Five Down

Five weeks down! Tomorrow marks the start of week six. These past few weeks have been long yet at the same time flown by. I've spent much more time in class and more time studying than I did in undergrad, but I've also been having so much fun. Here are some highlights from the past few weeks:

• I took two lecture exams (aced them!) and a lab exam. We have one lecture exam every other Monday, which has been manageable. So far my studying strategy has been working well. When I come home at the end of the day, I'll take some time to decompress before turning my attention back to school. After dinner, I'll spend a few hours reviewing the material I had learned that day. Finally I'll catch up on social media and either a few YouTube videos or possibly an episode of a TV show, look at my schedule for the next day to see if there's anything that needs to be prepared, then go to sleep! On weekdays I'm usually asleep by 11 PM, which is great and totally necessary when you have to wake up around 7 AM. By the time the weekend comes, especially a test weekend, I can spend several hours reviewing, but I don't have to worry about trying to relearn material that was presented several days ago, and I can actually enjoy the weekends and do fun activities! 
• I turned 22! My roommates and I went hiking at the nearby Pandapas Pond, which was beautiful, then had lunch at Green's downtown. 
• I attended my first Virginia Tech football game, which was the first home game, where we beat UDel 27-0. I'm almost positive this was the first football game I ever stayed for the full duration of, even though Rutgers seems like such a big football school. VT knows how to make the games fun! I also have been going to tailgates, which wasn't a big deal at Rutgers. 
• I've attended quite a few lunch/dinner meetings hosted by various clubs at school. So far I've joined the Companion Animal Club, the Food Animal Practitioners Club, Radiology Club, Pathology Club, VOICE, Alpha Psi, and the Veterinary Business Management Club. Pathology Club hosts slide rounds on Mondays and necropsy rounds on Fridays, where a professor/clinician will talk through cases using the specimens. Radiology Club also holds rounds, where a professor/clinician will run through PowerPoint slides of radiographs and walk us through the process of what to look for and how to make diagnoses. FAPC holds Saturday morning bovine palpations. I had only palpated once previously in undergrad, so I'm excited to hone my skills. Plus we have Jerseys in addition to Holsteins here, whereas Rutgers had only Holsteins! Last week, I attended a Sunday wetlab at a nearby farm, where we used ultrasound to diagnose pregnancy in 24 sheep (we suspect 6 pregnant ewes, with at least one of them carrying twins!) and trimmed hooves. At first I was slightly hesitant to join so many clubs, especially since some people warn against taking on too much the first semester, but so far my schedule has definitely been manageable. You only have to do as much as you want to/can. A lot of meetings are during the lunch break and provide lunch, and since I don't go home for the break, I figure I might as well use that time to learn something new! I've attended meetings on topics including business leadership skills, the AKC, AVMA PLIT and veterinary insurance, Nationwide pet insurance, and more. I probably attend at least two per week. Clubs and meetings add something fun to focus on outside of class. 
• I've already gotten more hands-on experience than my friends at other veterinary schools have, which is really exciting. I've had handling labs for dogs, cows, and horses, and recently we've started learning how to perform physical exams on these species. Anatomy/cadaver lab is also going well - each team of 8 is responsible for two dogs and a cat. So far we've opened the ventral midline, removed the right thoracic limb, removed several ribs, and opened the thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities. This week we'll actually be performing our first necropsies! 
• I'm slowly settling into a good group of friends. Since I'm not typically someone who becomes close to new people very easily, it could be a little disheartening to see some other classmates seem to click right away, even though it may be on a superficial level. However I do have a few friends that I truly get along with and enjoy hanging out and studying with, so I'm grateful for them and am excited to see where our friendships go. 

Overall I am absolutely loving vet school. It has been an amazing learning experience so far, both academically and socially. Even though not everyone in the class likes each other, for the most part no one has any problems with each other, and everyone is able to get along. I think we're much more laidback as a class than previous years or classes at other schools. I also really like our curriculum, which is very different from that at other schools. All of our classes are integrated, which means what we learn from one professor connects to what we learn from another. For example, one professor will give a lecture on cardiovascular anatomy while another gives a lecture on cardiovascular physiology, all in the same morning. Then we'll have a hands-on lab where we practice listening to the hearts and lungs of our teaching dogs, plus a lab where we use microscopes to look at the microanatomy of muscle tissue! This system makes learning and connecting different lectures very manageable, and helps us to understand how to apply what we're learning. Another great thing is that we average twenty-five contact hours per week because VMCVM feels that this is the appropriate amount of hours that allows students to maintain their well-being. We don't have class 9-5 Monday-Friday like some other schools do. We usually will have 3-4 hours of lecture in the morning and 1-4 hours of lab in the afternoon from Monday-Thursday. On Fridays we have Integrative Sessions for two hours, where we use the material from the week to discuss case studies with our teams. It's working well so far. 

Here's to week six!