Semester countdown

As of the time of this writing, here is the breakdown of the remainder of my academic semester:

- 0 "Professional Writing" lectures!
- 0 unavoidable reminders (I hope) of how seemingly every freshman vet student except me received a scholarship for next year
- 0 free lunches that we know about
- 1 1000-word Professional Writing essay to complete
- 1 cumulative virology final exam
- 1 cumulative bacteriology/mycology final exam
- 1 bacteriology extra credit assignment to turn in
- 1 neurobiology lecture
- 1 neurobiology final grade to be revealed
- 1 biology of disease midterm exam
- 1 cumulative online biology of disease final exam
- 1 nutrition lab
- 1 online nutrition final exam
- 1 finance final exam
- 1 pet hospice end-of-the-year party
- 1 diagnostic imaging club end-of-the-year party
- 1 tour of the teaching hospital to give
- 2 school days in April
- 2 weeks before the bittersweet move out of the cubes
- 2 food animal production lectures
- 2 biology of disease labs
- 2 nutrition lectures
- 4 bacteriology/mycology lectures
- 4 biology of disease lectures
- 5 virology lectures
- 5 finance lectures
- 8 school days in May

(Okay, apparently I have 6 exams to take and one essay to write in the next 2 weeks? Great, it sure helped to write THAT out! :-)

Pet peeves

For your enjoyment, here are some of my pet peeves:

1. Poor grammar. Examples: its/it's, your/you're, there/they're/their, and any use of the "word" irregardless. After all, irregardless of how lazy your being, its not that hard to use proper English. [<-- that sentence makes me cringe!]
2. Professors who repeatedly mention how behind they are on their lecture schedule, yet consistently end class early without using the full lecture time.
3. Being asked to write a thank-you note. What does a thank-you note mean, anyway, if you had to request it? Thank-you notes for birthday gifts will be forthcoming, as they nearly always are.
4. People who make up and/or spread rumors.
5. Putting so much tupperware on the top rack of the dishwasher that half of it doesn't get clean. And putting wooden spoons and/or measuring cups in the dishwasher with the concave side facing up, so they are full of dirty water and chunks of food when you take them out.
6. Classmates who act inappropriately toward professors who they feel do not deserve their respect. The irony? You're paying tens of thousands of dollars to people who think those professors are the most qualified people to teach you. Joke's on you!
7. Huge exaggerations and drama about how we'll all be dead from swine flu a month from now. And not-so-subtle insinuations that I have swine flu and am behaving in a terribly socially irresponsible manner by coming to class, a mere 7 days after the onset of my cold symptoms.
8. Having to replace a contact lens before it has lasted as long as it should.

There, how's that for a cheerful post to close out the day! I promise to be happier tomorrow. :-)

What I learned in school today

Peach yogurt tastes terrible when you eat it right after a raw carrot.

Q: What's the date today?

A: It's April 27th.

Q: Then why is it snowing?????

Be gone, ye foul disease!

CLH had a cold last week. I have a cold this week. Can we all just say, "Yuck!"

Mine started on Tuesday with a terrible sore throat, which continued into Wednesday with no improvement.

By Thursday morning, the sore throat had subsided somewhat, but I was into the whole achy-lethargic-blurry-sneezy-congested-mucusy phase. After lunch on Thursday, I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to stay at school since I wasn't learning anything through the haze in my brain. So I went home and slept for a couple hours, which didn't really help anything except making the afternoon pass faster.

I woke up yesterday feeling a bit better, especially after clearing out the evening's accumulated congestion. But things rapidly went downhill again and culminated in more misery.

Today I'm better, at least for the 1 1/2 hours I've been awake. Here's hoping the improvement continues so I can start to feel like a human being again! A couple people at school have tested positive for strep so I'm mostly just glad the sore throat aspect has been abating.

(The saddest part is that I was feeling so good about having stayed healthy all winter. I hadn't had a cold or any illness since last September, when a bug swept through the freshman class and pretty much everyone got sick. Guess I prided myself on my good health and forgot to knock on wood one too many times! A bit ironic that my cold hit during the first week when we have consistently had 80-degree temperatures...)

And then the cow ran away

So all semester in neurobiology, we've had weekly "interactive case studies" that we had to complete online. Basically, the instructors have found a number of animals over the years with certain neurological problems. They then videotape a complete neurological exam of each animal (testing reflexes, proprioception, pain sensation, etc.).

As the cumulative portion of our final exam, we had 4 case studies we had to complete. The first one was of a cow with some neuro problem that we were supposed to figure out based on the results of the neurological exam.

The case in itself wasn't really all that fascinating - it was pretty run-of-the-mill as far as the requisite logic/reasoning/thought process was concerned.

But the best part came at the end of the first video clip, in which the examiners were just walking the cow around on a rope head halter, to observe any abnormalities in how the cow was walking or moving.

At this point, I need to let you know that this neuro exam was taking place on the main campus, not at the teaching hospital; i.e. they were walking the cow around on a grassy lawn between some of the academic buildings.

Anyway, I gather that cows don't usually like to walk on a halter and lead quite as much as some other species do. This cow certainly wasn't too thrilled about it.

The video clip culminated with the cow struggling mightily against the rope halter, eventually starting to pull the halter off her head, at which point the cameraman puts down the camera and runs over to help the other 3 people doing the neuro exam. The last thing we see is the cow, completely free from any halter or lead or restraint, wandering off into a parking lot with 4 people going after her in an urgent manner.

(Moral of this story? Maybe don't do your neuro exam on a cow on an academic campus with just a makeshift rope halter for restraint... or you risk having the ensuing hilarity recorded on videotape for countless generations to observe!)

Today's Big Event: A Surprise Hawaiian Neurobiology Final Examination Extravaganza!

Before we came to school this morning, we all knew we'd be spending most of the morning taking our neurobiology final.

But we didn't know that our instructors were going to turn the exam into a giant Hawaiian-themed party! And I mean, complete with tacky Hawaiian shirts and hats, plastic leis for everyone, multiple fake birds and other tropical creatures, and an enormous rainbow-colored beach ball that we bounced around the lecture hall for awhile.

Hooray for relieving stress during the first 15 minutes of the official testing period! (Boo to distracting us with fun happenings, and making us forget everything we just crammed into our short-term memory...)

Seriously, though, the exam went really well and I am definitely going to miss our quirky, wacky, hilarious first-year instructors once we graduate to sophomore status. But I'm sure there'll be several funny weirdos among our new professors, too.

I was done with the final in about 45 minutes and spent the following hour basking on the lawn in the sunny, 80-degree weather and eating most of my lunch (okay, yes, it was only like 10:00 am at that point) with friends. Then I went inside so as to avoid total sunburn, and hung around the cubes for another hour reading a really awesome book ("The Story of Edgar Sawtelle"). Three huzzahs for nice, enjoyable, sunny, relaxing days!