And now I face the final...finals...

Nagging successful! Well done! Although, I would like to point out that a certain nagging person hasn't updated too recently either...

Anyway, Thanksgiving is far past, and starting on Monday we were quickly thrown head first into the reality that our first semester of veterinary school is quickly drawing to a close. Isn't that crazy? I seriously feel like we just got here. Although, when I think back to things that happened earlier in the semester, they do seem like they happened forever ago. Time is very strange like that.

This week has also been strange. Compared to the rest of the semester, we've had very little class and almost all of it has been histology. I don't care too much for histology, so it hasn't been the most enjoyable thing. However, the little bit of extra sleep has been quite nice.

I think my most interesting experience this week has been our Immunology poster presentations. My group presented on Wednesday, on a paper about the potential use of human IV immunoglobulin as a therapy treatment for dogs with immune-mediated thrombocytopenia (a condition where the platelets aren't working right - so, usually the dog is hemorrhaging and losing a lot of blood). I didn't really know what to expect for this project, and as we started getting more details I started becoming more terrified. The project itself wasn't bad at all - we were to find and read through a scientific article on our topic, and summarize it in a nicely organized tri-fold poster. The kicker was that we then had to present our poster to some clinicians who were picked specifically because of their knowledge on our subjects, and who could then drill us with knowledgeable questions. That was the scary part. However, the whole thing went pretty well. The clinicians were friendly, seemed to understand for the most part that we were still in our first semester of vet school, but didn't completely baby us either and asked appropriately challenging questions. I was amazed at how much I was able to learn about a topic I knew barely anything about in just two hours of presenting it (over, and over, and over again) and trying my best to work through the questions that they asked. I was also pleasantly surprised about some of the questions that I was able to answer; maybe I remember a few things from my undergraduate immunology course after all! Moments like that are always somewhat uplifting. I still occasionally have tiny inklings of doubt whether this is the right field for me. However, when something that I've learned the scientific basis of clicks into place with some clinical aspect, it's a really exciting moment, and I feel like I'm in the right place.

My very favorite part of the poster presentation came with the last two doctors to whom we presented. The first was Dr. Monroe, a clinician (who apparently used to be on the show Emergency Vets, but doesn't like to talk about it!). He was rather awkward and twitchy throughout our presentation, and didn't quite let us finish before finally bursting out with what he'd been wanting to say the whole time. He went on quite a long rant about how the paper we did our project on didn't prove anything, was a terrible example of research, and that the majority of veterinary research was like this, and that it was what he really hated about the profession. Wow. We were left slightly stunned. Then Dr. Ahmed heads over to our group. Dr. Ahmed is a researcher, and I'm not sure if he has much, if any, clinical experience. We gave our presentation again, this time reining in a little of our enthusiasm about the whole thing. Dr. Ahmed then proceeds to tell us that the paper is really promising, shows great clinical application, and that it proves why the union of research and clinical work is so great. Wow, again. This pretty much just left us shaking our heads in amusement, wondering what exactly this says about our future profession. I just hope that I don't end up as a bitter clinician.

So, here we are. Finished with a semester of classes and just four finals and two assignments between us and Christmas break. Here's to making it this far, and here's praying that the rest goes smoothly!

Goodnight!