4 more days!

Hey everyone!

Like I said in my last post, nothing has been going on lately beside non-stop studying. Since then, I have survived:

- One written Surgery final
- One simulated client interview
- Three Principles of Disease finals back to back, 3 days in a row (finishing one exam and then having to study the same material only to find all the mistakes you made that morning is not the most fun, but yay to the monster Phase 2 course being done!)
- One Health Management final
- One Theriogenology (reproduction) final

And we only have Anesthesia & Pharmacology (which is one course) to go!

We have fewer finals than we did in first year, but the amount of material tested this year is massive and all of them are worth so much. Today's was Therio and it was worth 70%! So even if you go into the final with a good mark, it doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Intimidating for sure, especially since our brains are beginning to wear out.

I took a mental break this weekend though; the weather has been gorgeous and Matt came down to take Daisy back to London for me. We got to hang out for a bit and we took a nice long trail walk - it was nice to finally get some sun! I'm feeling like less of a vampire/troll/hermit and ready to get this last exam over with so I can celebrate, head home and recover for a week before starting work.

Almost 50% of a DVM!
Bye for now :)

Hands-on Learning and FREEDOM!

Helloooo lovely people,

Let me just take a deep breath before this post because it's going to be a long one. The past 2 weeks have been some of the busiest and most hands-on weeks I've had so far in vet school.

Surgery ward shadowing:

I completed my week of no sleep aka shadowing week! I got to follow a 4th year around during her rotation in the small animal surgery wards doing pre and post op treatments on patients. Due to confidentiality I can't explain exactly what I saw, but some of the reasons that our patients were at the hospital were: amputations, mammary tumors, septic peritonitis (2 different cases), and ectopic ureters. Although as Phase II students we aren't ready to be able to give medications yet, I got to practice plenty of physical exam skills (I'm now a pro at taking a rectal temp on a grumpy cat) as well as giving fluids, calculating drug doses, taking blood pressure, and getting to cuddle with dogs as I heated or iced their surgical sites. I also gained the title of magician because I was able to coax all of our not-so-hungry dogs to eat. It was a tiring week because I had to be there before class (started at 6:45 most mornings) and then from 7 pm til 9ish for evening treatments. But it was so worth it, I learned so much and my student was great - she taught me tricks about things here and there and gave me "homework" to prepare for the types of questions I will get asked during 4th year rounds. I'm super glad that this week was mandatory for our Clinical Medicine course, and seeing our patients go home to their owners was so rewarding.

My new stethoscope served me well :)

Labs:
We had a week of useful labs that it made it seem like we are actually learning real-life things! Class can obviously get a little monotonous. First we had a small mammal handling lab, aka bunnies (love) and rats (ew, sorry to the rat-lovers out there). I've had a little bit of rabbit experience at the clinic I volunteer at, but there were lots of people in my class who were shocked at their crazy fast heart rates (250-350 bpm - our prof described it as "if it's too fast to count that's a good thing). Next we had a surgery lab where we got to remove "tumors" (sponges) from cadavers and learn how to properly suture them up, depending on the incision size and shape. Finally there was an anesthesia lab where we got to practice intubation and catheter placement on simulation models. Yay for practical labs!!

The rabbits looked like this and they were the softest things ever <3

Intubation models because we're not quite ready for the real thing yet ;)

After that whirlwind of a week we had 3 back to back finals - Pharm/Anesthesia (trickiest one so far and it covered a TON of lectures which was annoying), Art of Vet Med (basically ethics and communication...needless to say I didn't study much for that one), and today we had Radiology which went better than expected and I'm slowly getting more confident in my ability to actually see things on radiographs.

My view in the library all day yesterday

And now I'm free for 2ish weeks! We're celebrating tonight and then I'm heading home tomorrow to see DAISY (and my friends and family...)! My girlfriends and I are going to a Christmas party on Saturday and then Matt and I are exchanging gifts and hanging out on Sunday and Monday because I havent seen him in 3 weeks!

Vet school work never ends and there are a few things I want to get done over the break, but the majority of my time will be spent sleeping and eating. Time to catch up on all of that lost sleep :)

Bye for now and Merry Christmas!

I survived!

Goodbyyyeee first year!

It feels crazy to write that, especially since I remember writing my first blog post when I moved here in September, and that does notttt feel like 8 months ago!

Since my last post we wrote another 6 exams, the dreaded genetics one wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Goodbye forever genetics! It's always been one of my least favourite classes and I took way too many of them in undergrad. On Monday we wrote the intense 3 hour/3 course exam which was basically a marathon, I had to pee halfway through but didn't want to waste 5 minutes so I pushed through!

After we finished our last one on Thursday, my group went out for lunch and then had a night of celebrations. For the first time in who knows how long, I went out 2 nights in a row because the OVC fraternity had a toga party so I obviously had to go! Matt came down for that one and it was a great night. I'll post some pictures below if I can find some tame ones - we may be hard workers, but vet students still know how to party!

Today I packed up my apartment (packing is the worsssttt). I'm looking forward to going home and seeing my friends and family - and Daisy!! I haven't been away from her for this long since I've had her - but I'm not excited at all about having to live at home for 4 months. I'm meant to live on my own! But I will take advantage of not having to pay rent or buy groceries or cook all of my meals :)

I doubt I'll post much over the summer because I want to keep this as a vet school blog, not a super personal one. But I'll probably post some highlights :) Matt and I are planning a tropical vacay of some sort, but other than that I'll be working, volunteering at the vet clinic and doing a whoooole lot of sleeping.

So excited to be 25% of a vet!

Wedding dress fitting? Isn't that my job?

Group 9 aka the best group!

Less than 10 days to go :)

As if it's been 2 weeks since I've posted - I've written 6 exams since then!

It's basically just been a whirlwind of exams, hours in the library, and coffee. But I'm surviving! So far we've had:

- Gross Pathology - looking at diseased tissues from dead animals and describing the lesions
- Anatomy and Histology/Pathology bellringers - back to back! We had a tiring 3.5ish hour stretch of a 60 station anatomy bellringer and then the HistoPath one 15 minutes later. I'm glad we had that combo at the beginning of the exam period because it was definitely one of the most intimidating ones.
- Anatomy Live Animal - not worth much, but we had to identify and explain certain structures on a dog, horse, and cow. It seemed like everyone was pretty flustered by this one, especially after working on cadavers all week for the bellringer - live animal stuff is more intimidating when you have the prof standing there staring at you while you answer! I definitely made up some stuff about nerves and arteries in the horse limb hahah but oh well.
- Anatomy Radiology - yes, anatomy is split into a million exams, but this one went really well considering I had almost no radiology experience coming into vet school. I owe that to our amaaazing radiology prof :) We each got one rad and had to interpret it and then discuss it with an instructor. I got a horse hoof, and thankfully I knew what I was looking at!
- Art of Vet Med - basically ethics and communication..aka a lot of writing...and a lot of BS. Only studying for ~1 hour for a vet school exam and still feeling good about it is a rarity for sure; it was a nice breather before the rest of the exams coming up.

Next up - Immunology and Digestive Phys tomorrow - 110 multiple choice so it'll be long, but they're 2 of my favourite sections so I'm hoping it won't be too bad.
Then we have Genetics the day after, which is worth 70% and is generally terrifying because we've hardly had any time to study for it and the course in general is a mess..but I won't get into that. Needless to say tomorrow will be a full day in the library and lots of stress eating (I already put gummy worms in my backpack).

Next week is the Anatomy (yup, more anatomy), Phys and HistoPath written combined final where we have 3 exam books to finish in 3 hours - thankfully we've already studied a lot of the material by studying for the exams we've already had. Repetition is good! And then we finish with Health Management (the 2.5 days we have before the exam are more than enough to study for it) and Phase 1 will be over!! Just crazy (side note my end-of-exam alcohol is already waiting in my freezer).

Sorry this post was all exams, buuut that's all I'm doing with my life at the moment! Bye for now :)

Goodbye classes!

Wow, can't believe it's already been over a week since I posted last! In that post I was talking about our big practical exam (the OSCE) so I'll go through that first.

We basically had what felt like a scavenger hunt all over OVC. I started in the computer lab doing a multiple choice exam which was a good station to start at because it gave me a few minutes to wake up and get my brain working. Then I changed into my large animal gear and went over to the barn for 7 stations involving horses, cows, sheep, and various bits of info about nutrition, infection control and history/medical records taking. My animals were all (thankfully) cooperative and although the 5 min per station time limit was a little stressful, I survived. Then I had 5 mins to run back to the main building - literally run, in steel-toed boots and coveralls...not the most ideal - and change into my lab coat to start the small animal portion. We had similar stations as the large animal part, just substituting the barn animals for the sweet little teaching beagles :) much more within my comfort zone. Next thing I knew, the 3 hours were up and we were done! Obviously people lost their minds like some people always do during exams (see my rant post from a few weeks ago, I'll spare you my sass in this one), but I felt confident and it was really a moment of "wow, I've learned so much this year". Before September I knew next to nothing about large animals!

That weekend the University of Guelph hosted College Royal, an agricultural fair. The only thing I cared about was the barn because they brought in a bunch of animals - donkeys, bunnies, goats, and mini horses (!!!) to name a few. Matt and I went to check it out for a bit and now I think I need to have a donkey in the future - along with my multiple dogs and potential horse - yes, I have a problem.

Other than classes, nothing much exciting has happened in the past week or so. I went home this past weekend because we had a long one, I got to catch up with my family and friends and also got to go to Matt's improv comedy show - finally, I've had to miss the last few because I've been in a different city!

Matt on the left doing "jazzercise"...improvisation at its finest!

Got to spend some time with this cutie :)

Today was exciting because we officially finished classes!!!!!!! About time, as I mentioned before I was going crazy sitting in class for the past month. Time to get into the exam zone - we have a small test tomorrow and then 4 exams starting a week from now. Bring on the coffee!

Short and sweet

Hi! I don't have much to post right now but I'm kind of procrastinating soo why not?

We just had a 4 day weekend so getting up for class this morning was pretty brutal. Not that I slept all weekend or anything - Friday and Monday were packed with 2 hours of barn practice, shifts at the teaching hospital on campus, and library studying in between. I love productive days :) I feel pretty confident in my large animal handling skills at this point, which is good because we have that big exam on Friday morning.

Ready to examine these cuties!

I made these study guides for all the animals we have to know....yeah, I have no life

I had a nice visit with my best friend Ashley from back home on Sunday, we went out for lunch and had some good catch up talks - mostly about makeup! I don't get to go all out during school because I'm not trying to impress anyone in class, but one of my favourite past times is watching youtube beauty vloggers and then going out and buying way too much makeup...little additional fact about me there! But anyway Ashley is the same way, so it's just another reason why we're best friends :)

Other than studying for that big practical exam on Friday and our pathology test the day before..what am I saying, I'm not doing anything other than that! Today is St Patty's and its the first one in a few years that I haven't been out celebrating - it feels weird, but at the same time that's the sacrifice I have to make now. We'll more than make up for it when finals are over ;)

I think that's it for this little update, I'll talk to you all when I'm another 2 exams down!

Thought I'd separate this post from my last one to avoid it being super long!

I'm just stopping in for a quick update because I won't have time later in the weekend - another Monday morning midterm to study for!

This week we crossed another 2 tests off our to-do list, genetics and pathology. So needless to say, I don't have much exciting to report on. We had a review lab for our big (60%) physical exam evaluation we have in 2 weeks. I'm feeling much more comfortable with examining dogs, cows, horses and sheep :)

Class this week was brutal. Every year during this time I slowly start skipping non-essential classes because it's torture sitting there when you're thinking about all the studying you have to do! But don't worry, I'll only skip very few courses otherwise I'll feel guilty. Only 3 weeks of class left!!

Matt is visiting tomorrow and we're gonna go out for dinner and then watch some House of Cards (obsessssed). So tonight and sunday are gonna be full of studying. Thankfully Monday's test isn't a huge one and its all multiple choice soooo when in doubt, guess! (wonderful advice I know ;))

Daisy is going back to London with matt on Sunday :( I need to start getting into serious study mode and I cant do that at home, and I cant leave her home alone alllll day while I'm in the library. I'll miss cuddling with her in bed and having someone to wake me up in the morning (I can't hit snooze on a dog that needs to pee!) but I think she's getting a bit lonely because she's used to living in a family of 4 and now it's just me and her. I'll have to keep reminding my parents to brush her teeth and make sure they're following her diet - vet student problems!

Anyway I'll stop procrastinating now and get back to work - talk to you all when I'm another exam closer to the end :)

One of my last winter walks with my girl

What's left - I keep this on my desktop so I can cross things off; so satisfying! :)

Rant/Sassy Comments/Life Lessons

Attention ladies and gentleman - this will be my first rant blog! Kinda surprised I haven't had one until now, considering some of the people that drive me crazy at school hahaha

So. It's obviously a stressful time of year, especially for us first years since we're getting ready to go into our first year of crazy finals. But some people are driving me absolutely nuts with their pessimism.

Do I complain about some pointless/confusing stuff that we learn in class? Yes.
Do I complain about less-than-ideal lecturing styles? Yes.
Do I skip some classes because of this? Yes (but only recently - that end of semester trend, oops!)

But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I want to be here and that I can handle it.

I've heard so many people complaining about the amount of work we have to do. Yes, we have 14 more assessments to go until the end of the year (eek!). But starting on March 30th we're done classes and we can set up camp in the library. I came from a university (not Guelph) that had next to no animal-specific courses. I've never learned any animal anatomy and anything clinical has come from my vet-related work and volunteering experiences. After applying twice to OVC and just narrowly getting in the second time, I'll admit I was a bit worried that I would come into this with no relevant background education and lower intelligence than the majority of the class. But instead I've shown myself that I have it within me to do this. I've learned all of anatomy from scratch and it's one of my favourite courses. It's actually amazing the amount of material we have learned, and my friends and family back home have even noticed it.

There are days where I wonder why I'm learning about how to critique journal articles, but then I go to the barn and learn how to do a physical exam on a horse and I remember why I'm here. OVC has a 97% NAVLE (vet licensing exam) pass rate and the curriculum wouldn't still exist if it wasn't successful. We just have to get past first year, which is known for teaching all of those sometimes boring but also essential things - cardiology, neurology, anatomy, genetics...

As for exam stress, I understand that there are people with learning/test-taking issues as well as mental health concerns and that is fine. It's the people that complain 24/7 and honestly don't seem to want to be here that bother me. Go home.

If I've learned one life lesson during my almost 7 months here, it's that professional programs are only successful if you have that internal desire to learn. I have friends in master's programs that have told me you'll hate your life if you're not researching something you're interested in, and I can definitely understand that now.

I hate girls that live by quotes (live your own lives instead of by someone else's words), but the only quote that I love is "dreams don't work unless you do". Sit down, shut up, and study.

I've had times in undergrad where I felt 100x more stressed than I am now, because back then it was all about getting the marks to get into vet school. I can't let myself not do well now (hello Type A personality), but there's much less pressure. I'm just going to live in the library and study the way I have been all year - taking it one test at a time and savouring those moments that make me realize I'm actually on my way to becoming what I've wanted to be for as long as I can remember.

14 more tests until I'm 25% of a vet!

The tattoo I got when I got into vet school :)

Crunch time!

Just chillin'

Hey everyone! Long time no post, but last week was reading week so I didn't have much of an update. The only fun thing we did in the last week before break was a sheep handling lab. We got to practice exams on some adorable fluffy lambs, and also did "sheep tipping" - a restraint technique that relaxes the sheep while looking hilarious. We can't take pictures of teaching animals so I took one from Google because they look too funny not to share!














cutie pie

My week off was great but went way too fast, of course. I spent lots of time with friends, slept in almost every day, worked a few shifts (hello much needed money!) and took advantage of having Matt back in the same city as me. There was a girl's night complete with pajamas and wine, a get together to meet another friend's new puppy (they also have a cat - a vet student's perfect situation), and a joint birthday party for a few people with February birthdays (myself included). It was a much needed week to unwind although I did go to the library once, because I had a list of things to do that I had been putting off until the break.



some of my London best friends :)



The ride back to Guelph with my handsome fiancé..

Last night was spring fling, a formal social event that was put together for our class. It was nice to dress up and see everyone out of their usual sweatpants and hoodies :)

This Saturday are the mock MMIs which I'm helping out with - after 2 years of interviewing for OVC I'm ready to be on the other side of the table and scare some potential students (just kidding...........not really though, I have a really good resting bitch face ;) )

Other than that, I'm going to be studying for the foreseeable future because we have 15 tests/quizzes/exams in the next 8 weeks. 2/week doesn't sound bad, but it's the fact that there's no more breaks that makes it a little overwhelming. Good thing I have a healthy stash of coffee in my kitchen!

That's all for now, my next few posts will probably consist of "hi I'm studying, bye" - can't wait to be able to post "IM DONE FIRST YEAR!"