New record

Classes started yesterday.

I came prepared with a positive attitude, a sense of optimism. I swear, I really did.

It took about 5 minutes of "VM712: Practice Management" to kill any shreds of enthusiasm I brought with me. Pretty sure that is a brand-spanking-new record for the amount of time required to generate this level of cynicism at the beginning of a new semester.

Before we get into the course material, let's just talk some logistics. Last fall was spent half on clinics/rotations, half in classes. Except for a few select rotations (like Emerging & Exotic Diseases), I've basically been on my feet all morning thus far this year, interacting with senior students, interns, residents, clinicians, clients, and patients. Or if not in the clinic, then at least in a lab like parasitology or clin path -- at least doing something, rather than getting talked at.

Fast forward to the first 4 weeks of this semester, and you might be able to imagine why I'm less than thrilled to be spending 4 hours every morning learning about why I want to own and manage my own veterinary practice (which I rather emphatically don't).

Additionally, we have a weird course schedule this semester. It's really the first and only semester in which the large and small animal trackers are enrolled in vastly different courses. Last fall, aside from some electives, we were basically all still in the same Clinical Sciences classes together.

Now, though, the large animal trackers are taking "Bovine Herd Medicine" and "Equine Medicine & Surgery," while the small animal trackers are taking "Small Animal Medicine & Surgery" (1 & 2).

Since we have a large number of "general" or "mixed" trackers in our class, and they need to be able to take any combination of the above courses that they want, all of the classes have to be offered at times that don't conflict with each other. So aside from Practice Management or junior rotations till noon every day, I'm in class only from 2-4 on Mondays, 1-5 Tuesdays, 2-4 Wednesdays, 3-4 Thursdays, and 2-4 Fridays. Definitely an odd schedule, with all of those extended lunch breaks in the middle of the day.

So there's that: not only have I wasted 8 hours of my week so far on fairly useless Practice Management topics, but yesterday was one heck of a long day being in class till 5, and I'm sitting here today watching the 7200 seconds of my lunch break tick by incredibly slowly.

Think I've complained enough already? Fear not; the venting shall continue.

Let's talk about some of the "course material" we've covered so far in Practice Management. About half of our lecture time on Day 1 was spent hearing the "motivational" life stories of some of our speakers, including such facts relevant to Practice Management as where they went to vet school, their favorite species to practice on, innumerable details about their nuclear and extended families, pictures of their hiking trips to Mount Everest, and how their rich relatives died and they inherited enough money to pay off their vet school loans within a couple years after graduation.

Today, Day 2, included more motivational quotes than I've honestly ever heard in the span of 4 hours' time, or probably in a single month. Add the time spent on cheery cliches to the recitation of all of those helpful quotations, and we had about 30 minutes left to actually cover Practice Management material.

And the small amount of information we did discuss was very basic financial and management advice that I've already covered in my elective business courses during vet school, and even that was mostly stuff that I had figured out on my own through common sense long before entering vet school.

We also took personality tests today and discussed the results. Never mind that we took exactly the same personality tests during our freshman orientation for vet school 2.5 years ago, and it was a waste of time then too. Gee, I'm more introverted than extroverted, more of a thinker than a feeler. Thanks for the earth-shattering news.

I'm telling myself it will get better (and I really hope it will; after all, I don't see that it can get much worse). However, it's difficult not to keep in mind that we have 56 hours of this left.

On a brighter note, I'm fairly excited about our once-a-week Applied Animal Behavior course, the first session of which was held yesterday. Yes, it's the dreaded class that will keep me at school until 5 pm on Tuesdays, but I find behavior topics really interesting, and overall it seems that vets receive an inadequate education about animal behavior during vet school. Most of the DVMs I've met offer clients behavior and training tips that the DVMs learned working as technicians or trainers before vet school, or that they've learned through CE and self-education after graduation.

Also, I have had some previous experience with the instructor for this behavior course, and I really like her and respect her ideas. She is not a DVM (although it is possible to become a board-certified veterinary behaviorist after vet school), but rather has a PhD in animal behavior. She does a great job of using science-based research to back up her recommended methods and suggestions, and cuts out a lot of the touchy-feely stuff.

My other course this semester is Small Animal Medicine & Surgery. We're in part one through March, and will cover review topics in dentistry and oral surgery, GI disease, respiratory medicine, respiratory and soft tissue surgery, cardiology, oncology, and ophthalmology. We've started with dentistry lectures, given by a clinician who is not especially popular but whom I really like. He's only been at this university for about 3 years and has become a progressively better lecturer every time we have him as an instructor.

See? I can end positively! And things will be way better in 3.5 weeks when Practice Management is over.