Take that anatomy

It is Friday. And as I type I am sitting in front of my very neglected TV, in my comfy pants, relishing in this rare night of relaxation. We had two exams this week. That's a good thing and a bad thing. Bad because its a horrific week of study study study with NO downtime. I study every night anyway so adding a test (or two) into the mix really adds on a lot of time and effort. If you stop studying for all the other courses and only focus on the test material, you fall helplessly behind. So, unfortunately the only thing you can do is add more study time onto your already overstuffed schedule. I tried to utilize ANY downtime I have during the day to study for an exam. This keeps my night-time routine pretty much the same. Plus, at least for anatomy a big part of the studying has to be done at school, so doing it during down times is just convenient. Luckily we had more downtime than usual this week, a few cancelled meetings, and one class rescheduled for next week. I did have to spend a few hours staying late, but overall it's worth the extra time to ensure confidence on test day. I felt pretty confident about both exams, and though I don't know yet, I feel pretty good about my potential grade on each.

The good part about having two exams in one week: after you take an exam--if you've studied, you are completely caught up for that class. No lingering studying, worksheets, dissection...all caught up. It's a rare thing but a good feeling. AND, because I did a decent (not great but decent) job of keeping up with my other coursework, I am pretty caught up overall. I do have a little work to do tomorrow (probably only about 6 hours worth, half the usual weekend study-a-thon) and I am taking tonight off! The key is to maintain your usual schedule and add extra hours where you can, do any worksheets or "busy work" as soon as possible after it is assigned (because you will forget it until 10 minutes before it's due, I promise) and just buckle down and do it!

Today's test was large animal anatomy. An inordinate amount of rumors from the second year class floated around about this course in our preparation for the exam. Apparently the class ahead of us had a really rough time in Large animal anatomy and wanted to pass along their displeasure. And, as rumors will do they amplified, and turned and twisted, and got us really really scared about this exam. That too turned out to be a good thing. We were so worked up about how potentially hard this exam could be, we WAAAY overstudied. I promise I can tell you everything about everything regarding the equine neck and thoracic limb. As always there were a few questions that I was unsure of the answer. It wasn't that I didn't know the answer, or missed studying that topic, just that the question was unclear or the tag on the cadaver was really obscure. Like I said, I feel overall pretty good about the whole thing, I guess we'll see on Monday.

It was a long and tiring week, but I think the work I put in paid off. Keeping up with things nightly and not getting behind is a chore, and often not the way I want to spend every evening, but in the end it's worth it. A huge majority of my class is folding fast under the pressure of this semester. We were told from the beginning that this would be our hardest semester. I am tired, but not overwhelmed and stressed. I am hoping that won't hit me. But, we're only 3 weeks in, 13 more to go. Until next week starts, I'm catching up on trashy reality TV.