Exhaustion induced giggling

I'm sure you've all had those moments when you've been so stressed or tired, that everything suddenly seems very hilarious. That's kind of the point I'm at right now. Several of us spent far too many hours studying at Barnes and Noble this evening, and our conversations often strayed far from the topics of lipolysis and uroliths in Dalmatians that we really should have been discussing. Some interesting points of discussion included the virtues of footed pajamas and people we've know with obsessive compulsive tendencies (complete with demonstrations, of course). I'm ok with all of this, though. I think the tendency to become totally ridiculous at times like this may be some sort of defensive mechanism to keep us all sane. What's life without enjoying the little moments? This includes the moments when you're having to memorize how nucleic acids are synthesized.

This reminds me of a story from before Thanksgiving. A day or so before break started, we had our anatomy final, which mostly was on the reproductive system. We were in the practical part of the final, which involved a lot of careful scrutiny of...reproductive organs. Lots of fun. I get to one of the dog cadavers, which has the pin in an artery that we're supposed to identify. As I've done with all the other cadavers, my first step is to see whether the dog is male or female, so that I know exactly what I'm working with. Typically this isn't a problem, because, you know, certain anatomical features are quite obvious. Plus, its a reproductive anatomy final...being able to tell what sex the animal is is the least of our worries. So I'm staring at this dog, and suddenly realize that I have no idea what it is. Greg, one of my classmates, is there looking at the same dog with me. We're both leaning over the cadaver, and start circling it, taking it in from different angles, getting down and looking at it from eye level, and generally getting much closer to it than we would normally want to. We suddenly realize that we're both having the exact same problem, and the ridiculousness of the entire situation hits us. And the giggling starts. Right in the middle of the anatomy practical. Eventually we regained composure, formed our best educated guess about the sex and the artery, and moved on.

It was just a little moment, but one that I think I'll look back on with a smile. Vet school is a strange place, and where's the fun if we don't stop and appreciate the weirdness from time to time? There is plenty of stress to go along with it, but in the end we're making it through and the good far outweighs the bad.