Diary of a Vet Student

Coooo I haven't been this cold since my first sheep practical in 1st year! I've just got back from a dairy farm trip. It was great to chat to the farmers about their "coos", but blimey Charlie it's cold! We were there for about 3 hours asking questions and looking at the buildings and silage and feed. They feed a complete ration to all the cows regardless of their stage of lactation. I was quite interested in that as some farms split the cows up according to their lactation stage and feed them separately. This farm reckonned the cows ,match their own intakes to their output. It was a very successful farm so they seem to have the right idea!

Anyway. That's that. Now we've just got a week of exams and then it's home time. Yippee! I'm just home for a total of 4 days this holiday. I'm just going to pop back inbetween work experience placements to pick up my Easter eggs! Can't wait to see my family and do my placements. I'm doing 2 weeks at the National Stud in Newmarket, which should be amazing as they're at the forefront of thoroughbred breeding. I managed to get in there by writing a letter a year ago. It's good to try to get some really good placements by planning in advance. Most places will take you on once they know you're a vet student. It's also important to make sure you get loads of basic work type placements too. Hence I'm going to do 2 weeks lambing after the NS before driving straight back to Glasgow.

This week has been pretty study-packed. It's all good and I'm feeling quite relaxed about the exams. I'll just give it my jolly-ho bestest shot.

I've also been trying to learn Nepali this week, ready for my summer volunteer placement. My flatmate's getting a bit sick of it now though, as all I can ask her is "what is your name?" and "how are you?" and "what is this object?". I keep telling her she should be patient and I have to practise. Ha. I made her fish, mash potato and mushy peas to make up for it last night. Lucky her, hey? Bet you wish you lived with me.

Anyway off I go.

Anyway

It's that time again! Oh yes folks let the chocolate binging begin because it's exam season!

I've just had a mock oral for anatomy. It was really lovely actually and doesn't count for anything. They're trying to prepare us for our final professional exams next term. Next term we'll have a practical paper, a written paper and an oral for anatomy and we'll be examined on 1st and 2nd year. This term we just have the practical and written papers for the gross anatomy we've covered this term. Phew.

So what exams have I got next week? Monday starts off with a bang. There's anatomy-written in the morning followed by biomolecular science in the afternoon. Then along comes Tuesday and with it we'll have a fabdabbydozey anatomy practical. Wednesday starts off nice and breezy with a physiology oral. Roaring through to Thurday and a happy-go-lucky Histology exam. Friday's grand finalee (and they've really saved the best til last here) is animal husbandary.

So this week I'm planning a lot of studying. Surprisingly enough I really don't mind as everythng we've done this term has been great and I don't mind learning it at all. Good job eh? I think the workload is also slightly less than last term and I 've got better with the old studying skills. So I'm feeling quite chippa about it all really. I just can't believe this term's nearly over!

This week I haven't really got any lectures. Yesterday was a full day down at the main uni but now I have nothing but another mock oral on Thursday (anatomy again, they're letting us try out a different examiner) and a trip to a beef farm on Friday. I think they're trying to give us a pre-exam treat with the latter (yippee fresh air and live animals).

Alrighty I'm getting back to my revision schedule now. Cheeerio!

Well I got in at 4am this morning following a fairly hairy session in the Union. I now feel as though a large badger has farted in my mouth so be prepared for some pretty horrendous spelling mistakes.

Yesterday was small furry animal day. We covered all the anatomy and physiology particular to gerbils, hamsters, rabbits, rats etc. This is another aspect of the course that isn't covered in masses of detail so its up to you to read up on it if you're interested. We also had a demonstration session, which turned into a bit of a "bring your pets to school session". It made me realise how much knowledge you could really gain from keeping one of these small furries. They really are amazing just because of the way they're so well adapted to coping with their small size and short life cycle.

I'm really enjoying my studying at the moment because I'm finding everything we're looking at so interesting,. It's great when you find yourself wanting to read around your subjects. I've also started to go to more of the clinical club talks. I went to another one last night. It was on corrective shoeing. There's a lot you can do with a shoe (I made that up myself). It seems to me that so many of the lameness cases we see in horses stem from problems in the back or problems in the hoof. Problems in these areas set up the problems that we find in other areas of the limb. For example the uneven weight distribution on the hoof leads to uneven stress on the tendon and thus tendon problems. There really are so many problems to do with horse conformation that can be elleviated by good farriery. If you ever get the chance to go on work experience with a really good farrier go for it. It's so interesting how very complex problems can be solved so simply through the right shoeing.

Today we had a lecture from a guest speaker from the cattle breeding company "Genus". They supply semen to dairy and beef producers. They also do a lot of other stuff like embryo transfer. They're doing alsorts to manipulate cattle genetics to improve production. Although this isn't very comforting when you feel like you're about to chuck out the contents of your stomach. I'm a disgrace, I know.

Until next week.....

Today we're doing reptiles and amphibians and it's such fun! Goody goody gum drops. One of our anatomy lectures is really into his reptiles and stuff. He's got loads of slides that we've been looking at. Of course we hardly do anything at all on reptiles and amphibians. They are very different to other species and there's a lot of stuff you can do to damage them just through ignorance. Later today we get to handle the reptiles at the vet school! Wow, real live animals! What a treat! I don't like the thought of having to refer all my reptile cases, especially as so many people keep reptiles as pets. The tutoror today even suggested that we should cut down on the amount of food-animal stuff we do, in favour of reptiles and amphibians. This is because some of us (in small animal practice) are more likely to encounter them than cows and chickens. Hmm... worth a thought me thinks.


Last night I went to a Clinical Club lecture. This is a vet school "out of hours" group that gets different speakers in each week to talk about (ba da ba da...) clinical stuff. Last night was collic surgery in foals, which was very interesting. You can take bits of intestines out and put them in all over the place. We also learnt how important the use of ultrasound is in assessing whether surgery is necessary.

Last night talks were also given on The British Veterinary Association (BVA). This is apparently our trade Union (they have a web site - do a web search if you're interested). They play loads of roles like offering us insurance for our extra mural studies. They're main role is to do with shaping the profession. The guy was talking about lots of recent changes and the effect they might have. Changes like: increasing numbers of females, younger vets wanting more time and more flexibility and thus perhaps cutting back on "night duties" etc, diminishing large animal practice, top up fees. The're main message was that they want us to think about where we want our profession to go as apposed to how we want our individual careers to go.

We also got a talk from the International Veterinary Students Association. This is ace, because through this you can go abroad and see practice and you can go on exchange trips with other vets (like my flat mate did) and get very drunk. Grand.

Anyway. Exams are in 2 weeks so I'm trying to be "Serious Suzy". We're getting an oral in physiology this time, instead of a written exam. EEEEEk! but it's not too bad as it means we don't need to write a letter. We're also getting mock anatomy orals, which don't count for anything (phew). Mmmmm exams, yummy yummy yummy yummmmmmmy.