I had only heard horrible things about this year so I was expecting the worst, but things are actually going really well so far. For my non-vet student friends, here is our schedule for this semester:
General Pathology
Parasitology
Pharmacology
Bacteriology & Mycology
Cross Course Integration 3
Camelid Medicine
20 credits total, class 5 days a week, tests virtually every week of the semester (a few weeks off here and there, this being one of them!). Needless to say it's intense. We're learning how describe abnormal tissues in pathology. Not my favorite subject but a very important one! It feels like necrosis is the answer to everything...throw in some words like "liquefactive" and "multifocal nodular" and you're good to go...if only it were that easy :/ In parasitology we're learning the various parasites an animal can get in addition to the diseases they cause, their life cycles, clinical signs associated with them, as well as how to diagnose and treat them. I have gotten WAY more familiar with ticks than I have ever wanted to be. Such gross creatures. Pharmacology is my favorite class right now, I find it really fascinating how drugs work in the body! Bacteriology is just...bacteria. Kind of bland but it's a ton of information. Of course every type of bacteria just HAS to cause a different disease in every species. It's hard to remember which bacteria causes what disease in a pig, cow, horse, dog, even humans. So much variation! I'm loving my camelid medicine course though. The lecture is all online and we have lab once a week. So far we've learned how to handle, restrain, and do some husbandry activities on the alpaca herd at the school. I got spit on a couple of times...all part of the learning process I suppose? Haha you can hear them regurgitating and hocking up their stomach contents and getting ready to spew it on your face. It is fantastic. We've also learned how to place jugular catheters - not an easy process on an alpaca - and how to obtain CSF by doing a spinal tap. Last week we learned all about breeding alpacas and yes...even watched them mate. It was slightly disturbing; look up a video on alpaca's mating and you will get why!! Haha so anyway, that's this semester. I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit. I wanted to learn all of this stuff throughout five years of undergrad and now that I'm finally able to I'm loving it :) We've also gotten some fun privileges this semester like a ton of free products to try from different pharmaceutical companies, a fantastic heartworm lab, and free lunch talks from drug reps. There's a KVMA conference coming up next month I'm planning on going to, and I'll be helping with surgery at the local animal shelter next month as well. Lots of fun things!
We'll see how I feel after the next six weeks...probably will feel like a zombie. We have exams every week, sometimes two a week, until (a much needed) Thanksgiving break. Hoping I will survive it and be able to keep exercise and at least a TINY amount of social life in the mix!
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