Saturday, November 1, 2008

An Easy Week

Last week was a nice relaxing week. We only had a small test so there was quite a bit of free time. Early in the week, we had a horse lab. I feel so much more comfortable handling horses and giving them physicals after only an hour of working with them. I wish someone would have taken the time to show me this stuff before now.

I went down to watch some surgeries also. One surgery I watched was an amputation of the hindlimb. This was a great review of the muscles, nerves, and arteries that we've been learning in anatomy. I was able to help them out a little too. The surgeons were wondering where the muscles of the quadriceps originated and if they needed to cut them. In their defense, they don't usually do this surgery. I told them that rectus femoris is the only one that originates on the pelvis while the vastus muscles originate on the femur and don't need to be cut. They looked and saw that I was right. It was nice to show them that I am learning things. Hopefully I'll be scrubbing into surgeries soon.

Watching these surgeries and listening to clinicians has been a huge motivator to keep studying. There are so many times where I'm studying and don't know the clinical importance of the material. Seeing how what I'm studying will be useful and important in clinics encourages me to continue plugging away.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you seem totally arrogant. (Taking about easy exams and saying other students ask stupid questions) This is coming from another vet student, so I know what first year is like. Don't pat yourself on the back too much. Try to get over yourself.

Ratboy said...

Thanks for the comment. It's nice to know how I come across whether I mean to or not.
It's interesting that part of your basis for me being arrogant is the easy exams which it sounds like you agree that 1st year exams are comparatively easy to future years. While we have had very difficult exams, some of the 1st years think the curriculum is not as hard as they thought it would be.
As for the stupid questions, maybe I went too far. By "stupid," I mean information that the professor just said and someone wasn't paying attention. Questions that people ask because they don't have experience in a certain area that is obvious to other students is totally understandable because we bring a variety of experiences to the classroom. Maybe I should have said redundant questions that stall the flow of the lesson instead. I think we would all admit that these questions get asked.