Capstone, oh Capstone, I hate you, you stink

(Credit given to a classmate for a fitting adaptation of the poem "Homework, oh homework, I hate you, you stink.")

I'm 1/3 done with this year's charming Capstone exam. Yesterday was the "practical" portion covering the first half of this semester's small animal courses.

Really, it wasn't that bad. By which I mean, it could have been a lot worse.

Monday's exam consisted of 12 cases that we had to work through, covering everything from dental disease to GI disease to various types of cancer to feline cardiology to liver disease to causes of red eyes and sudden blindness to suture selection for enterotomy closures to the calculation of A-a gradients for an electrocuted dog with non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema (thanks a lot, professor-who-has-insisted-for-the-last-3-semesters-that-we-shouldn't-bother-to-memorize-all-the-equations-for-interpreting-blood-gas-data-and-then-didn't-give-us-those-equations-on-this-exam).

Each case had 2, 3, 4, or 5 parts. You had to start with the first part, fill out your answer sheet, and turn it in before moving on to the second part, and so forth. Unlimited amount of time for each case (within the constraints that you had to be done with everything in 4 hours). It took me about 2 hours and 15 minutes to get through the cases.

All of the questions were written, i.e. no multiple choice -- everything from answering with a single word or sentence to writing your complete radiographic interpretation of some chest films or penning a paragraph justifying your choice of diagnostic tests to perform.

Overall, it was indeed a "practical" exam which presented us with the kind of cases we will see as seniors in the clinic and as new vets in practice -- and the questions we were asked were designed to prompt us to make the kind of decisions about diagnostic pathways and treatment choices that we'll have to figure out as student doctors and real doctors. So it was nice that at least everything was applicable.

Tomorrow's exam is a more typical written exam covering all of fall semester's courses (radiology II, plus clinical sciences III/IV) plus this semester's applied behavior and practice management classes. It's rumored to be 70 pages of questions (mostly multiple choice, but some short answer as well). I'm more worried about Wednesday's exam than Monday's or Friday's because (a) the material was covered a longer time ago, and (b) it's half large animal information, which is not my strong suit. However, I figure that my skill at answering multiple choice questions will (I hope) outweigh those cons. I did actually get through a review of all of the large animal material from ClinSci III and half the large animal stuff from CSIV, as well as all the radiology slides (1181 slides about radiology, by my calculation. Gah.).

Friday's morning exam will be like Monday's -- a practical, case-based, no-multiple-choice-question exam -- but it will cover the small animal course material from the second half of this semester, including critical care/emergency, dermatology, endocrine disease, genitourinary disease, infectious/immune disease, neurology, and orthopedics. Since all of that material is relatively fresh, I'm counting on not having to review much (haha, I'll let you know how that goes).

Anyhow, as my derm prof would say, "The long and the short of it is," I'll be done with Capstone in 3 days and done with all of my junior year exams within 8 days, if not sooner. Bring it on, senior year!