This is Going to Hurt

I have finished a few classes - business, pharmacology, nutrition, and maybe some others. BUT I am far from finished. More finals start tomorrow. I am unprepared for all of these and don't have time to get prepared. Histology on Tuesday is the scariest because it covers the whole year. By year, I mean Fall and Spring semester material. It's a 2 credit class too!

Physiology is also cumulative for the semester and I need to do well on it too. Radiology is on Friday and it should be easy, but there's still a lot of material I won't have time to look at until Thursday evening.

I am truly learning that Finals week is all about my GPA sustaining the least amount of damage possible. The funny thing is that I was trying to prepare for this the last 3 weeks and I'm still not ready. Well, 5 more days of sleeping, eating, studying, taking exams and repeating the next day.

Client Interviews

For a couple of our classes this semester, we have client interviews at the learning assessment center. The clients are all volunteer actors. I hate these interviews because they are very unrealistic at times, but I know it's good practice. We study cases and then are assigned a case to make a handout and visit with the client for 15 minutes. The biggest problem with these interviews is we never know where we are in the case and what the client knows. My problem today is that I focused more on the general problem, Addison's disease, than the actual case. The client asked what we had done to her dog, and all I could remember from the update on the exam room door was giving fluids. This is part of the unrealistic part because we never actually did anything in these case studies and we have a couple minutes to read the update on the door of what has happened in the case up to this point. We have 4 of these interviews this semester and I just finished my 3rd interview.
This last interview was unique in that the clients were told to act upset about the case. Some were crying; my client was just sad - the whole time. I had the plan that I would just inform the client that their dog was doing fine and Addison's disease is manageable. It didn't work as planned. I know I have a lot to learn about interacting with clients and am still waiting on my client's comments. It should be interesting if I came off compassionate enough - kinda don't think so.
The most painful part of these interviews is that they are recorded and we have to watch them and evaluate ourselves. My biggest lessons so far: Don't call a client by their first name even if you have no idea how to pronounce their last name. Butchering my second client's last name actually lightened the mood from the beginning. Also, admit that you don't know things and you have to check with the clinician. I did a lot of that this last time.
Next week I do a physical exam on a real animal and take a diet history. This should be interesting.

Quote from Professor

When asked about the difference between anxiety and depression, our Pharmacology professor said, "Anxiety is what you feel before a test and depression is what you fee after the test." So true.

Vet School has Consumed My Life and Made Me Sick

The first 2 weeks after Spring Break were nice and relaxing (Read "no tests"). Then tests started again. Then I'm expected to go into the lab every week to learn about the research I will be doing this summer. Then the weekly quizzes for 3 of our classes started again and Finals are just around the corner. Also, being sick and in vet school is no fun either. I thought I would be able to avoid it, but it finally got me. Once one person in the class gets sick, you know it's coming for you. After a few weeks of it spreading around the class, it got to me. When you don't even feel like being awake, it's hard to do any homework. I felt like my head was going to explode and had to sleep sitting up on my couch so everything could drain out of head.

I was talking to one of the surgery residents about what GPA I should aim for to eventually get a residency. She said a 3.9, maybe a 3.8 with good letters of recommendation. Who does that? Well, I better start making friends with faculty to get those letters of rec. I'm also finding out that failing a test makes it very difficult to pull up your GPA. I have 2 more tests and can only miss 5 questions to have a happy ending with Physiology. Not cool.

Finally, No Tests

At least for a while... I finished the first round of tests and am now "relaxing" on Spring Break. I also have 2 weeks of classes without any tests. It's AMAZING!!

Two weeks ago we had our Pharmacology exam which I thought would be easy because I knew all of the equations that they said we needed to know. However, I guess they were just kidding about those equations because it turned out that we didn't need to know them after all. Needless to say, the test wasn't exactly what I expected. I did alright, but would have liked to do much better...Story of this semester.

Last week, we had Anatomy and Physiology. Yes, we had a Phys exam the Friday before Spring Break. Fun. Since I learned from the first exam that I'm no good at Phys, I spent most of the previous week studying Phys instead of Anatomy. It's nice that I can learn Anatomy as it's taught and don't have to spend too much time studying around exams. (I suppose I could learn other subjects as they are taught, but I haven't figured that out yet.) I'm still waiting for the scores from Phys - not sure why this is taking so long. I know a lot of people were unhappy with one professor's questions so hopefully there will be a curve or something. I need all the help I can get in that class.

Spring Break is halfway over and so far so good. I got into the routine of doing homework in the mornings and hanging out with friends in the evening. I'm hoping to keep myself in school mode while getting ahead in some classes. I started reading Cardiology as that's the next section in Phys, finishing Nutrition modules (purinavets.com), Anatomy, and research articles. I wish I was back in high school or at least undergrad when I had so much more time.

So much to read, so little time.

How to Pay Attention in Class

After my first Physiology exam, I knew I had to start paying attention in class and reviewing on a regular basis. This semester we have computers in the lecture hall which means playing Freecell, Solitaire, and checking my email. These are all very tempting to do during lecture, and I needed a way to force myself to pay attention. Here's the solution: the course moderator has started to sit directly behind me so I really can't check my email and play games anymore. I think I'm getting a lot more out of lecture. I've started googling things that are pertinent to the lecture and find out how this information relates to the actual clinical cases. I'm not sure if the moderator totally approves of this. He just asked me today if I do it for all my lectures so I don't think he minds.

Downs and Ups

This week we had our first tests in Physiology and Parasitology. They say everyone fails at least one test and this was the week for me. I felt prepared for the Physiology exam, but apparently I was wrong. I hate tests that have less than 40 questions since the margin for error becomes quite small. There were 33 questions and too many that I could only eliminate to 2-3 choices. Most of my guesses ended up being wrong, I changed answers (always go with your first gut feeling, I know I know), and one I was just too stubborn to put the right answer. I must say that if there was ever a test to fail, this may have been the best one. It's only worth 16% of my overall grade so I can still somewhat recover from it...hopefully.

Let me tell you that failing this test rocked my world. Any confidence I may have had before Tuesday was wiped out. It was especially hard because it was Physiology which is our biggest class this semester. I was starting to think that this semester may be easier than last, but I was wrong about that too. Physiology!! It's basically the foundation of all of medicine!! It was hard to study and feel prepared for my Parasitology exam today after that.

But thankfully I did well on today's exam. I am just waiting for the results from the essay portion. Taking Parasitology in undergrad is definitely helping now. Today's exam has given me some confidence back, but I'm still shaken from Tuesday.

I have a friend that I started studying with last semester, and it's funny because we excel in classes that the other one does not. I failed Physiology when they did very well, and I did well in Parasitology today when they did very bad. I highly recommend for future vet students to find someone whose strengths are your weaknesses. Studying together usually helps both as one person can explain what the other doesn't understand. It didn't work out this time though.