Wonderful Random Moments

These past two weeks have not been particularly fun, with several tests and quizzes coming along in quick succession. However, the past couple days have been great, definitely making up for all of it.

Thursday morning began with our Pathology test, which most of us were very excited to be done with. It was the last one in the string of tests we've been having, and it preceded a (sort of) three day weekend for us. Once the test was over, however, we still had a full day of class until 5 to get through, including the dreaded double lab sessions (which seem to be more and more frequent these days). With most of us running on only a few hours of sleep, this was not a particularly exciting prospect. By the time my group had gotten through parasitology lab and had to face our final two hours of anatomy lab, we were all slightly giddy with exhaustion. Thankfully, the lab didn't require too much brain power, since Dr. Eng's method of going through the muscles of the thoracic limb involves slowly and carefully explaining and going through each of the muscles one at a time as we dissected them out on our dog cadavers. So in the end, the lab itself wasn't too bad. What made it memorable, however, occurred about halfway through the lab when I started to hear scattered snickers and giggling throughout the classroom as Dr. Eng described the actions of various muscles. Finally, I realized that the laughs were due to Dr. Freeman, who, behind Dr. Eng's back, was demonstrating the actions of each of the muscles with wildly exaggerated movements (the best one being a rapid succession of fist pumps). Finally, Belinda, the MDL lady who was operating the video camera on Dr. Eng's dog cadaver, just broke down into uncontrollable laughter, which seemed to be the signal that set the entire lab laughing. If this doesn't seem like that big of a deal, you must understand that anatomy lab is usually a relatively serious affair, so the whole thing was pretty amusing. Despite the entertainment provided by Dr. Freeman, we were all still very happy to leave, and it was the first time a professor announcing the end of a lab session has been greeted with applause.

To cap off the weirdness that was Thursday, as Alex, Candace, and I were heading out of the building, we ran into Dr. Klein, our neurobiology professor. We already knew that Dr. Klein was a little strange (he brought a saw to class one day so that he could hold it up to his own head in order to demonstrate the different kinds of sections that can be made of the brain), but we were slightly concerned when we saw that he seemed to be staring into a closed doorway. Noticing us coming, he pointed at the doorway. Confused, we looked and realized that he was pointing at a mouse, which was skittering nervously around the crevice of the door. All four of us watched as the mouse hurried by us and turned down the next hallway, checking each doorway for a potential escape. I don't know why, but it was kind of a weird, surreal moment. Probably just because I was so tired. Perhaps also because it brought back flashbacks of the mice that escaped during my research in undergrad, causing me to have to crawl around on the floor to catch them. Anyway, after a moment of intense interest, we continued on our way, finally heading home.

Yesterday, we did not have classes, but were all strongly encouraged to attend the VA Veterinary Medical Association conference being held in Roanoke. Although it involved waking up earlier than usual, it was a really fun experience. I attended a series of lectures on cat and dog behavior and aggression, got a pretty delicious breakfast and lunch, and got to go around the exhibit hall collecting a bunch a free stuff branded with vet supply company and drug names. I mean, who wouldn't want a baseball cap that says "Prevent the Ulcer" on it? It's the height of stylishness. If there's one thing I've learned from vet school so far, it's that if I stay in this profession, I'm probably never going to have to buy another pen for the rest of my life. As long as I don't mind using pens that say "K9 Advantix" or "Purina" on them, I'm pretty much set.

"If absence were measured in terms of the heart...

...friends would only ever be a minute apart." So says the small picture that's been hanging in our kitchen at home for as long as I can remember. Although the picture shows two girls mailing letters to each other, I was thinking today about how this seems to apply even more to modern forms of communication.

Although I used AIM a lot in undergrad, I have come to appreciate it even more now. While it will never replace having a phone conversation with someone or getting to see them face to face, it's a wonderful way to keep the people you care about as a part of your day-to-day life. Even if the conversation isn't any longer than a few lines, I find that it causes me to feel that people who are hundreds of miles away aren't so distant after all. A brief story about something that has happened that day, a few words of encouragement, a link to an interesting article or video, or a quick question about how my day has been going always manage to brighten my day and break up the monotony that studying sometimes becomes.

Anyway, point is, you all are wonderful, and I really love having such an great way to keep you as such a central part of my life.

Sometimes moving forward involves...moving backward?

I just got back to the apartment from being in the anatomy lab for about 8 hours today. These pre-anatomy test weekends can sometimes feel like mini-marathons, except instead of running they involve looking at lots of severed animal heads in excruciating detail. However, as strange as it may seem, this is probably why anatomy has been my favorite class so far. With the studying being so hands-on, the time spent in the lab really does just fly by. Also, when you find that lymph node, or finally understand the course of that stupid nerve, it's a really rewarding feeling. So, while it's still overwhelming, it definitely beats spending all of your studying time staring at flash cards or highlighting pages of notes (although anatomy involves plenty of that too).

On a totally different subject, I've been thinking recently on something that several of us first years seem to have taken note of. This is the rather paradoxical fact that veterinary school seems to share a lot of similarities with elementary, middle, and high school. How can this be, you ask? Well, here are several of the best examples that I've come up with:

• At the beginning of the year we were all assigned lockers sitting in the hallways. While standing around and chatting at lockers isn't nearly as important of a social outlet in vet school as it was in high school, the whole procedure really brought me back. Like in high school, people still enjoy decorating their lockers. While picture of pets predominate, there are also plenty of pictures of spouses and children, a decided difference from the usual high school decor.
• The entire school has the same lunch period from 12-1. While we have considerably more freedom to do whatever we want during this time than I ever had in high school, having everyone gathering into the commons to eat has a very cafeteria-esque feel to it. Not only that, but the Doctors/Professors always sit together at the same big table...very reminiscent of the teacher's table in middle school. After four years of living off a dining plan, it's interesting to be bringing a lunchbox to school everyday again.
• The drama...ooooh, the drama. I have a very distinct memory from middle school from when I was in sixth grade or so of one of my friends telling a friend who was a year above us that our entire class was like "a big Soap Opera." We took ourselves so seriously...it was cute. Yet, here I am again. This is what happens when 91 people do everything together all the time. Thankfully, I have found relatively drama free friends, for which I am extremely thankful. This means I just get to watch most of the drama from afar, which is pretty much what I attempted to do in middle and high school as well.
• Show and Tell! Being vet students, we all love to talk about our pets and show them off as much as possible. Dogs are invited to pretty much every social event, and people never fail to accept said invitation. When our wonderful physiology professor said she'd like pictures of our pets to show for mini breaks during class, we all jumped on the opportunity. The best example of show and tell came during reptile lab last Friday, when everyone with reptiles was invited to bring in their pets. The reptiles were introduced, passed around, and appropriately oohed and ahhed over, not so very unlike the little treasures that we used to bring around to show off in elementary school.
• I have definitely not done this much coloring since middle school, and once again colored pencils have become a necessary item in my back pack each day. This is mostly for anatomy, where color coding pictures of muscles, nerves, bones, and the like has become an essential part of my study regime. We even have a textbook that is essentially a humongous anatomy coloring book with tons of black and white pictures which I can highlight, color, and scribble to my heart's content. True, coloring is a rather lax way of studying, but the colored diagrams really do help me study later. Best of all, it allows me to feel like I'm being productive when I really don't feel like doing anything more thought provoking.

Vet school is definitely a different environment from undergrad. I feel like I've somehow both gained some freedoms and grown as an adult, while losing a lot of freedoms, at least as far as my academic curriculum goes. I suppose that it's all a part of slowly narrowing in on what you want to do with your life. Thankfully, the more and more I learn, the more excited I get about this strange career I've chosen. There's a whole lot of cool stuff that vets can do. So, I think the stringency of the program here will definitely be worth it in the end.