What I learned at "Junior Orientation"

Yesterday we had our much-anticipated day-long "Junior Orientation." I use quotation marks because, unfortunately, upon our arrival at 8 am we rapidly ascertained that the day's schedule had very little to do what we actually need to know to be juniors.

Sigh.

Here's what we DID get to experience:

1. 3.5 hours of radiation safety training, including such helpful tidbits as "we will kick you out of vet school if you take an xray of yourself"; "don't eat or drink the radioactive isotopes"; and in regards to reporting problems, "if it seems weird, there's probably something bad going on." Blah blah blah, wear your dosimetry badge, tell us if you're pregnant, make your classmates help you when you take xrays. Got it.

2. 30 minutes (haha) of VTH Biosecurity discussion - which ended up being about 6 minutes of the assistant to the biosecurity director (since the director himself suddenly couldn't be there) killing time and finally recommending that we just go read the 135-page biosecurity manual for ourselves.

3. 20 minutes of senior practicum discussion. That's right, we're still a week away from starting our 9-month JUNIOR practicum but one of the most relevant things they can include for us in junior orientation is a discussion of senior year. And most of what they told us was that, finally, starting with my graduating class, we don't have to do "wards duty" (which sounded really horrible: the Internal Medicine or Radiology students got multiple weeks of the year when they were assigned to after-hours duty, meaning they worked in IM or Radiology from 8-5 and then took care of after-hours patients from 5-11 pm, then got to go home at 11 IF there was nothing else left to do, but were on call from 11 pm to 8 am, when they started their next day of Internal Med or Radiology; my lucky class just gets to have 2 weeks of the year where the only thing we do is after-hours duty (assigned 5-11pm, on call till 8am, but free from 8am-5pm); sounds much better).

4. 10 minutes of "Rationale for completion of the Animal Welfare Act Training Module" which apparently is something that we have to do on RamCT that everyone always complains about doing so they decided during orientation they should tell us why we have to do it, but they never really told us that after all.

5. 2 hours (TWO HOURS) of a "Tolerance and Diversity" seminar taught by somebody from the university's human resources dept (who, to her credit, made the seminar just about as "fun" as I think anybody could). We learned that you can't discriminate against people, that you should probably go tell someone if you're being sexually harassed, and that we should all learn how to manage conflict. Boy howdy. Probably would have been a more interesting talk if I hadn't JUST covered all that stuff last spring between my mandatory VTH employee (tour guide) sexual harassment awareness training, and my semester-long Business Law & Ethics course.

6. 20 minutes of an "explanation" on how to use the various computer systems at the VTH to access digital xrays. Yes, that's all they taught us about the computer programms, the electronic records, etc: how to find the xrays. Which was totally useless, since we don't even know the name of the software, how to access it, how to login, how to look up a client, how to look up a patient, etc. But at least once we figure that out, we'll be able to find the patient's xrays. Unless we've forgotten what we learned at "Junior Orientation."

Here are a few of the things they DIDN'T talk about at Junior Orientation:

1. VTH dress code (which was mentioned during our FRESHMAN orientation) but we could all use a little refresher on, since everybody in my class seems to have a different opinion on it

2. What time to show up and where to go for our first set of junior rotations, starting a week from today. (Side note: I think I managed to figure mine out based on some intensive sleuthing on the vet school website: Junior Lecture Hall at SEVEN THIRTY IN THE MORNING.)

3. Facilities available for use in the VTH (which I mostly found on my own by wandering around: mail boxes, locker rooms, student lounge, bagel shop/cafeteria, computer labs, etc.).

It really seems like either (a) they sent out an email detailing all of this vital information a month ago, but nobody in my class actually got the email; (b) they are simply totally clueless about how confused we all are; or (c) the administration is being intentionally ambiguous in an attempt to "break us in" to the reality of being junior and senior students.

Who knows!