On to different things

Capstone is over (well, the scary, closed-book, in-class part of capstone that I'm actually talking about when I say "capstone" is over). 191 multiple choice questions, plus some short answer/essay questions. All in all it wasn't too bad.

I feel that as I've gone through the last 2 years of vet school, I get better at taking exams. Well, maybe "better" isn't the right word. Maybe "efficient" is more accurate. I can pretty much know with my first skim of a question if it's something I have any chance of knowing, or if I'm honestly going to be stuck guessing randomly among the 5 possible answers no matter how much time I spend trying to pick my brain for tiny bits of information from the last 24 months.

So I guess that doesn't probably help me answer a greater number of questions correctly, but it sure cuts down on the stress and strain of staring at a question that you just don't know the answer to, and stressing yourself out about what answer you're going to pick, and going back and re-reading it, and changing your mind, then re-changing your mind, and on and on. I've learned to just let those questions go.

That's not to say that the majority of the questions on today's exam were like that - although there were a distinct few. More often, I knew the answer or had a reasonble suspicion, enough to narrow it down to a couple of choices.

At this point I have a lot more of the online portion of capstone done than I expected to; honestly, I wasn't even planning on working on it until this week or next (I intended to get the big scary part out of the way first). But one of the nice things about online capstone is that most classes have an in-class part and an online part, and by completing or at least looking at the online part, you can get an idea of how difficult that professor's questions will be, how in-depth they will go in the in-class questions, and what material has already been emphasized on the online portion, and thus (hopefully) you won't need to know as well for the in-class exam.

Really it's a just bunch of "strategizing" that my classmates and I do to take our minds off the looming exam and make ourselves feel better about how little studying we've done, or how unprepared we feel. I actually felt pretty good about my studying this year (thank you, box office), although I will admit to having some moments of panic during the last 2 or 3 days. (Especially when I realized on Saturday afternoon that I hadn't even opened my therio binder, my most hated and boring class from last semester. Thank the good Lord that those instructors had a TA who posted "take home messages" from every single lecture, or I never would have gotten through it.)

What's coming up next? An early morning tomorrow - getting up around 6 am, leaving the house at 6:45 to arrive at the VTH in time to get myself organized and change into scrubs and clinic smock and start my "Surgical Principles Laboratory" rotation. Tomorrow morning promises 4 hours of SPL fun: 2 hours of aseptic technique, 1 hour of pack prep, and 1 hour patient preparation.

Then I will actually have an hour-long break for lunch! And I will (at least theoretically) have said break for lunch every single day! I never realized (okay, maybe I did) how annoying some of those lunch-hour business classes were until I finally got to this semester, when I have no business class. But don't worry, I'm sure rotations will end up going past the scheduled end time of 12 pm and will cut into my lunch time so that I feel back to normal again.

The afternoon is just 2 hours of Clinical Sciences III tomorrow. Actually, Clinical Sciences ("ClinSci") is just about our only course this fall - we have ClinSci III through mid-October, and ClinSci IV after that till December. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they divide it into 2 separate courses like that. It made a little more sense last semester, when ClinSci I was all GI disease (well, plus endocrine disease) and ClinSci II was all respiratory and cardiac disease. ClinSci III, however, contains such diverse topics as (on the small animal side of things) osteoarthritis, reproduction, seizures, vestibular disease, and incontinence, and (on the large animal side of things) equine hoof care, mare breeding management, bovine infertility, large animal neurology, and urinary disease. We have 1 hour of large animal and 1 hour of small animal every day.

I only have 2 other classes: Principles of Imaging Interpretation II (a continuation of last spring's xray interpretation course), and an elective called Alternative & Complementary Therapeutics. That second one meets from 5-6 pm on Mondays (yeesh) but should cover some cool stuff like acupuncture that I'm at least mildly interested in, especially since I didn't get the alternative medicine rotation as one of my electives this year. Imaging Interpretation meets on Mon & Wed afternoons.

I guess that's all I can say about tomorrow... Happy First Day of School!

Capstone comments continue

(also alliterations)

Here are some more of my favorite Capstone-related comments from Facebook:

"Done with online capstone!! Really squeaked by on that last one. Actually I didn't technically pass until the ungraded portion gets fixed. Striving for excellence was so last year"

"must... finish... online... capstone..."

"Home cooked meal, bottle of red, movie, and my wonderful boyfriend...suck it, capstone exam!!!"

"Two and a half days till Capstone and already I don't want to study anymore....must continue because I need to still open some courses."

Where am I along this meandering yet stressful Capstone path? I'm finished with 5 of the 8 online/open-book sections, and am just about ready to give up studying for Monday's in-class portion. Really I need to finish studying respiratory disease (I'm about halfway through) and study all of Therio (yikes), then do some last-minute review of anesthesia, cardiac drugs, pharmacology, etc. tomorrow afternoon. At this point I'm mostly just looking forward to being done with it. As my classmate so aptly posted, "Striving for excellence is so last year." :-)

Capstone looms

The online/open-book portion of this year's Capstone opened 3 days ago, and is due by Labor Day. The in-class/closed-book portion is in 4 days. Gaaaahhhh!

But seriously, it'll all be ok.

In lieu of studying at the moment, I thought I'd share some of my classmates' Capstone-related comments on Facebook:

"Want to go to bed but there are two dogs and lots of three-ring binders in the way. Guess I should take back the bed."

"Capstone was a much more enjoyable experience whist drinking a delicious glass of moscato! Only one left, and I've at least started it. Then on to studying the many things I don't remember... two days should be sufficient, right?"

"Sigh, you know it's the week before capstone when you wake up at 4:00AM and your brain will NOT fall back to sleep... why, oh why, do you torment me. Guess I'm up for the day."

"Trying to end this court dispute over my bathroom remodel... capstone will have to wait..."

"my cortisol levels are elevating, two more online exams..."

"Company left this morning and the radiator on the Suburban exploded. Studying's overrated anyway, right?"

And those were all in the last 24 hours. Think we're obsessed with Capstone much?

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!

Vets like 'x's

As I sit in the box office on a slow day, trying to work up the motivation to dive into 19 pages of notes about diarrhea in piglets, I can't keep my mind from wandering...

So here's some random trivia for you. Members of the veterinary profession looooove acronyms and abbreviations, and lately I've realized just how much we like to add 'x' to other letters of the alphabet and decide that it stands for something. Here are some examples for you:

Ax: anesthesia
Bx: biopsy
Cx: cortex
Dx: diagnosis
Fx: fracture
Hx: history
Px: prognosis
Rx: prescription
Sx: surgery (sometimes 'symptoms')
Tx: treatment or therapy
Vx: vaccination

So I can say: "Pp w/hx of adv rxn to ax during liver bx; no recent vx or rx; rDVM dx'd w/PSS & tx'd pt w/SAMe & NSAIDs."

Which means: "Patient presented with a history of adverse reaction to anesthesia during liver biopsy; no recent vaccines or prescription medication; regular vet diagnosed with portosystemic shunt and treated patient with s-adenylmethionine and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories." (Which is not actually how you'd probably want to treat a portosystemic shunt, but I'm just trying to make a point: abbreviations are awesome!)

Now I have to go study piglet diarrhea.... bummer.

Box Office, Year 3

Yes, it's that time of year again: the choral festival (or coral festival, if the 'h' button on your keyboard isn't working too great; on the other hand, maybe that would be more fun some days?).

To start off the summer, here are my top 3 favorite greetings I received yesterday from choristers who had just arrived for the first of four week-long sessions:

Number 3:

Chorister: "Oh, hi, I see you're in the box office again. Did they finally put you on payroll this year?"

Me (in reality): "Oh, no, I've been paid for all three years, don't worry."

Me (in my imagination): "Why on earth would you think I'd do this job for no pay?"

Number 2:

Chorister (whom I've never met before, approaches me while I'm in one of the dorm lounges studying, and says the following in a sing-song voice you'd use to talk to a not-especially-bright toddler): "Hi, there, dear! Are you a sing-er?"

Me: "No, I work in the box office."

Chorister: "Oh, good for you, sweetie!"

Me (in my imagination): ".......?"

And my number 1 favorite so far:

Chorister: "Hi! It's great to see you again! How've you been-- did you have your baby?!"

Me: "Um... you must be thinking of somebody else?"

Me (in my imagination): "Guess I won't be wearing this shirt again."

And so the madness begins!

Junior practicum schedule has arrived

A couple weeks ago they notified all of us about-to-be-junior-vet-students that we could check out our schedules online for our junior practicum rotations.

(Reminder for those who are confused: at my school, the 3rd year is half "junior practicum" -- a series of week-long rotations through the different departments of the hospital -- and half classes. Rotations all morning, classes all afternoon. We get 13 weeks of core rotations during the year, and 6 elective weeks each semester, to be chosen from about 25 options each semester.)

I'm pretty happy with my schedule. Overall I got almost all of the electives that I really wanted, although there are a couple "interesting" rotations thrown in that, let's just say, weren't too high on my list.

My core rotations are:

1. Surgical Principles Lab - fall, week 1

2. Large Animal Procedures Lab - fall, week 2 - this is possibly the rotation that I'm looking forward to the least, so I'm glad to get it over with early in the year

3. Radiology - fall, week 4 - should be a good rotation; they say that you learn more in a 20-hour, 1 week session of junior practicum radiology than you do in the previous 2 semesters of classes - and I like radiology to begin with

4. Small Animal Procedures Lab - fall, week 5

5. Client Communication Skills 1 - fall, week 6 - this is the infamous rotation where you have to practice expressing empathy and using reflective listening (etc, blah blah blah) while being videotaped and watched by your friends....

6. Emerging & Exotic Animal Diseases - fall, week 8 - no idea what this is?

7. Clinical Pathology - fall, week 13 - I love Clin Path! LOVE IT!

8. Independent Study - fall, week 15 - no idea yet what I'll do for this, but it's nice that it's toward the end of the semester

9. Diagnostic Parasitology - fall, week 16 - parasitology = yuck but learning it = important

10. Anesthesia - spring, weeks 12&13 - this is one of the scariest rotations out there and I am already scared of anesthesia so we'll see how it goes... glad it's not till the end of the year

11. Clinical Communication Skills 2 - spring, week 14 - another dastardly communications rotation... I'm over it already

12. Independent Study - spring, week 15 - again, no idea what to do, but I'll work it out

And, drum roll please, my electives!

1. Community Practice Surgery - fall, week 3 - 2 days of seeing appointments with senior students, and 3 days of assisting seniors with dentals, spays, and neuters; I'm a little bit nervous about this one because rumor has it that the junior student is responsible for running the anesthesia for the senior students' cases...

2. Soft Tissue Diagnostics - fall, week 7 - I'm not entirely sure what this rotation entails although I ranked it pretty high

3. Community Practice Medicine - fall, week 9 - more healthy pet and mildly sick pet appts seen with senior students

4. Junior Surgery Lab - fall, week 10 - I am excited for this one! This is where we anesthetize cull pigs (purchased by the vet school before they were to be sent to slaughter anyway) and practice almost any surgery we want on them; pigs are euthanized at the end of the lab without waking up

5. Small Animal Surgical Anatomy - fall, week 11 - practicing a bunch of fancier surgical procedures on cadavers

6. Small Animal Medicine - fall, week 12 - seeing internal medicine cases

7. Oncology - spring, week 5 - mixed feelings about this one; oncology (cancer medicine) is one of those things that you see every day in small animal private practice, but it's also sort of depressing.... but I think it will be good to get more experience dealing with the sort of issues that crop up in oncology

8. Rabbit & Rodent Medicine - spring, week 6 - I was really quite alarmed at first that this rotation (which I ranked #15/25) made it onto my schedule, but after getting used to the idea, I think it will be good for me to learn a bit more about bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, and rats, since I've elected not to take any of the exotics electives so far

9. Evening Urgent Care - spring, week 7 - this sounds like sort of a cool rotation; instead of coming in from 8am-noon, you work 5-11pm and have the morning off; you take care of hospitalized patients and help admit urgent care/emergency cases that come in during the evening

10. Shelter Medicine - spring, week 8 - not super thrilled about this one since I don't know how much I'll learn, but I will get to do some cat neuters, and at least it's not horses or cows, right?

11. Orthopaedic Diagnostics - spring, week 10 - another one I'm not too excited about (ranked #17/25); it's not that I'm not interested in orthopaedic diagnostics, it's just that most of the orthopaedics clinicians I've had contact with so far in the curriculum have really come across as jerks

12. Cardiology - spring, week 11 - I love cardiology! I really enjoyed our 4 intensive weeks of cardiac medicine this past spring, and although cardiology is a required senior rotation, I really wanted to get it as a junior too for more experience (and so I don't forget everything I learned as a sophomore before I'm a senior)

What rotations didn't I get?

I was really bummed to not get neurology, until I realized that no one got neurology - I think they cancelled it as a junior rotation. I can take it as a senior.

I wanted complementary & alternative medicine, and was disappointed to not have that on my schedule, but it looks like they only accepted 9 students for the entire year. That was a rotation I wanted more because I think it would be good to learn than because I'm interested in it. I'm taking the elective complementary medicine class this fall, anyway.

I didn't realize that I'd ranked dermatology #6/25 for my spring electives, but apparently I did... and didn't get it. Not too sad about that one, since I'm not sure why I ranked it so high to begin with.

Advanced surgical techniques - a rotation that sounded really cool but probably wouldn't be that applicable to the type of practice I want to do (things like laparoscopy, laser surgery, cryosurgery, etc.).

Spanish for Veterinarians - I don't like the instructor so I ranked this pretty low, plus I already own some good resources for translating vet med into Spanish.

Food animal / equine / zoo med / exotics / lab animal / wildlife rotations or more independent study - these all went at the way bottom of my ranking lists, and good riddance!

So, all in all, I think that I pretty much got what I wanted. Of the rotations I wanted and didn't get, there's not much of that that I won't get as a senior anyway, so no worries.