Diary of a Vet Student

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr this flippin (no swearing) computer! It takes practically a whole week to get onto the internet. By the time you're on you've got to log off again.

Well it's not that bad otherwise I wouldn't still be here. Anyway Glasgow is feeling so good at the moment, because it's Summer! Yahoo! Everyone just goes for it when the sun comes out. There's no waiting around just to make sure it really is going to be warm, before you leave your coat at home. There's so little time when the sun's out that everyone goes for it: shorts, T-shirts, sun glasses, barbeques, the whole caboodley-doodley.

We're finnishing off our avian course today. Birds are so well adapted for flight. We're dissecting a pidgeon this afternoon. There is so much to know about birds and the lectures just point you in the right direction so you gotta do a bit of research yourself, which is alrighty really.

Our lectures are finnishing up now, even though we've only been back a week and a half. Everyone is looking forward to revising for our big bonanza exams this May and June. I can't believe it's come around so quickly. The thought of Summer is soooooooo exciting. It'll be really nice to stick about in Glasgow after our exams and climb the hills and stuff and drink and stuff. I'm also going to go and do aid work for 6 weeks in Nepal, which I'm really really weally excited about. Oooh ah ooh ah.

We got the exams first, but it's really nice to have time to go over everything you know. It makes you feel like a real vet. When I go home I'm going to palpate my dog and feel all the bits we learnt about in first year. She'll love it.

As far as the exam format goes, we've got anatomy written and practical as usual plus an anatomy oral. Then in animal husbandary we've got a written and a practical (not sure what that's going to involve - hope it's not slam-dunking sheep - poor sheep). In biomolecular science I think it's just one beasty paper and the same for physiology. We'll also have a histology practical (lots of cell identification). All the exams are based on everything we've done over the past 2 years. Then once we've done we'll have finnished our 2 preclinical years and we'll start our 3rd year in September which is the beginning of our clinical years.

Now I've confused myself. Anyway everyone is really excited about our rodeo. This is massive. It's annual and basically it's like your school fete, but much much bigger. They have dog shows and rides and small furry animals and reptiles and fire-breathers. It's my flatmate's 20th so we're having a surprise champagne lunch on the day (skillfully blagged from my other flatmate's parents). Everyone has got to help out then in the evening there's the traditional "knees-up" (you know what I mean) in the big marquee. Last year I managed to collapse the barbeque table by doing the YMCA on it. Wahey I know how to live it large.

Okee dokee.

Ello ello ello and here I am again. I have actual been back in gorgeous Glasgow for a week. So muchus biggus apologies for not writing last week. It's just taken me a week or so to re-adjust. Easter was great. Really busy and I was absolutely garfunkled (nackered, bamboozled) when I arrived back in Glasgow.

The first 2 weeks I stayed in Newmarket with a batty old cow who would not let me have more than 1 five-minute shower in 24 hours. I was working on the National Stud and that was fabdabbydozy. I learnt so much about equine stud management and breeding. I was so pleased because we'd just done so much on ultrasound scanning of mares to detect when they are in oestrus and when pregnant and I got to see all that kind of stuff everyday. Newmarket is an amazing place especially if you love horses. It must be the only place I've been to where it's Ok to walk into Weatherspoons in your addidas trackies and stinking horse shirts and boots and not feel like a complete scaff.

The last two weeks I spent in Yorkshire. All I did was eat, sleep and lamb. The latter for 14 hours at a time. Lambing is absolutely nackering. I love all the physical work, but sometimes find it hard to cope when I'm on a farm where the welfare isn't great. Our farm wasn't too bad on the welfare side of things. We still lost a lot of triplets, mainly due to nobody having time to supply them with supplementary feeding.

It's always good when you go on work experience to try and assess just how good the establishment is. I know that before I came to vet school I went to a lot of places and just trusted the folk running them. I didn't really question how well they were being run. If you're not careful this can lead to you not having a good idea of the right way to go about things. There will be plus points and crappy points about most places, you've got to try and weed them out and if possible encourage improvements. On the farm we were on we helped the farmer to set up an orphan area with teated bucket feeders so he could feed lots of lambs with minimum effort. This enabled him to take the week triplets off their ewes so that the ewes could concentrate on producing a set of strong twins.

Lambing can be great or it can be absolutely horrendous as my poor flat mate found out. She stayed with the couple from hell running the farm of hell where practically everything died. This was really difficult for her. Then she got the kick in the teeth when they told her they were only paying her £100 a week. That's probably about 50p per hour. My advice: check out the pay and the farm before you go.

Anyway that's your Aunty Suz's advice on the wonderful realms of lambing. Now I'm back in Glagow and our professional exams are in, oooh 3 weeks. EEeeeek! I'll be grand I hope. Chocolate biscuits and cuppas can get you through most things. I did pretty well on last term's exams so will just have to keep it up. I'm going to go home for 2 weeks next tuesday as lectures are over and we've got a study break.

We've been finnishing our course with a look (a huh) at the eye and ear. We're also looking at avian stuff. All really interesting.

Lovely.