Sunday, September 20, 2009

Basically "B's"

I'm now a month in, and it feels pretty good. I survived my first round of exams with little fanfare. I made straight "B's" which isn't exactly what I was hoping for, but in comparison to the garish grades others received, I'm pretty proud of myself. I have changed my study habits a bit though...it is important to review the lectures as soon as possible...and understand things that don't make sense in class as soon as you can. All this stuff just keeps building on itself, so if you don't understand a tiny concept one day, you will be completely lost the next.

On a humorous note, I became the jackass that hit the "reply all" button on a return email rather than just "reply". Luckily it wasn't an embarrassing email, only letting someone know that I never received something I paid for. Unfortunately I sent it to the entire vet school, not just the intended recipient, or just my class, no...the whole school. Oh well, I was only slightly embarrassed about it, and I made a pretty good joke out of it. At least it wasn't something horribly personal, like being excused from class for infections diarrhea or something. In the end not such a big deal.

I guess I haven't spoken too much about my individual classes and how each is going. So here goes:

Anatomy- I took this lovely summer course (best $500) I ever spent. So this class is mostly a review, with some new material. I am beyond glad that I don't spend too much time catching up in this course. It seems to be the course that is drowning most people. I most most disappointed in my exam grade in this course--as it turned out I just made stupid mistakes. I didn't read the question correctly, or answered too fast and put a wrong answer, or said something like "extends the carpus" instead of the "joints of the carpus". There wasn't a single question I didn't know the answer to, I just rushed myself...lesson learned. But, either way a high "B" isn't hard to bring up.

Physiology- up until now, my previous physiology course had guided me through the professor's muddled and sometimes untranslatable lectures. That's over now. I don't really know anything he's going over currently, so I am having to do a lot of reading, and self teaching to stay caught up. Which isn't so bad. I will probably do better on the next exam (hopefully) because of that. Again, "B" on this exam, not terrible in comparison. The hard thing is there were only 24 questions, so it doesn't take missing many to make a "B". And, the one's I missed I legitimately didn't know, no stupid mistakes here. I just need to work harder.

Histology- I HATE this course. The material is not hard, I just hate it for some reason. Maybe because it's at the end of the day, or maybe it's just because I can't stand to hear her lecture. (In one hour the other day she said "essentially" 84 times...killing me). I did well on this exam too, nothing major to worry about, I could have studied more...but I really really hate it.

Immunology- I like this course a lot. I thought I did great on the exam, but turns out there were a few key concepts I didn't understand as he wanted me to. I barely studied for this test--that has changed. It is absolutely key to review his lectures, and to look up any terminology he assigns. His exam is not meant to trick you, he just looks for VERY specific answers, lesson learned.

That's pretty much it, we have two more courses Professional Development, we pretty much just sit and listen to guest lecturers--show up and you get a grade. And Clinical Correlates, this is the one course where we are allowed live animals--supervised of course. I like it because it's easy, again show up and get a grade, but we pretty much have no leadership as far as what we're supposed to be doing, we are learning by muddling through it ourselves. So far we made a mess of things on an equine case, but we rallied in the end and made it work.

That's pretty much my week, same ol' same ol'. This week I start my husbandry rotation with the Ostrich, (who by the way I found out is named Henderella) I'll post pictures I promise.

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