Third Semester

Well, I'm 5 weeks into my third semester and as you can tell by the lack of posts on this blog, it's been a little busy. This is very strange because we don't have many morning classes and you would think I could get a lot done. At least 2 days a week, we don't have class until 1 pm. However, I somehow find myself at a loss for time. The only extracurricular activities I have are tutoring physics 3 or 4 hours/week and working in the lab when I have time.

I just took our 3rd exam yesterday. It was pharm and it was bad. Here's a taste: dermatopharmacology covered 3 or 4 of the total 13 lectures and its material was 20 pages of text and 160+ powerpoint slides. That is way too much information to even attempt to remember!! Plus, we were learning about drugs to cure skin diseases that we haven't been taught. It would have been nice to know about the disease instead of memorizing that this drug cures these unknown diseases. All in all, it went ok for me, but I know a lot of people failed it which I completely understand. I feel it was an exam that everyone was on the same playing field no matter how much you studied - we were all guessing on most questions and in the end your score depended on how lucky your guesses were. But I noticed a difference in my class from people failing a test 1st semester compared to this one: It's almost like we don't care that much or we're just used to it or we know it will probably be curved. There were no tears and no one sulking. I only knew people did poorly from what they told me. I think we have officially been desensitized to our test scores.

Over the past 2 weeks, we had our first micro and toxicology exams. Micro went very well for me and I felt that I may have overprepared for it but it did pay off and I can take it a little easier on the next exams. However, the toxicology exam had my number. While I didn't do terrible, I would have liked to get a couple more questions correct in a class with only 2 exams. I actually did fairly well on the part that I didn't study much and have a chance to take twice.

I do feel like my test-taking skills are improving which is consistent with the professors and 4th years telling me that vet school makes you into a test-taking machine. I'm really started to see that conversion. I feel like I'm getting better answering questions that I don't necessarily know the correct answer. Another sign is that I don't think I will get upset as much when I fail. I understand that it will still hurt and shake confidence, but I don't think it would be as bad as last semester.

I have an epidemiology test on Friday which I'm not too scared of. The old tests seem straightforward and the professor is really cool. The downside is that I may have only paid attention to half of the lectures. I also want to start studying for path and public health exams next week. And somewhere in there, I want to work on finishing my first draft of my research article that I will be submitting to Veterinary Surgery for publishing. Lately, I've been getting calls from the new guy in the lab I did research in last summer so I will probably have to go in there and collect samples sometime this week. I think these are the reasons I feel busy.