Diary of a Vet Student

Ahhh wasn't pancake day so gooooood?! Four lovely spongey American pancakes with melted chocolate and golden syrup. Yup. Definetly not for the faint hearted, but hey we live in Scotland and need to build up our insulation.

Yesterday I did an animal husbandary practical, which was really good. It was horse dentistry. We did a bit on this in 1st year, but didn't really get to look at real live horses (as is often the case). We just sat on the stable floor ageing sets of teeth from dead horses. That was Ok but yesterday we got to age four live horses (oh Wow). It really gave me more confidence, because up until then I thought that I'd never be able to age a live horse. Now the next time I go to help out at the stables back at home I'm going to age all the ponies. I'm sure they'll love it. We also got to look at the rasps and tools used to remove teeth. I'm a bit of a horse mad girly so I just found the whole thing really worthwhile.

This weekend there is a course at the vet school for real professional vets (like wot I will be one day). It's all about imaging in the pregnant mare, so it would be quite a good thing for me to go to have a look at, because I'm doing work experience at the National Stud this Easter.

Tonight is the Vet school Stars in Their Eyes Event. This is run by third years to raise money. The idea is that every year enters a group or solo singer. It can be quite painful and will thus probably involve drinking large quantities of alcohol, which I'm trying to avoid right now as the exams are getting closer. However it is very hard to resist double vodkas at £1.50. Ooooooawh. Grrr!

Ok better get going. We're doing renal physiology this morning. There are fewer lectures today as some people are on strike because of top up fees. Top of Fees are absolutely rubbishimo. That's what i have to say on the matter. I was reading that they will ultimately limit the availability of veterinary science to people with lots of wonga and that's bad, because the profession should be driven by people from a range of social and financial backgrounds. Its probably really worth looking into how top of fees will effect you if your planning on coming to vet school soon.

It's pancake day everyone! Hope you've got your ingredients. We're making American pancakes with chocolate filling later - yum!

I had a really good studying weekend. Friday was football night and I discovered I am crap at playing defense, but less crap than I am at playing foward. Yesssss! Football would be no fun if I was any good at it! I spent most of Saturday catching up with anatomy notes and studying animal husbanday, which works quite well if you lie down and listen to the radio at the same time. I know all about beef subsidy schemes now and about Autumn/ Spring calving. This short course in beef production that we are doing at the moment is really the first time we've strayed away from studying dairy production. Most of 1st and 2nd year cow stuff is focused on dairy.

Yesterday I had a lab practical to do for biomolecular science. We were testing for concentration of progesterone in cow's milk using Enzyme Linked Immuno Assay. Basically you can tell if the cow is pregnant at 21days after AI if the progesterone in her milk is elevated. Marvellous. Normally this takes an afternoon and then you get a worksheet to hand in. The worksheet gets marked, but it counts very little towards the course. Really it's just worth doing well so that you understand it. At Glasgow your mark for 2nd and first year is really based on the marks you get in the end-of-term exams and the professional exam at the end of each year. There is very little course work (just one main piece each in 1st and 2nd year both in the form a presentation plus essay). There are good and bad sides to this. the good side is you have more time to learn the stuff and to read around your subject. I really like that. The bad side is that you miss out on getting feedback about how well you're learning until the end-of-term at the exams, because you don't get any essays marked. That's not so much of a worry if you can be bothered to go to lecturers after the end-of-term exam results to discuss where you went wrong. Then hopefully you'll get it right for the professional exams.

Moving on.....Today I've got lectures in the histology of the urinary passages and more physiology (probably more on sex - grrrrrrrrrreat). I've also got a gross (ie large not disgusting, but it probably will be a bit grim) demonstration on urinary anatomy, but no dissection today. Instead of dissection I'm going to book a flight to Kathmandu. As part of Student Volunteers I'm doing aid work there this Summer. Woohoo. Exciting!

End of Tuesday

Feeling a bit warmer today, thank goodness.

Anyway, I can't believe tis Friday already. I did quite a bit of work last night. Big up me! Had to lock the door of the flat to stop people coming in and dragging me off to the Union. But hey, look who's laughing now! I'm soba and headache-free, whilst my mates are in bed or asleep in their lectures.

It's animal husbandary day. This morning is beef production. I really like these lectures as the guy lets you kmow what's going on in the industry at the moment. I'm really going to make an effort to learn this stuff as I sometimes feel really ignorant when I do work experience. I often end up blagging my way through conversations with farmers. We're also doing small animal nutrition. There's actually quite a number of ways to wrongly feed a dog.

My flat mate has gone to Oslo. This isn't a permanent thing. She's gone with The International Veterinary Student Association. You automatically become a member as a vet student. The association sets up exchanges between vet students from all over the place. It's a dirt cheap way to travel. Hence my lovely flat mate got herself a £50 flight to Oslo and won't be back for 5 days. I'm really missing her, because she's the one that normally makes my porridge each morning as I seem to be completely lacking in porridge skills.

This weekend I'm planning on getting some studying done and keeping soba. I might go out on Saturday as part of my Student Volunteer thing. I've got to raise £450 to go to Nepal this Summer and we might be having a raffle towards this on Saturday night. Should be fun.

Okee dokee off I go again. ah me....

I can't believe the vet ball is over dude! All the build up, the excitement - it's all done and dusted. It was aaaamazing. I'd say it's worth trying to get into Glasgow vet school specifically for the vet ball, although this might not be a good thing to mention in your interview. My sister came up for the weekend and Saturday day time was taken up completely with hair and make-up preparations. We worked out we must have danced consistantly for 5 hours in one fashion or another from kayleigh dancing to mad stampeding during the jamaican drums and then finally drunken schamoozying at the very end. The night would not have been complete a trip on the number 40 bus, which allegedly goes though Anniesland (my place), but actually took us nowhere near.

As a consequence of the vet ball, although I got up bright and early on Sunday, Sunday was not a good day for working. Hence reallity and work came flooding back on Monday morning when my sister left. I got a serious case of Monday Blues aided by 5 hours of lectures. Ahhh such is the life.

Studying is pretty good and varied at the moment. We're doing a biotechnology topic in Biomolecular science. Our tutor is a researcher in the field. It's great to hear his opinions of transgenics and cloning. He's also carried out a lot of the lab work that practising vets relie on to make diagnosises (sorry I know that's spelt spectacularly wrongly). We're also doing stuff on immunodiagnostics so we're learning about how pregnancy tests work and how lab tests can detect certain antibodies in blood plasma. None of this was very comforting to me on Monday morning, but you can see it is really very exciting stuff. I'm actually looking forward to getting it locked in my head over the next few days.

On the anatomy front there is light at the end of the "male reproduction tunnel". We started the renal system on Monday. Today is the final "mopping up" of the male reproduction stuff and it's going to be quite a different day for an anatomy day. We've got turorials later this morning, instead of a practical demonstration and dissection. We're going to be in small group rotations looking at ultrasound and then annalysing semen samples in the histology lab. We've also just had one of those tongue-in-cheek lectures about artificial vaginas and semen collection from bulls!

Ok so off I go to study more sperm. Hopefully it will be warm in the labs. Jeepers Creepers this country is cold today and the vet school seems to have a massive heeting lackingness.

I really am a complete moron. My mate has just driven me all the way down to the main university from our flats so that we could go swimming. I got to the swimming pool, started getting changed and reallised I didn't have my swimming costume. Shampoo - yes, conditioner- yes, moisturiser - yes, goggles- yes, towel - yes, swimming kit- big fat stupid no! What an eeeediot. Never mind. Look on the bright side I came to write my diary entry whilst I wait for my slightly digruntled mate to swim off her anger in the pool.

Testicles testicles testicles. It's never ending. Today we were learning about the histology of the testes. This is apparently very important when it comes to clinical cases. That really makes a change, because normally histology seems a little irrelevant to me. It's just not as meaty and intersting as the gross anatomy. We also watched some "practical" videos today about the mating of dogs. Apart from looking like an extremely painful business it's actually very technical and the sort of thing we might not get to experience first hand (you know what I mean) so I'm glad we saw it.

On Tuesday night we had a "flat family" meal in honour of my friend who was visiting from Newcastle. The pudding was chocolate testacles made by my lovely flat mate. Of course she had included all the various layers. The parenchyma was a mass of Mars bar crispy. The Tunica albuginea was represented by a thick layer of melted white chocolate, which was encompassed (as in the real life specimen) by the tunica vaginalis - layer of dark chocolate. MMMMMMmmmmmm. Maybe the learning of anatomy is taking on a whole new form. Perhaps we could all learn a great deal faster if we always made edible versions of whatever we're studying. Now there's a thought.

Moving back to reallity. I'm feeling a little less stressed about work now. I had a day off yesterday and managed to rouse myself at 9.30am, despite getting in at 4am the night before with my rowdy Newcastle contingency. Luckily I managed to get quite a bit of work done. I worked mainly on the male reproductive anatomy I'd fallen a bit behind on. When you learn anatomy it's really just about studying diagrams and getting yourself orientated with the way everything is positioned. The more diagrams you look at the better you remember. I have actually written all over my text book diagrams. Coloring is also very useful for making things clearer and it's quite good fun too.

Tonight I'm planning a mammoth last minute study session before the weekend. This weekend will be "all systems go" towards vet ball preparation. Everone is very excited indeedy.

Right better stop writing there, must be nearly time to face my "swimming buddy" again.

I've just realised that this term we've really done nothing but reproduction in physiology and anatomy. Pretty soon I'm going to have willies and testicles and ovaries coming out of my ears! Today we started something quite interesting in physiology: sexula differentiation. THis is is about the processes that decide whether or not you're going to be female or male. I bet it will get quite fascinating later on.

I'm absolutely nackered. My Mum and Dad came over at the weekend and all that noshing and pampering and spoiling has really worn me out. I didn't do any work either and so I've been worrying about catching up. That's tiring too. Poor oh poor oh poor oh me. It really annoys me when I spend ages doing stuff and don't get very far, like I did last night. I got myself in a frenzy over descending testicles and gonad embryology. Grrrrrrr. Grrrrrrr. grrrrrrr

My flatmate and I have invested in a "disgo". It's great you just plug it into the back of the computer and you can download all your lectures onto it. It's cheeper than using CDs in the long run as you call delete the lectures from the Disgo once you've finnished working on them. Then you can copy some more on. Thus you don't need to keep buying CDs. You also don't need a CD writer to copy the lectures, which is great as there's only one (crap) one at the vet school.

I've started to learn Nepali for when I go to Nepal with "Student Volunteers Abroad" this Summer. We had a lesson at 6pm last night so I stayed after lectures at the main Uni from 2pm to 5.50pm in the library. The lesson was really good and even though it took a couple of hours out of study time I spent some quality hours in the library. This is me justifying time away from studying, hmmm not good. Anyway sometimes I think it's not how much you study, but how efficiently. That's something I've got to work on...developing some efficient studying skills. Hmmmmm think I've said that before.

My lovely mate is coming from Newcastle tonight and we're gonna "do Glasgow" so will have to pospone the study until Wednesday.

I like Friday animal husbandary lectures. They're really............peaceful. This morning we've learnt about goats and deer. You often get lectures in animal husbandary, which just touch on a subject that you think you might like to look more deeply into in your own time. Goats are really interesting. Our lecturer reckons their a cross between a cow and a sheep, but I went to visit a goat farm last Summer and I reckon they're more like sheep X dogs, because they like cuddles more than cows. I didn't realise how big the fibre industry was for goats either (fibre as in woolly cashmere jumpers).

Later on this morning we have horse nutrition. I've always had horses and think I know about as much as the average "horsey" person, but at vet school you learn all the technical bits that you just can't learn "on the yard". For example, where I help out, feeding is an absolute art, but it's done by eye and by someone who just has a "really good feel" for what they're doing because she's fed so many horses in all kinds of conditions. You can learn a lot from that sort of person, but sometimes it's good to get the pure black and white basic facts and that can only really be done at vet school or on an agricultural course.

I saw a monkey fetus in the gross anatomy demonstration yesterday. It was part of an amazing demonstation of all kinds of fetuse and their different placentas. Placentas are different across the species. We get told that dogs are epithelio chorial, zonary, non-deciduate, which makes you want to run a mile. It becomes so much clearer when you can see it in 3D.

We've moved onto the male reproductive tract in anatomy lectures now. I must admit my dreams are quite "willy- orientated" at the moment. Disturbingly the specimens in my dreams are not attached to their owners and have different layers dissected back so that I can pinpoint the spermatic cord and deferent duct. Hmm lurvely.

That reminds me it's valentine's day soon. Better buy my valentines vet ball ticket.

I managed to book two weeks lambing in Yorkshire this Easter. They've got 1250 ewes due from 30th March and I'm going on 4th April so it should be good fun. Reall pleased I got the placement.

On the social scene I have been soba for 1 week and 1 day now. This is despite going out twice this week. I'm prepearing for next week's onslaught. My friend from Newcastle is coming to stay on Tuesday and her bloke works in an alcohol shop. She's also bringing choc cake and I have unfinnished business with my own bottle of vodka. What a triple whammy!

This weekend my parents are coming to stay and I can't wait. They're also bringing chocolate cake.

Not a right lot has happened to me in the last four or five days or so. I went to the union last Thursday night for the Vet challenge. This turned out to involve lots of shaving foam, amazing displays of sexual positions in a twisted version of musical staues and three nuddy men (men with no clothes). Enough said I think. Then came the weekend and it was bliss. I stayed in nearly the whole weekend. My flat mate and I detoxed and kept warm whilst the snow whistled around ouside. I got quite a lot of work done and lost that dizzy haze that's been following me for some time now!

I'm feeling really excited about arranging some work experience. You need to do 12 weeks in 1st and 2nd year. 2 weeks dairy, 2 weeks lambing, 2 weeks horses, 2 weeks intensive (pigs or poultry) and 4 weeks optional. I've nearly done it all, but I think it's important to get as much hand-on experience as possible. I'm going to the National Stud in New Market this Easter. It's been planned for about a year and I'm really excited about it. I'd also like to get some lambing done, although I'd better get organising that pretty sharpish. I'll go up to the animal husbandary notice board and see if there's any jobs advertised. You can get paid for lambing, which is great. I got £300 for 2 weeks last year. You have to be prepared to stay with your lambing family, which is usually OK.

Preparations are in earnist now for the vet ball. I am trying so hard not to drink and to eat healthily for the next week or so. I must admit the "eat all you want and slap on a pile of make-up" approach is rather tempting, but I have will power. I shall go to the ball as a beauty, really.

We had a good tutorial yesterday, although I'm feeling a bit ashamed for not saying anything. Tutorials can always be a bit gruelling, because you're in a smallish group with a tutor ad nobody wants to answer any questions let alone ask any questions about stuff they don't understand. The tutor we had yesterday had a really good approach. Most of the old croanies just set you question and after 5 or 10 minutes of trying to pump the answers out of everyone they give the answers to you, which is neee good. Yesterday the guy some how managed to get us to ask him questions and we really learnt. It was great. So if you're ever in a tutorial give it a chance and try to speak up. I must admit I was a big lazy git yesterday and let the others ask the questions for me. You feel better if you get involved.

We're studying lactation and the good-old mammary glands in physiology and anatomy. I feel so lucky to be able to learn this stuff (now that I'm not hungover). It's pure genius. We have a very messy practical in anatomy this afternoon. Not sure what we're dissecting, but I guess it's pretty big and bulbous and will spill out lots of gunk when we cut into it. Gggggrrrrrrrrrrreat.

I went to a house party last night. Stayed good and soba, just had a nice bit of chat with some of the vets in my year. We were reminissing (spelt wrongly, but you know what I mean) on first year. We decided that second year is the best, because we've all got to know one another better. In first year the year is divided a bit into clans of people from separate halls. Now that we're all in flats we mingle. Wooohoo! We have house parties too. Woohoo wa ho! You also get to meet other peiople from other years more. Not that 1st year isn't really great too of course. Anyway....

Double dash and darn it, Ive forgotten my wellies for that practical.