Diary of a Vet Student

Went out for lovely massive meal with my lovely (not so massive) flatmates last night. having said this we all felt pretty massive after engulfing a banquette that even the 7foot waiter seemed pretty impressed about! feeling a little queezy this morning.

Good job it's worm day then! Worms don't make you feel sick (unless there's one inside you, which I thought there was when i was in Nepal). Today it is gastrointestinal worms of sheep. We did cattle last week. I have another lecture after this Blog. Then we'll go to the lab and study gross specimens and eggs under the microscope.

Monday was more smelly bacteria and pathology - chronic inflammation. Under the microscope again. We're getting quite good at dying our bacteria. Well we're good at doing the dying as in we cn colour the bacteria. Sometimes the results aren't very good at giving us a diagnosis though! It definitely takes practise.

Finally we got thrashed in our footi match on Sunday. It was a bit messy actually and a few of the other team threatenned to "smack us if we did it again". not sure what "it" was but the other women were a lot beafier than us and 10 years older so we didn't argue.

The lovely Wednesday and Thursday of me:

On Wednesday I went to a welfare symposium. This was organised by one of our rugby players and involved three talks from the NFU, a humane slaughter association and a charity campaigning for compassionate farming. I thought it was really good to see three different views on how to improve welfare in farming and reminded me of some of the reasons I want to be a vet. It also made me think how there always has to be such a careful compromise between the need to maintain economic production and the need to maintain a standard of welfare. It's also really difficult to define what that standard should be and even more dfifficult to implement the standards. The presentations pointed out that regulations on farm practises in the Uk aren't enough. This only raises the costs of production in the Uk so that British consumers buy cheaper animal products imported from countries where the bans and regulation aren't implemented.

I'm seriously considering doing an intercalated degree at Bristol. This means taking a year out and taking part in quite a bit more hard work and a research project. After the year Id come back to bonny Glasgow and continue in 4th year. Applications don't start until next term, but it's very exciting because I'll be moving to a new place and studying something I'm really interested in (animal behaviour and welfare). Anyway tis early days yet, but definitely something for me to chew on for the time being.

Yesterday we had a pathology multiple choice exam. this counts for around 2% of the final mark, but it was a good idea for us to see how well we're understanding the subject. It went OK, but I lost 3 marks straight away for not knowing which famous scientists were linked to which famous discoveries(!?!?)

Last night I went out for wine and chocolate cake with some mates. Then came back to continue my "Sex in the City" project. I am saving the hard core clubbing for next week. Now that I am a mature (and completely skint) 20 year old I have to take it easy, don't you know.

We have just had a parasite lecture and I'm gutted, because it was quite complicated and I thought that parasitology was supposed to be the "sanctuary subject". This is the one you do on hang-over days. ooooohh.

I have realised that at the mo we are spending quite a large proportion of our lives smearing poo onto a variety of different media. This isn't for fun of course (although sometimes I think my flatmate finds it a little too satisfying). It is for growing bacteria. We are having to learn about so many different species of bacteria and parasites . It's a bit worrying. Are they going to present us with an exam describing the different characteristics of a bacteria, which we have to name? I think this is exactly their cunning plan. eeek.

Anyway. I'm gutted because on Friday the guys at the Indian take away asked me if I was a wrestler and suggested that my teeth were wonkey. I laughed but I don't think they were joking. They looked pretty serious and almost pityful. Hmmm.

I'm thinking of going to a welfare symposium this afternoon. Not really because of the free buffet lunch (although this is a prominant factor in my decsision to go), but it looks quite interesting with talks about welfare in the slaughter house and stuff.

Ok bye.

I love Fridays. We only have 3 hours and you can roll in at 10.30, which is perfect for maximising Thurday nights in town. Sadly this week i maximised my Wednesday night by drinking all the wine I could lay my hands on and stuffing my face full of Spaninsh tapas with a few mates. Even more sadly, we have to start at 9am on Thursday. Bla. And it's pharmacology which is a bit mind-mangling. We were looking at the autonomic nervous system and the effects of different drugs. Tad confusing especially when you're staring at the lecture through a wine enduced blur. It was good wine though and I have been over my notes and they make sense now in the cool light of Friday morning.

I am going to spend this afternoon doing a computer aided learning programme for pharmacology. It is all about a set of experiments that have been done on a rat. You simulate them on the computer. I've had a go already and it seems fairly straight forward, but it's going to be tough drawing myself away from the cup of tea that is waiting to be made and drunk in my cosy flat. Ah well, when needs must... and they must. We'll have to fill in a multi choice exam type thing on it which counts towards 3.5% of the final grade. There are lots of little things like this and it's so tempting to just ignore them and think, "och it's only 3.5%", but apparently people have failed 3rd year by "having this dreadful attitude".

We had a pathology post mortem demo yesterday. They showed us how to take sample from bodies and package them safely to be sent to a lab for annalysis. I can't believe we're learning about this stuff now!


This weekend I'm working at the Indian and beginning my pre-Xmas quest. I will have to alternate studying with the work I must do on my latest project, namely "Sex in The City, series 1 - The box set". Sure it can be done. half an hour study - couple of episodes - half and hour study. Grand.

Hello. I expect you're all dying for another fantastic episode of vet school adventures as you've had to wait since last Friday. Well here it is. lucky lucky you eh?

Ok sorry. Anyway. The weekend was lots more comforting than usual because my downstairs-flat flatmate had an allergic (and unfortuantely slightly annoying - but I didn't say that) friend over to stay. That meant they couldn't look after their cat, Mouse. So we had to keep her in our upstairs flat. It was so nice to have an animal (alive and kicking with no parasites/intestinal necrosis/staphylococci infestions) to look after us and wake us up in the morning. Ahhhh.

The practicals are continuing. Yesterday was a pretty interesting pathology practical. Looking at more inflammed specimens under the microscope. I'm still often finding it difficult to make any sense at all of a lot of what I see, which is alarming. Very alarming, what if someone hands me a slide in practise and says - what's wrong with that? I won't even know where to start at the moment. I have to ask the demonstrators the most basic questions, like "Is that a blood vessel" or "How do you know it's the liver we're looking at?", when we're suppposed to be looking for basophillic nuclear inclusions in hepatocytes. Really hoping it will come with hard work and dedication otherwise I haven't a leg to stand on.

There is going to be a "half way" test in pathology next Thursday. This is a good thing as it means we don't have a big mambo-jumbo-all guns-blazing test to do at the end of term. instead we'll have 2 half tests and an essay (I think) and a class work book to hand in.

I started a part time job last Friday. It's only 1 night a week, but will help to pay for my expensive lifestyle. It's at an Indian restaurant and has the additional perk of a free Indian every Friday. Fantastic. What more could a girl want?

Flippin heck it's cold in here. I don't know why they have to switch the air conditioning on. this is Scotland for goodness sake and it's pratically winter.

Anyway. The week has been pretty full of work. Our subjects are really interesting, but I'm beginning to realise that i couldn't have done this if I didn't enjoy science. We have at least 3 to 4 labs a week and they're always about 2 hours long.I always tried to avoid chemistry praticals at school and usually had to fake my results (doesn't everyone) but here I'm definitely having to convince my self to actually do it.

It's not always pleasant either. On Tuesday we had to culture some bacteria and this meant we had to spread some faeces on a plate of agar. then on thursday we had to smell our cultures. Apparently you an begin to identify the bacteria in this way, but I think somebody was having a laugh.

Yesterday we had our first prost mortem demonstration. Our pathology teacher is amazing. he knows so much. They were examining a dead dog and a dead pig. It was fascinating the way he went so quickly through the bodies to discover what they'd died from. They were showing us their technique and it gave us the chance to see pathological processes happening. But oh my good gally did it smell! Oh yes it did my good gally.

Anyway. Back to serious business.Iwent out last night dressed as a cow girl. Freshers welcome do you see. It got a bit messy actually and ended up with my mate breaking the stairs in our rather posh block of flats ( when I say posh I mean there isn't normally puke on the floor in the stair well).

Ok. Better go. this weekend I'm starting my new job as a waitress and studying and playing football.

Hello. I'm baaaack! I spent the summer in Nepal doing aid work with Student Volenteers Abroad and running away from the gorilla paramilitary group currently trying to take over the country. It was one of the best things I've ever done in my life (the aid work andI guess the running away was pretty important too), but nothing to do with veterinary science so i'll stop there. I was also a photocopy technician for one week at the end of my Nepal adventures before returning here. And let me tell you how jolly glad I am that I spent 40 hours of my last week earning some wonga. Cor blimey the books are expensive this year! £70 for a set of pathology notes, which thankfully you can download free of charge. then it's £20 to £80 for the average text book in each of the 4 subjects, unless you want to go wild and splash out on a gigantic £160 chronice of parasitology. Ooooh nnnoooooooooo! It's not all bad news though.I have a student loan and Safeways are always doing special offers on tins of baked beans.

There was the usual chaos associated with time tables at the start of term, but apart from that the vetschool has undergone a few really good changes and I'm really pleased about that! There is a new microscope lab, which is very swish. Then there's a new teaching block so you know where to go to moan and to get advice. The new small animal hospital is also being built soon. that will be amazing. There's also lots of other construction going on that looks marvellous darling.

Can't believe we're in third year now. Up until last Tuesday we didn't really know what the names of our subjects were. I've now discovered that they are parasitology (worms - we studyed worm penises last week - I don't believe it!), pharmacology (drugs and how they work), microbiology (bacteria, viruses and fungi) and pathology (basically how things die, so lots of post mortems - great!). It all sounded a bit dry at first and that list is probably enough to put a few people off veterinary science, but actually it's turning out to be really interesting and I'm enjoying it again. The work load is going to be massive I think and so we're all bracing ourselves. Although there's not many assignments to do there are a few more than 1st and 2nd year (which had about 2 or 3!). As usual passing the professional exam at the end of the year and the class exams at the end of each term are going to be the major mama obstacles and there's going to be a lot to learn.

Anyway there's the usual array of vet school entertainments to look forward to to provide a decent enough distraction at least for the first half of the term. There's a cow girl night and yes, I've already been shopping (as i said there's the loan and I WILL get a job). Hee hee.

Ps It's cats and dogs here I think it will probably rain every day until March.