Fifteen weeks to go...

That's probably not a good method with which to view the rest of the semester at this point, eh?

Week 1 of Semester 4 went okay. It was nice to be back in school, at least on some levels, and we all know that I love to be on a regular schedule. However, I think I prefer a regular schedule that doesn't begin at 6 am every day.

Let's take a preliminary look at this semester's courses:

Theriogenology:

Meets: Tuesday 1-3 pm (lab), Wednesday 2-3 (lecture), Friday 2-3 (lecture)

Credits: 3

Length: All semester

Theriogenology is the study of reproduction. Since we have an entire semester-long course all about reproduction, that means that all but the most fundamental topics in reproduction have been removed from the curriculum prior to this point (i.e. in Anatomy last year: "This is a testicle.").

So we are starting Therio with pretty much no prior knowledge about reproduction. Which, unfortunately, the instructors don't seem to entirely understand. The first lab and first lecture were reasonable, but yesterday afternoon (last class on the last day of the first week of the semester = everybody is WAY ready to go home), we had one of the most confusing lectures I've had during vet school.

The topic was "Male Endocrinology," i.e. all the hormones that are produced in the male reproductive system, how they affect each other, how they affect different organs and tissues, and how they work in feedback loops. The instructor proudly stated that he doesn't like to use PowerPoint (generally fine with me) but we also had no notes relevant to this topic in our course guide, and no textbook for the class. So, this lecture was it.

After about a half hour of rambling briskly through various convoluted hormone names and creating an absolutely unintelligible drawing on the whiteboard, the professor stopped and asked the class, "Did all of that make sense?" Awkward pause, then everybody laughed....

So we'll see how this class goes! The other main instructor fortunately seemed to be a little clearer in the other lecture we had this week.

Clinical Sciences I:

Meets: Monday 10-11 and 1-3, Wednesday 9-11 and 1-2, Thursday 1-3, Friday 10-12

Credits: 5

Length: Half the semester (ends before spring break)

ClinSci will be our "big course" this semester (like Anatomy during Sem 1, Neuro during Sem 2, Clin Path & Pharm during Sem 3).

It is all about learning to integrate the various things we have learned in the first three semesters of vet school, plus additional information like how to diagnose and treat specific problems.

It's very intensive, with tons of homework assignments, case studies, exams, and quizzes (not to mention the 10 hours of lecture every week).

Seems like it will be a challenging course, but is really focused on everything we need to know to be great vets.

We started with 5 hours of lecture and discussion about "clinical reasoning," something the vet school and the AVMA want to have play a bigger role in the curriculum. What that meant for us was that we sat through three hours or so of clinicians from the VTH walking us through cases they've had where they made mistakes and, generally, the patients died. Humbling to hear, but awkward and uncomfortable to listen to.

Yesterday, we started the GI problem section - with a thrilling discussion of salivation and drooling, followed by an introduction to regurgitation. The GI instructor, who we had in pharmacology last semester, was one that I used to like. That is, until yesterday when he pulled out the class roster and started randomly calling on people to answer spontaneous questions. Not cool! Fortunately he stopped doing that for his 2nd hour of lecture, and I liked him again.

Biology of Disease III:

Meets: Monday 8-9 am (lecture), Thursday 8-9 am (lecture), Thursday 9-10 am (lab)

Credits: 3

Length: All semester

BoD III is basically a continuation of BoD I & II that we've taken in the two previous semesters. We have fewer hours of lecture this semester, and a shorter lab (50 minutes instead of 70). I'm okay with both of those changes.

We have four main sections (four body systems to cover), with a different instructor for each. We've had all 4 instructors before, so I am glad that I know what to expect, because two of them are people that I could not learn well from last semester. Big Blue Pathology Textbook, here I come!

Diagnostic Imaging Interpretation:

Meets: Monday 11-12, Wednesday 11-12

Credits: 2

Length: All semester

Mixed feelings about this class (and not sure what I will call it: Imaging? DI? Xray? Radiology? Stay tuned to find out). It's basically learning how to interpret normal and abnormal x-rays, with a few ultrasound lectures thrown in.

Most of the instructors were people who taught us during "Principles of Diagnostic Imaging" first semester freshman year, and I liked some of them and disliked others. However, that class was long ago enough that I don't really remember which were the ones I disliked, so I'm trying to approach everybody with an open mind.

I've heard from upperclassmen in the past that my vet school does not have a very strong emphasis on imaging interpretation in our curriculum, which is why I joined Radiology Club as a freshman and continued to participate in it this year. It's really a nice club - unlike most clubs, it has regularly scheduled meetings - "rounds" every week where student members take turns presenting cases and walking the rest of the club through the findings. I think it has helped me a lot, if not to be particularly good at interpreting x-rays, then to at least stay familiar with radiographic anatomy while my non-club-member classmates forgot it during the one-year gap between classes.

So, as long as this course is well-taught, I'm looking forward to it.

We do have some technological issues - the x-rays we are using as examples in class are in a PowerPoint presentation that is projected onto the big screen in the front of the lecture hall. Normally my class prefers to have all of the lights on because we stay awake better that way. However, you can't get good contrast and see the important details in the x-rays unless at least some of the lights are down. There is a medium lighting setting for our lecture hall, where the room is mostly dark but there are a few lights that make it bright enough for us to take notes. However, those few lights are accompanied by an irritating buzzing noise, which my radiology instructor evidently cannot stand, so she just turned off all the lights in the lecture hall so it was pitch-black. Good for seeing the x-rays, good for not going insane from the buzzing, but no good if you actually wanted to take any notes or write anything down on your copy of the x-ray PowerPoint slides... hope they can find a compromise in this regard so we can learn something!

Principles of Surgery:

Meets: Tuesday 10-11 (lab/recitation), Wednesday 8-9 (lecture), Friday 8-10 (lecture)

Credits: 2

Length: Half the semester (ends before spring break)

This class is going to save me during the second half of the semester, mostly because I won't have it during the second half of the semester. That means that instead of having class at 8 am every day except Tuesday (9 am), after spring break I will have class at 8 on Mon & Thurs, 9 on Tues & Wed, and 10 on Fri. After just four days of my current schedule, I am already looking forward to more sleep.

Principles of Surgery seems like it will cover a lot of information that is really important yet not necessarily very fun or entertaining and not easy to make more interesting: things like details about different kinds of suture material, how to maintain aseptic technique during surgeries, memorizing different kinds of surgical instruments, etc.

We will have some hands-on lab/recitation periods where we get to practice stuff relevant to surgery and the surgery labs we will start next year. I think a lot of those are led by the VTH's surgery techs, who are pretty cool people.

Principles of Anesthesia:

Meets: Monday 9-10 (lecture), Tuesday 9-10 (lab/recitation), Friday 1-2 (lecture)

Credits: 3

Length: All semester

I haven't really had enough of this course to decide anything about it. Our first academic event this week, back from winter break, was an anesthesia recitation, which was a little weird since we were broken into smaller groups and we hadn't had any course introduction yet (had that yesterday). We watched videos of how to place intravenous catheters and induce anesthesia in dogs and horses. The dog video was really boring for me because I've seen that a lot of times, but everybody does things slightly differently so it was good to see how exactly they do it at the VTH.

The horse video was cooler. I hadn't seen a catheter placed in a horse before. They usually use the jugular vein since it's in a location that's easy to access without getting kicked in the face. I didn't realize that you place the catheter with the lumen aimed down toward the ground and the base of the catheter pointed up toward the horse's head. They also mentioned super-gluing (super-glueing?) the catheter to the horse's neck since you can't exactly secure it in place with tape. Awesome!

Watching an anesthetic induction in a horse was neat too. I have seen photos of anesthesia in large animals, but never in person or on video, so it was interesting to see it all put together. Way different proportions to think about than just knocking out a Beagle and carrying it into surgery!

Principles of Shelter Medicine:

Meets: Tuesday 3-4

Credits: 1

Length: All semester

Shelter Medicine is one of my three electives this semester, and I think it will be a really interesting class for me, since I have always been interested in that sort of thing since I decided to enter this field.

We have a bunch of guest lecturers who are "big" in the field of shelter medicine - some of them will be remote lectures, i.e. we look at their PowerPoint slides while their disembodied voice floats down through the PA system via a phone line. That will be a little weird.

We have two exams and one project that's worth half our grade - we don't get to find out anything about the project until next week but I expect it will be awesome.

Problem-Based Learning:

Meets: Thursday 12-1

Credits: 1

Length: All semester

PBL is my second elective - and although I guess it still qualifies as an "elective," about 80% of the class is taking it.

We are divided into small groups - about 5-7 students in a group - and each group has a facilitator, who is one of the vet school faculty, generally people who are DVMs but are not directly involved in clinical medicine and do not work in the VTH. My facilitator is one of the admissions people who is mildly intimidating but also seems really nice.

Each small group decides on their own when they want to meet every week. I was glad that my group decided on the Thursday lunch hour because that works really well with my schedule. That is, until a few hours later, when I realized that all of our free lunches this semester will be held on Thursdays over the lunch hour... bummer.

In PBL we are presented with cases (i.e. "This is Fluffy. She is a three year old spayed cat. She has been vomiting for a week.") and we have to, as a group, work our way through them. So we get to decide what questions we want to ask the "owner" (played by the group facilitator), what diagnostics to do, do research on our own to come up with differentials, etc. If we mess up, Fluffy "dies" and we have to pursue a different course of action. Sort of like those old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. It's another course that I think will be personally challenging but a great experience for me.

Business Law:

Meets: Monday 12-1, Wednesday 12-1, Friday 12-1

Credits: 3

Length: All semester

Simply because of scheduling issues, I fear this course will impinge mildly on my sanity this semester. On Mon/Wed/Fri, I will have a class every hour from 8 am to 3 pm. It's only on Tues/Thurs that I have a few breaks and time to actually eat lunch. Sigh.

But scheduling aside, I'm not sure what to think of this course. It's the next course in the Business Certificate program, and the 4th of 6 steps in completing that program. I sort of feel like, I've come this far, why give up now?

I had good feelings about Business Law after our first class on Wednesday. The instructor seemed organized. Class started on time. People participated. True, it was a large class (over 100), in a terrible classroom (steeply sloping floor so your feet [well, MY feet] never touch the ground, no matter where you sit), and at least a 10-minute walk from my vet school classes. But I thought to myself, this seems like stuff that will be good to know for life in general, even if I can't relate it to vet med.

So, like a good little student and as instructed, I printed out the PowerPoint slides that the professor indicated would be oh-so-necessary to keeping up and succeeding in class. I arrived to Friday's lecture open-minded and ready to learn.

Much to our surprise, 2/3 of the PowerPoint slides the professor used were not actually ones that were in the set of slides he told us to print (which came from the textbook publisher). Instead, he mostly used a set of slides he had made up himself.

So we frantically scrambled to copy down his slides as he lectured, not by explaining the material spontaneously, but by reading verbatim and in somewhat of a monotone from his own typed notes. Gaaahhhh!

Here's hoping the course improves next week....