Semester countdown

As of the time of this writing, here is the breakdown of the remainder of my academic semester:

- 0 "Professional Writing" lectures!
- 0 unavoidable reminders (I hope) of how seemingly every freshman vet student except me received a scholarship for next year
- 0 free lunches that we know about
- 1 1000-word Professional Writing essay to complete
- 1 cumulative virology final exam
- 1 cumulative bacteriology/mycology final exam
- 1 bacteriology extra credit assignment to turn in
- 1 neurobiology lecture
- 1 neurobiology final grade to be revealed
- 1 biology of disease midterm exam
- 1 cumulative online biology of disease final exam
- 1 nutrition lab
- 1 online nutrition final exam
- 1 finance final exam
- 1 pet hospice end-of-the-year party
- 1 diagnostic imaging club end-of-the-year party
- 1 tour of the teaching hospital to give
- 2 school days in April
- 2 weeks before the bittersweet move out of the cubes
- 2 food animal production lectures
- 2 biology of disease labs
- 2 nutrition lectures
- 4 bacteriology/mycology lectures
- 4 biology of disease lectures
- 5 virology lectures
- 5 finance lectures
- 8 school days in May

(Okay, apparently I have 6 exams to take and one essay to write in the next 2 weeks? Great, it sure helped to write THAT out! :-)

Pet peeves

For your enjoyment, here are some of my pet peeves:

1. Poor grammar. Examples: its/it's, your/you're, there/they're/their, and any use of the "word" irregardless. After all, irregardless of how lazy your being, its not that hard to use proper English. [<-- that sentence makes me cringe!]
2. Professors who repeatedly mention how behind they are on their lecture schedule, yet consistently end class early without using the full lecture time.
3. Being asked to write a thank-you note. What does a thank-you note mean, anyway, if you had to request it? Thank-you notes for birthday gifts will be forthcoming, as they nearly always are.
4. People who make up and/or spread rumors.
5. Putting so much tupperware on the top rack of the dishwasher that half of it doesn't get clean. And putting wooden spoons and/or measuring cups in the dishwasher with the concave side facing up, so they are full of dirty water and chunks of food when you take them out.
6. Classmates who act inappropriately toward professors who they feel do not deserve their respect. The irony? You're paying tens of thousands of dollars to people who think those professors are the most qualified people to teach you. Joke's on you!
7. Huge exaggerations and drama about how we'll all be dead from swine flu a month from now. And not-so-subtle insinuations that I have swine flu and am behaving in a terribly socially irresponsible manner by coming to class, a mere 7 days after the onset of my cold symptoms.
8. Having to replace a contact lens before it has lasted as long as it should.

There, how's that for a cheerful post to close out the day! I promise to be happier tomorrow. :-)

What I learned in school today

Peach yogurt tastes terrible when you eat it right after a raw carrot.

Q: What's the date today?

A: It's April 27th.

Q: Then why is it snowing?????

Be gone, ye foul disease!

CLH had a cold last week. I have a cold this week. Can we all just say, "Yuck!"

Mine started on Tuesday with a terrible sore throat, which continued into Wednesday with no improvement.

By Thursday morning, the sore throat had subsided somewhat, but I was into the whole achy-lethargic-blurry-sneezy-congested-mucusy phase. After lunch on Thursday, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to stay at school since I wasn't learning anything through the haze in my brain. So I went home and slept for a couple hours, which didn't really help anything except making the afternoon pass faster.

I woke up yesterday feeling a bit better, especially after clearing out the evening's accumulated congestion. But things rapidly went downhill again and culminated in more misery.

Today I'm better, at least for the 1 1/2 hours I've been awake. Here's hoping the improvement continues so I can start to feel like a human being again! A couple people at school have tested positive for strep so I'm mostly just glad the sore throat aspect has been abating.

(The saddest part is that I was feeling so good about having stayed healthy all winter. I hadn't had a cold or any illness since last September, when a bug swept through the freshman class and pretty much everyone got sick. Guess I prided myself on my good health and forgot to knock on wood one too many times! A bit ironic that my cold hit during the first week when we have consistently had 80-degree temperatures...)

And then the cow ran away

So all semester in neurobiology, we've had weekly "interactive case studies" that we had to complete online. Basically, the instructors have found a number of animals over the years with certain neurological problems. They then videotape a complete neurological exam of each animal (testing reflexes, proprioception, pain sensation, etc.).

As the cumulative portion of our final exam, we had 4 case studies we had to complete. The first one was of a cow with some neuro problem that we were supposed to figure out based on the results of the neurological exam.

The case in itself wasn't really all that fascinating - it was pretty run-of-the-mill as far as the requisite logic/reasoning/thought process was concerned.

But the best part came at the end of the first video clip, in which the examiners were just walking the cow around on a rope head halter, to observe any abnormalities in how the cow was walking or moving.

At this point, I need to let you know that this neuro exam was taking place on the main campus, not at the teaching hospital; i.e. they were walking the cow around on a grassy lawn between some of the academic buildings.

Anyway, I gather that cows don't usually like to walk on a halter and lead quite as much as some other species do. This cow certainly wasn't too thrilled about it.

The video clip culminated with the cow struggling mightily against the rope halter, eventually starting to pull the halter off her head, at which point the cameraman puts down the camera and runs over to help the other 3 people doing the neuro exam. The last thing we see is the cow, completely free from any halter or lead or restraint, wandering off into a parking lot with 4 people going after her in an urgent manner.

(Moral of this story? Maybe don't do your neuro exam on a cow on an academic campus with just a makeshift rope halter for restraint... or you risk having the ensuing hilarity recorded on videotape for countless generations to observe!)

Today's Big Event: A Surprise Hawaiian Neurobiology Final Examination Extravaganza!

Before we came to school this morning, we all knew we'd be spending most of the morning taking our neurobiology final.

But we didn't know that our instructors were going to turn the exam into a giant Hawaiian-themed party! And I mean, complete with tacky Hawaiian shirts and hats, plastic leis for everyone, multiple fake birds and other tropical creatures, and an enormous rainbow-colored beach ball that we bounced around the lecture hall for awhile.

Hooray for relieving stress during the first 15 minutes of the official testing period! (Boo to distracting us with fun happenings, and making us forget everything we just crammed into our short-term memory...)

Seriously, though, the exam went really well and I am definitely going to miss our quirky, wacky, hilarious first-year instructors once we graduate to sophomore status. But I'm sure there'll be several funny weirdos among our new professors, too.

I was done with the final in about 45 minutes and spent the following hour basking on the lawn in the sunny, 80-degree weather and eating most of my lunch (okay, yes, it was only like 10:00 am at that point) with friends. Then I went inside so as to avoid total sunburn, and hung around the cubes for another hour reading a really awesome book ("The Story of Edgar Sawtelle"). Three huzzahs for nice, enjoyable, sunny, relaxing days!

Weather update

Weather update (a.k.a. meteorologist fail): our expected blizzard that was to deposit 1-2 feet of snow over the weekend ended up being.... rain! And lots of it. Beats the heck out of a bunch of snow. And now we're having highs in the 70s and 80s all week. Whoo hoo! Be gone, winter!

Rusty, the narcoleptic dog

So we spent a little time in neurobiology last week talking about narcolepsy. And, of course, we just HAD to watch some hilarious videos of narcoleptic animals. Therefore, I present to you Rusty the Narcoleptic Dachshund. (Really, is there any funnier breed of narcoleptic dog than a dachshund??)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zVCYdrw-1o

Procrastination pays off

So I had been meaning to register for one of the several 5Ks that were scheduled for tomorrow morning. But, being a busy and sometimes lazy person, I hadn't gotten around to pre-registration.

But it turns out that's a good thing, since Fort Collins is having a serious blizzard today and tomorrow!

Pre-registration: fail. Procrastination: win!

(In case you were worried I'm slacking, I did my 3.2 miles this morning, inside, on the climate-controlled treadmill. Okay, I walked for 1 mile but the rest was running. Beats the heck out of jogging through the anticipated 20 inches of snow!)

In honor of my birthday

In honor of my 23rd birthday tomorrow, I will be...(gasp)... skipping my first two-hour lecture in order to stay home and sleep in with poor sick CLH and actually get a restful night of sleep! Proud to say this will be the first time this semester I've missed class (and will be the last). If having your birthday isn't a good excuse to not wake up at 5:30 am, I don't know what is.

"Hallelujah Chorus" by the Silent Monks

This is a really funny video (okay, funny for all us church choir nerds) forwarded from CLH's mom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HkXmOIwpkQ

(feel free to fast forward to about 1 min 40 sec to get past all the text at the beginning...)

10 points for Professional Writing!

Well, the gods-of-sanity-and-rational-logic apparently gave a butt-kicking to the gods-of-inane-and-pointless-vet-school-courses, because our Professional Writing lecture this afternoon included an announcement that our final exam for the class has been cancelled. The change is due to what was described as "an onslaught of mostly polite and respectful communication from your classmates." Kudos to the instructor, who was very candid and kept a good sense of humor about the whole thing. And hooray for us freshmen who won't be memorizing random numbers and colors for a final!

It may be lame but it still cracks me up!

From http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/:

The urge to micturate

It's funny how you can go to class with an empty bladder, but after 50 minutes of talking about how the nervous system controls urination, you are desperate to pee...

Is someone having a case of the Mondays?

(That's like the most annoying question ever.)

But yes, it was one of those days where you go, "Ugh. Monday." For a visual depiction of my mood, we have a perfect descriptor from http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/:

My day started with waking up at 5 am (alarm set to go off at 5:30) and realizing that I hadn't yet finished my online neuro case that was due at 5 pm. I had planned to finish it after class was over at 3 pm but then I scheduled Simon to have his blood donor screening, which would take up my time after classes.

So with that realization, and the knowledge that my day also included 2 exams, there was no way I was going back to sleep. I unhappily crawled out of bed and got on the treadmill for 20 minutes of jogging and virology study.

Then I left at 6:40 to drive to school (hoping the traffic would be lighter, which it was slightly, but the massive fog made up for it).

Fortunately I got to mostly finish my neuro case before class started at 8. That relieved a minor amount of stress.

The next task, however, was my 12 pm lunch-hour finance exam. Of course, it was way easier than I even expected (and I expected it to be pretty easy).

Last but not least was the somewhat-dreaded virology exam. Virology goes along with parasitology -- the first half of the semester was parasitology, and now we are learning virology in the same course (different instructor). So people's grades in the class thus far are not exactly stellar, owing to our terrible parasitology exams. Plus, dealing with a new professor, you never quite know how they'll write their exams, and what the difficulty and level of detail will be.

But it was almost laughably easy! (Okay, not that easy. But easy enough that I finished 50 questions in 13 minutes.)

What a relief to finally have an exam where you can walk out and think, "Wow, I definitely did not fail that! I might have gotten an 'A'!" After a long, tiring semester, we all deserved that.

And needless to say, Monday went steeply uphill after the virology exam. (And it helped even more to take Simon to the teaching hospital for his blood donor exam, and have everybody gush over how cute and handsome he is and how he has a "perfect temperament" and awesome behavior. Am I a proud mommy? You bet.)

Doing our part for the kitty community

Lucky Mr. Simon has an appointment tomorrow afternoon to be screened as a potential blood donor kitty for sick and ailing kitties in need of transfusions at the teaching hospital! It would be awfully sweet if he could "give back" to the other kitties in the community --- and help build up some positive karma to counteract his garbage-eating karma so he doesn't end up reincarnated as a cockroach.

(Johnny might be off the list of potential candidates for now, due to his occasional gastrointestinal issues and his uncooperativeness [i.e. extreme squirminess] for blood draws.)

Just as an FYI, the feline blood donor program is pretty neat. The hospital used to have a colony of blood-donor cats that lived on site. Each cat donated every other month for a year or two then found a home. However, the cats eventually got too fat and it cost too much to feed and house them, so the hospital found homes for all but two cats - one cat of each major blood type - to have around in case of an emergency. The rest of the donated blood comes from cats in the community, almost all of which are owned by vet students. The cats have to be adults, at least 10 pounds, healthy, relatively cooperative, indoor-only with no contact with outdoor pets, and they go through some extensive blood screening for metabolic abnormalities as well as a bunch of yucky blood-borne diseases like feline leukemia, FIV, and blood parasites. They get dropped off for a day at the hospital once every 8 weeks, where they are sedated for their blood donation, then go home that afternoon. In return, the kitties get free physicals and all the bloodwork every year, and they get free food and heartworm/tick/parasite preventive medicine year-round. Pretty good deal for both the donor cats and the sick cats at the hospital that might die without a transfusion.

Quote of the Day, Vol. 5

Biology of Disease professor (a different one!) in lab this morning:

Professor: "It looks like you guys are just about finishing up. Are you ready to go over the slides?"

Class: "Yes!"

Professor: "....Do you mind if I finish my text message first?"

Not a baaaaaad time after all!

(Turns out it is impossible to write a title for a post about visiting a sheep production facility without making a terrible pun.)

Following an enjoyable Biology of Disease lab this morning, we freshmen all trooped over to the teaching hospital to await our instructions for the day's field trips. Coveralls and boots were packed, carpools were arranged, driving directions were handed out then corrected, and finally we were off for an exciting afternoon of learning about raising sheep for fiber.

(Ironically, the farm turned out to be located in Severance, which is a very lightly populated but somewhat sprawling town just a few miles north of Windsor. If I'd known we were going there, I would have driven my own car instead of riding with someone else, and I could have just gone home to Windsor afterward. Instead, I got to ride back to Fort Collins [about 30 minutes] and then drive myself back home [about 40 minutes] in rush-hour traffic. But I digress.)

The sheep farm was totally cool and the sheep were so cute. The ewes had just lambed in January and February so the babies were still pretty little. The farm was owned by a very nice older couple who have been raising livestock for 30 or 40 years. Their current business is raising really fancy, mostly purebred sheep (mostly British breeds) for wool fiber. Accordingly, all the ewes (and some of the rams) were wearing little nylon capes to keep their wool as clean as possible.

All in all, it was a neat trip. And I didn't look too ridiculous in my coveralls (which actually fit well) and rubber boots (which are too big but didn't cause me to trip, thank goodness).

I've been thinking that goats are pretty darn cool, and now I think sheep are pretty awesome too. Maybe I'll join the Small Ruminants club next semester??

No visit from the scholarship fairy??

Scholarship announcements from the vet school are supposed to have gone out in the mail in the last two weeks... sadly, none of them have made their way to my mailbox.

(I did get excited to see something in the mail from CSU yesterday. The good news is, my Pap smear was normal. The bad news is, no word on scholarships.)

One of my friends got an army scholarship that will fully pay for her remaining 3 years of school. Okay, so there's no way I ever want to be an army vet, but I'm still a little jealous. She also got another random scholarship that she can use to start paying back her loans.

So... it would appear I'm on my own (figuratively speaking) for next year's tuition. On the bright side, out of state tuition for next year has been raised to $46,912 (excluding books, supplies, health insurance, parking permit, room/board/living expenses, and a new $112 "loan fee").

(Let's have another brief mathematics rant: $46,912 per year / 2 semesters per year / 16 weeks per semester / 5 days per week = $293 per day of vet school. I can not comprehend how some of my classmates justify skipping their morning classes to sleep in, or missing a Friday or Monday because they were having fun skiing...)

On the non-sarcastic bright side, at least the federal government is still plenty happy to offer me a total of $61,116 in loans for next year!

Gee, I hope I'm clean today...

This afternoon, I had my very first experience with undergoing a urine drug test, in preparation for my upcoming summer employment for a Giant Veterinary Corporation. Let me say, that is NOT one of the things to put on your "100 Things To Do Before I Die" list. Nuff said.

Don't forget to wake up!

My first academic task this morning was our second bacteriology exam, which was from 8-10 am but you could come and start the exam whenever you wanted. I planned to wake up at 6, exercise, and do a quick review to put some of the nitty-gritty details in short-term memory, before getting to the exam about 9. My alarm went off at 6, and then I woke up at 6:45 (with no recollection of my alarm going off). Whoa, surprise! Nothing quite like oversleeping on the morning of a big exam to get your adrenaline going and make it easy to get out of bed. Fortunately, I hadn't planned to leave the house till 8:10 anyway, so I still had time for an abbreviated jog/study session. The bacteriology exam wasn't exactly fantastic, but as we've discussed before, the most important thing is that it's over (and that I didn't sleep through it, which could have easily happened).

Schedule in place

I have successfully registered for all the fall classes I wanted! I must admit to sitting at my computer this morning at 6:38, 6:39 am, waiting for registration to open at 6:40. But hey, I'm not alone, since almost everybody I talked to prior to our 8 am class this morning had already registered too. I hear the late sections of classes filled up almost immediately, so good job to us early birds! I am definitely looking forward to my fall schedule.

Balloon Animalology!

So this past Friday and Saturday, the university's teaching hospital hosted their annual open house. There were all sorts of things going on... tours of the hospital, petting zoo, mock surgery, and many, many tables staffed by particular clubs and organizations within the vet school. This is a very family-intensive event with tons of little kids coming with their parents, as well as school groups visiting on Friday.

Each vet student was required to work two 2.5-hour shifts, either leading tours or sitting at a table. I spent one shift at the Pet Hospice booth, where we helped kids make bookmarks and write notes to their pets, and one shift at the AAHA club booth, where we made pop-up animal faces.

That was fine. Except that... both of those booths bordered the table for the student chapter of the AVMA, also known as the balloon animal table.

With the possible exception of the mock surgery booth (where little kids got dressed in child-sized surgical gowns, caps, masks, stethoscopes, and gloves, and used forceps to remove felt organs from stuffed animals, then bandage them), the balloon animal table might have been the most popular exhibit with the under-10 crowd.

Those poor, poor, patient souls working that table. There were three students working each shift, and at times there was a line of 10-15 kids waiting for their balloons. There were all sorts of requests. Lots of kids were happy with a poodle (like the easiest thing to make). But then there were the creative kids who wanted a horse or a goat or a rabbit, and the smart-aleck older kids who requested elephants and platypuses (platypi?) and penguins and guinea pigs.

But really, the kids were pretty cute, and for most of the little ones, you could hand them a slightly modified balloon poodle and they'd be convinced it was a horse/goat/rabbit/etc.

The annoying part was the parents... I think I heard something along these lines about a hundred times over the 5 hours:

"Gee, ha ha, what kind of class do you have to take during vet school to learn how to do this? Haha!"

Yep, it's funny once or twice, maybe even 4 or 5 times. But come on, you really think you are the first person to come up with that joke today???

To their credit, the lovely students making the balloon animals were infinitely kind and patient:

• "Oh, we have to take the advanced class before we can make balloon animals at open house."
• "Well, actually, making balloon animals is a prerequisite for vet school."
• "This is how I made a living during my undergrad while I applied to vet school."
• "We have a school-wide competition and only the best balloon animal producers get to do it at open house."
• Etc.

All in all, open house was a neat event, despite the "spring storm" that threatened a foot of snow that never actually materialized completely. The best part is knowing that we helped raise awareness of the teaching hospital in the community, which means that hopefully we will have plenty of clients bringing their animals to us so we can learn from cases!

April Fool's Day disappointment

I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed to realize that I made it through April Fool's Day with nary a joke or prank. Nobody at vet school even played any pranks that I could discern. I think that means we are getting to be too serious. (Or that we are all just freaking out about today's big Biology of Disease exam.)

However, CLH's school district website had most of the text turned upside down. :-)

Awesome autumn!

(How's that for an alliteration? Take that, Professional Writing class!)

Today the administration emailed us our registration information for the fall semester. I can register on Monday at 6:40 am (which I plan to do in order to get all the sections I want).

Classes are:

• Veterinary Ethics
• Veterinary Preventive Medicine
• Veterinary Pharmacology
• Veterinary Bioanalytical Pathology
• Veterinary Biology of Disease II
• Veterinary Clinical Toxicology

And I'll also be taking the next course in the Business Certificate program, which is Fundamentals of Management. Plus we have to register for a 1-credit course for our Capstone exam, which will take place on the first day of classes (August 24) and cover everything from this year.

We're getting to the point in the curriculum where we have a few more choices about what day and time we want to take some of our classes. So, assuming I can register fast enough that the desirable sections don't fill up, here's my proposed fall schedule:

Monday: Class from 9-3 with no lunch break

Tuesday: Class from 9-10, break from 10-1, class from 1-3

Wednesday: Class from 9-3 with no lunch break

Thursday: Class from 9-11, break from 11-1, class from 1-3

Friday: Class from 10-11, break from 11-12, class from 12-3

I am super excited by the prospect of having NO days when I have to be at school at 8 am! Last semester we had class at 8 every day except Friday, and this semester class is at 8 every day except Tuesday and Friday. Plus I'm planning in plenty of breaks in my daily fall schedule, since I've decided that my studying is much more effective at school than at home.

Fingers crossed that all works out well with the scheduling...

The garbage bandits have been foiled! (for now)

After several consecutive days of the naughty little kittens (a.k.a. the garbage bandits) getting into the kitchen trash can, we have devised a creative solution to solve the problem. It involves two half-empty gallons of paint, plus an enormous kettle full of water, and it's neither pretty nor especially convenient, but thus far it's getting the job done. (And thank goodness, because it severely pains me to contemplate spending $60-90 on a decent quality, heavy, stainless steel garbage can with a foot pedal. I have better uses for that $$, thank you very much, Johnny & Simon.)