked if they could come in because they were locked out of their apartment. We decided to make the best of it and played cards, rummy to be exact, which seems to be one of their favorite things to do. We all had fun until they could get back into their apartment. After they left Ru and I decided to go back to our original plan for the night and watched a movie. We watched one of my favorite movies ever, The Emperor's New Groove and we were both reciting lines the whole time so it was fun. Today, Sunday, we decided we needed a break and a bunch of us went to the beach at the Marriott. Everyone brought their snorkeling gear so Alex let me borrow her mask for a while and I got see some pretty cool fish! I got sunburn on my shoulders, back, and face which is unfortunate, but I still had a really awesome time. While we were there it started storming so there was lightening and beautiful rainbow at the same time which was pretty neat. It has been a fairly good weekend and guess what I don't have classes tomorrow. Tomorrow is St. Kitts Independence Day so it is the one and only holiday that the school closes for! I'm still planning to go to campus to study anatomy at some point.

Study, Study, Study...and Sex Jokes?

taken from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7242966@N04/485895008

I'm sorry for not writing a new post in a few days but I've been super busy! My brain is slowly shutting down from overload and so I figured I would take this time to take a break from the studying and share some things with you. Believe me in the past few days I have barely had time to blink so I'm really glad that tomorrow is Friday and that I have three day weekend coming (very exciting). So honestly I can't remember what has really happened since the last time I updated you all on my daily life so I apologize now if I repeat anything I've already told you or if I leave out a whole bunch of mundane details. My days are starting to blend together, but I think I can somewhat differentiate what is happening. Anyway, this week I had my introduction to large animal palpation and introduction to radiology. Large animal palp was pretty exciting because we actually got to touch a live horse and we will be routinely using these horses to learn how to palpate different muscles and tendons and things of that nature, which is really cool. This is one of the perks of going to a vet school out of the country; we actually get to touch live animals starting in our first semester (partly because we don't have certain animal rights groups bothering us about it). These horses are all geriatric horses (in their twenties and thirties) that wouldn't have a home if the university didn't purchase them and they are very well taken care of here. Intro to radiology was honestly pretty boring, but reading radiographs (xrays) is an acquired skill and having this early exposure will hopefully make me better at it for the future. Tomorrow I will have Intro to Small Animal palpation where we will get to palpate the dogs in the University's dog colony. So not only do I get to play with live horses, but I'll also get to play with live dogs (although not this week, but starting soon!). In anatomy we also finished our dissection of the canine thoracic limb so YAY!

Okay so I bet you're wondering about my title for this post aren't you. Well if you aren't then you are a crazy person. So it seems that despite the level of craziness exhibited by veterinary students, the veterinary professors greatly surpass this level; in plain English-They are Crazy!!! Over the past couple of days I've noticed a pattern to all of this craziness and it seems that sex is on all of their brains (possibly, maybe because it relates to the topics we are learning, but then again not so much). So the first instance of this craziness was exhibited by none other than our favorite Slovakian hero, Dr. Z who in the middle of lecture he addresses the class and asks, "Do you like sex, by the way?" After we all laughed he quickly said, "Oh no, don't answer! That's a crazy question", which of course it was, but nonetheless absolutely hilarious! Then today in nutrition Dr. R was going over why there happens to be a lot of glycogen in skeletal muscles. If you don't know glycogen is the storage form of glucose which the body can use for energy when we aren't eating food because the body needs energy ALL OF THE TIME and we aren't always eating. Anyway, he starts giving us this hypothetical situation where he says we are lying on our beds watching a movie when the door rattles and some "nastiness" comes in and our skeletal muscles must react QUICKLY to get away. He explains that while we were lying down watching a movie there wasn't much blood flowing to the skeletal muscles and then he proclaims. "We're not going to discuss where your blood was flowing" <wink, wink>. Then right after nutrition we have physiology where we were discussing the controls of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and the professor is explaining the organs that are controlled by each and when he gets to penis he took a long awkward pause so of course the entire class is laughing and he just says, "I don't understand every time we discuss this section the students always laugh" as if he is clueless that he was uber awkward about the entire thing. So yeah, basically all of my professors are a bunch of perverted crazies, but at least it makes life entertaining! Before I forget during our second session of nutrition today we were talking about how the mother passes on her antibodies to her baby so that when the baby comes in contact with the bacteria and ickiness of the vagina it is protected. Oh and did you know that giraffes give birth standing up? I bet you never thought about it, but that new born giraffe has to fall about 6 feet from the vagina to the ground in all likeliness on its head...welcome to the world baby giraffe, here's some brain damage!


 

My Little Slovakian Hero

Purple Dusk (view from front porch)

The title of this blog post is dedicated to my histology professor because even though I find histology very boring is a very sweet man with a great sense of humor (although I think most of what I find funny has to do with this heavy Slovakian accent more than his sense of humor). Regardless as a classmate of mine put it today, "He is my little Slovakian Hero". Today in class we started a new topic which is actually embryology and not histology, but technically the course is entitled, "MicoAnatomy and Embryology" so it's all part of the course objectives. So today we started gametogenesis which is the generation of the gametes or sex cells (i.e. spermatozoa (sperm) and ova (eggs). In our discussion of these cells my professor started talking about his block back in what I assume is Slovakia and he said, "All girls live there because all the mens die". He was explaining that while the rate sex in fertilization favors males, there are more females around because males die easier than females. Well maybe that's not funny if you weren't there, but I got a good laugh from it so I had to share it with you all. I finally lost him when he was talking about the "waffle cloud" that surrounds the oocyte (egg before it's an egg), but I later learned while I was studying the notes that this is actually called the Cumulus oophorus which sounds nothing like waffles when I pronounce it so I don't know where he got that from. So that was my exciting news from histology today.

In even more exciting news today in anatomy we finally removed the thoracic limb on our cadaver dog. I was a little afraid to cut it off and I completely mangled the rhomboidius and the deep pectoral muscle, but that's okay. So our little dog is now three-legged and has a very well examined left forelimb. Even though I kind of made a fool of myself when the professor came over, in the end I learned something. He kept asking what the different muscles were and of course for some reason my first answer for each one was "latissimus dorsi" which, by the way, was always the wrong answer. I surprised him though because when he pointed to the superficial pectoral muscles I eventually told him (after I said latissimus dorsi) that they were the superficial pectoral muscles and I correctly identified both the descending superficial pectoral muscle and the transverse superficial pectoral muscle. I was also really proud of myself for remembering the omotransvarsarius which for the life of me I could not remember yesterday!

Okay, I'm sure you are all sick of listening to me talk about muscles so I will move on to something else. So here is a disgusting, but interesting fact that I bet you haven't thought about before. Brought from me to you by my nutrition professor, if you think you are a vegetarian/vegan you are sorely mistaken if you eat things like pizza and bread (or anything with flour in it). Well let me explain, we all know that flour (or most of it) is made from wheat, right? Well that wheat must be processed and unfortunately insects like to lay eggs in the wheat plants and there is no way to remove them during processing. The FDA allows a certain level of insect chitin (the structural polysaccharide or carbohydrate that makes up the exoskeleton of the insect) in flour. So even if you don't mean to eat insects you are everyday! Sorry to all of the vegetarians and vegans out there, I know you are trying hard, but there is nothing you can really do about this one.

In other interesting news I broke my third water bottle in the past week, but don't worry because only the cap broke and I used my torch liter to melt the plastic back together and now it's good as new (well maybe not new, but it works). Other than that I've been doing a lot of studying and I must need more sleep because Ru and I were in hysterics over the fact that I've been particularly clumsy lately and today I looked straight into a light bulb as I turned the light on and walked right into the corner of bed and scraped myself as I exclaimed, "I hope I'm not breathing". HAHA still makes me laugh. Obviously I meant bleeding, but we both were crying by the end of our laugh fest. Also, did you know a person needs 12 hugs a day to grow? Bet you didn't! Ru needs a lot because she's short, lol (totally just stole her joke that I didn't even get at first)! Oh well, such is life!

Mr. RUSVM and a Whole Lot of Studying

Pink Sunset (view from front porch)

   So the weekend has come and gone and while I did have a few hours to myself it has been full of studying, TA sessions, and time well spent in the anatomy lab. On Saturday it was rainy and gross outside for most of the day so we went to campus to try to get some studying done. After an absurdly long time spent in the computer lab printing notes for the week, Ru and I headed over to the Multi-Purpose Lab to finish our histology lab which again took an absurdly long time. We had planned to go over to the anatomy lab, but we didn't have time since everything was taking us so long. We ate a quick lunch and went back to the lab for a TA session which was actually really helpful. We decided to walk home since our ride had to be somewhere else before the TA session was over. Anyway I will say that I never want to walk home again! After a 30 minute walk mostly uphill I was tired and did not want to study so I took a shower and attempted to take a nap before Mr. RUSVM. For those of you who don't know Mr. RUSVM is a tri-annual talent show where a male representative from each of the 7 semesters competes for the title Mr. RUSVM. My friend Mike was the rep for my class so we were obligated to attend. There were several categories and a choreographed introduction so it was pretty entertaining. I have to say that it went on way too long and it got a little boring after awhile, but overall it was a good time. In the first category they had to act out a "tale of St. Kitts" and those were pretty funny even if I didn't get some of them because we haven't been here long enough. Then they had to dress up like their favorite superhero. Mike painted his entire body green so he could be the Incredible Hulk, although I would have to say that my favorite was a tie between the Can of BOP (bug spray that actually kills centipedes, pretty sure it's illegal in the US) and Captain Planet. All of the costumes were pretty outrageous and it was pretty cool to see how gung ho some of the upper semester students are about this little competition. Then the contestants had to perform a talent. One of the contestants tried to play the improv game where someone stands behind the other person and uses their hands to control the scene and I must say that it was not funny and really made me miss the Pappy Parker Players, the best improv/sketch comedy group at Binghamton University. The last category was formal wear which was pretty funny since the guys dressed in anything but formal wear. The seventh semester contestant was dressed like an Egyptian pharaoh and had a bunch of people carry him on to stage. Of course the winner and newly crowned Mr. RUSVM was the 7^th semester contestant, but I knew that was going to be the case even before I saw the show. It was a pretty interesting night, but I wish I got more studying done.

 Today, Sunday, I took care of some household chores and then made my way to the anatomy lab to study the cadavers. I finally learned all of the extrinsic muscles in the thoracic limb. In case you don't know the thoracic limb is the front leg and the extrinsic muscles are attached to the axial skeleton (but you probably don't know what that means either). Anyway now all I have to learn this week is all the information for all the other classes as well as the muscle attachments, actions, of course all of the intrinsic muscles, oh yeah and all the bones and parts of bones in my bone box. The information is endless, but I feel a little bit better about being able to accomplish some of this stuff!

I Made It Through!

Early mornings waiting for our carpools

The Anatomy Monster

this is basically a Poland Spring bottle filled with vanilla extract...weird right!

Rainbow for the end of our 1st week!

TGIF!!! Seriously this has been one of the most difficult weeks of my entire life, but I made it through! As one of my professors put it today, I am now roughly (a little less actually) 1% done with my education here at Ross. I survived my first week of classes and I think this is going to work although it will definitely NOT be easy! Everyone in my class including myself is worried about anatomy as it seems to be ruling our lives to the point where my nutrition professor said the other day, "I'm here to remind all of you that there is more to vet school besides anatomy". Regardless I'm going to tell you all about anatomy anyway. Yesterday I received my cadaver dog bright and early at 8 AM and I must say no matter how well prepared I was for that moment it was still a little strange to see a room full of dead dogs ready to be cut into. That being said, after the first few minutes I was fine with the situation and proceeded professionally as we began the dissection. To save you all the gory details as I'm sure some of you reading don't ever want to think about the fact we dissect dead animals for educational purposes I won't tell you much more about the cadaver itself. Also, not sure if I mentioned this previously, but we were assigned a bone box, which you can see in the pictures accompanying this post I meant to take pictures of us studying the other day, but I was just too busy studying (so I guess that's a good thing). Anatomy is going to be the monster that gives me nightmares for awhile. It's just plain intimidating, but I'm sure I'll get used to it and hopefully learn to love it. Yesterday I didn't have histology because the class is split in half on lab days. I was scheduled to do my lab today and so was Ru so we get to be lab partners for that. Unfortunately we only had like 20 minutes to do the actual lab because the professors were lecturing for an hour and a half. This was very reminiscent of Microbiology lab with Davies if any of you reading this took that class. Anyway, Ru and I are going to go to the lab to finish it on Sunday and we'll probably go to visit our dogs in the anatomy lab as well. I got home today and just could not bring myself to study so I decided to bake some banana bread with the 5 bananas that were way overripe. Yesterday we went grocery shopping and I bought some vanilla extract and baking soda so I could bake something anyway. I mentioned I bought some vanilla and by some I mean like a 16 oz water bottle full of vanilla extract. You can see it in the picture above. It's made locally in St. Kitts and I noticed it tastes a little different, but it's good. Well baking was a little bit of an adventure because our oven went out again yesterday because the gas tank was turned off outside so I had to relight the pilot light by myself. I thought I was going to blow up, but everything worked out and I didn't burn myself. Then I realized that the only baking pans we have are a cookie sheet and a 10x15 (huge) glass casserole dish. So I doubled the recipe to fit into the casserole dish which was fine because I had so many bananas anyway. Then I realized that it was going to be more of a cake so I wanted to make frosting, but I didn't have any confectioner's sugar so I had to improvise. I found a recipe for frosting using regular sugar but it required heating it on the stovetop. Well the last time I heated up sugar I burnt myself pretty badly, just ask Corey or my old apartment-mates, but I decided to go ahead and try it anyway. It actually came out pretty good and if you are interested I will share that recipe with you:

Frosting in a Pinch:

1 cup sugar

4 Tbsp butter

4 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

Optional: dash of cinnamon *I added this because I like cinnamon in my banana bread

Stir all ingredients except vanilla in a small saucepan and slowly bring to a boil stirring slowly and frequently. Boil for 1 full minute and then take off of heat. Add vanilla and place entire saucepan in cold water (I just filled a bigger pot with cold water and placed it inside). Let sit for a few seconds and stir gently until thickens. Beat to slightly whip to consistency for spreading on cake. Be careful because mine thickened a little too much and I had to run the saucepan under warm water to melt a little.

To Create a New Big Picture We Must Redefine All of the Little Things First

Today is my third day of vet school and apparently I lied to whomever I told that I wouldn't be writing on here for awhile. I have found that it gives me a great way to decompress after classes before I set down to study. Sorry about all the spelling/leaving out words/grammatical errors that were in my blog post yesterday, but as you can see (if you care to look) I haven't corrected them, because well I'm too lazy to go back in an edit it, LOL. Anyway those errors partly help describe my state of mind while writing which was just try to outpour information that would keep us both mildly entertained so that I could stop thinking about all the studying I had to do. Last night I got a lot more accomplished than I thought I would because we had the whole afternoon off and got out at 2 instead of 5pm which made a huge difference. Anyway, my point is that I will try to continue to write here to both let you know what's going on in life and as a way for me to get say a 20 minute break in between classes and studying!

Today, like every day I started with anatomy lab. My letter group was scheduled for Clinical Skills lab where we learned how to hold our instruments and we were timed to see how long it took for us to correctly move beads from one section of a container to another using these instruments. It sounds boring, but it was actually pretty fun and the hour flew by. Then, I got my bone box from anatomy (basically an assortment of canine bones that we have to memorize and get to play with. Today was also my first day of physiology which actually doesn't seem like it's going to be too bad, although the volume of information is still incredible. After classes I studied for a while with Emily and then Mike and Alex came over to study with us and my handy dandy bone box. We went through all the bones of the forearm and have started the process of setting them deep into our memories. I'm already started to burn out as this week seems to go on forever, but just two more days and then the weekend is here. Of course I'll have a lot of studying to do over the weekend, but I'll get to sleep in a few more hours and hopefully throw some fun in there too!

Vet school seems to be about pulling tiny details from everywhere, learning them, and then assembling them into a big picture. I can tell you now that anatomy is like learning a new language and the other classes are very detail orientated with a larger picture at the horizon. All of this information is leading somewhere (hopefully leading to becoming a great vet), but in order to get there, I've determined, we need to assemble all of the little details into a new "big picture" (kind of like those paintings that are made using only tiny dots of color, do you know what I mean?).

What I Learned In Vet School Today: Russian Water, Cloned Sheep, & Dolly Parton

Okay so this isn't going to be the most exciting post ever, but I need some way to decompress so I figured I would write a post. Today was my second day of classes and guess what…I'm still alive. It's a bit overwhelming, but I'm doing my best to work through it. So here's a compiled list of the most important things I learned today in vet school. Haha, ok so the first thing I learned was not get out of the car so that you not only hit a moving car with your door, but also so that you're water bottle doesn't burst out of your backpack and roll under the moving car. I also learned another important lesson regarding water bottles: Don't drop them more than once b/c they crack :(.  Regarding the second incident with the water bottle I also learned not to wear flip flops on a rainy wet day in doorways without mats to wipe your feet, you see you end up falling and banging your knee and unfortunately breaking your water bottle. Anyway all joking aside, I learned today that I should have taken an anatomy course in undergrad, if you are pre-vet and you are reading this I would HIGHLY recommend taking anatomy so it won't be so overwhelming. I learned that it is possible to both print class notes and go to the financial aid office within one hours time ( a feat I thought was absolutely going to be impossible on "Island Time")…I even got to scarf down my granola bar. I also learned that while I can't understand my histology professor he is a really funny guy and I enjoy his accent most of the time. By the way I'm still not over "nuc-le-oos", LOL. I learned today that my histology professor also calls vodka Russian water which I found hysterical. Apparently if you drink too much "Russian water" the alcohol starts to break down tight junctions in the terminal bars of the stomach lining cells which leaves those cells unprotected from the acidic gastric juices within the stomach. That's why some people experience "heart burn" the morning after they party to hard! Apparently this is how some Russian president guy died at some point…I learned that today too! Another interesting fact brought to you from my histology professor is regarding Dolly Parton's breasts (well sort of). So apparently Dolly (the sheep that was cloned back in 1997) was named after Dolly Parton, something I did not know before today and here's the reason why. Okay so when they created Dolly they took a mammary cell (if you don't know this, these cells in the breast) and implanted into a donor egg cell in order to create the clone. Since Dolly Parton has a very voluptuous bosom they named the cloned sheep Dolly. I think I'll end on that note, but I also want to mention that I learned today that deli chicken, hummus, American cheese, and cucumbers on a spinach wrap makes a very good lunch in case you have followed my amazing sandwich making abilities before and wanted to try something new. Oh and before I forget, I learned today that even though I've only known these people for a little over a week they are the most supportive and amazing people ever!!! Alright, I got to go study some important stuff for like a zillion hours so Byeee!

First Day of Classes & White Coat Ceremony

Today was officially my first day of Vet School classes and I'm already pretty stressed, but it was pretty exciting. My first class of the day was anatomy where we were assigned groups and the class coordinating professor ran through all of the scheduling and expectations of the course. It seems like scheduling is going to be the biggest issue with this class because sometimes it's like you have to be in three places at once since it combines dissection, radiography, and both small and large animal palpation. For any given day I'll be doing one of those while other members of my group go on to do the other tasks and then we will confer at the end of class. It's going to be pretty challenging, but it seems like the professors are really nice and really want to help us learn! After a break which was supposed to be 20 minutes, but turned into 10 since anatomy ran over time I ended down to the multi-purpose laboratory for Microanatomy & Embryology (AKA: Histology & Embryology). The class is split between two professors and the one we have now is from Europe (I believe Slovakia although I couldn't really understand him, LOL). He seems really sweet, but like I said he's hard to understand. I love the way he says the word nucleus, which he pronounces nuc-le-oose, haha. The class isn't the most exciting in the world and I've determined that I will most likely have to chug coffee during the 10 minute breaks in order to stay awake and get in enough study time, etc. At 12:00 we break for lunch until class starts at 1:10. After lunch we had Animal Nutrition which is promised to be our most difficult class. The professor seems pretty entertaining even if he's going to be really tough. At one point he walked out of the room screaming that he was done lecturing and that the chartreuse colored arrows were making him angry, only to come back in and say he was unchanged. Apparently it had something to do with homeostasis, but whatever. Our last class of the day, which would have been physiology, was canceled so that we could get ready for our White Coat Ceremony. We rushed home and got changed and rushed back to try to print notes before the ceremony began which was only a semi success, but oh well. The White Coat Ceremony was really nice. If you don't know what a White Coat Ceremony is it is an official induction to the veterinary medical profession where all incoming students are presented with their white coat and take the Veterinary Student Oath which reads as follows:
"At the time of being admitted to the school of Veterinary Medicine at Ross University, I solemnly pledge: To Consecrate my life to the service of both animals and humanity; to give my teachers, staff and classmates the respect that is their due; to conduct myself at all times with conscience, dignity, and integrity; to always provide comfort and compassion to teaching and client animals left in my care; to maintain the honor and noble traditions of the veterinary medical profession; to not allow considerations of religion, ethnicity, gender , sexual orientation, politics or social standing to preclude productive and constructive relationships with my instructors, staff, classmates, or clients; to never use my veterinary knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity; I make these promises sincerely, freely and upon my honor".

Anyway, it was really nice ceremony and there was a quick reception that followed where we all ate and took pictures. It's funny because even though orientation is over my orientation group all found each other and we hung out together during that time. We all had a lot of studying to do even though it's only the first day so we all split up to go home. Once we were home Emily and I tried to get into study mode and finally succeeded after trying to figure out how to use Ecollege which is a program like Blackboard where we can access our course materials. Although stressful, overall it was a good day. I can't believe I've started vet school and I'm here on this beautiful island…it's pretty incredible. This may not be what I pictured when I thought about what vet school would be like or where I would end up, but for now it sure is awesome!