Diary of a Vet Student

Hello

I’ve just finished 2 weeks of work experience in Hereford at a great mixed practise. I was really lucky to get somewhere where there were a couple of new graduates and some really supportive senior vets who pushed me into doing things. I’m at the stage now when I really need to make my work experience more hands on and start practising practical things like injections and blood sampling. I also really need to get used to doing physical examinations and listening to hearts and just basic animal handling and the practise was great at pushing me into all those things. By the end of the week I’d got a bit more confident and even done my first cat castrate (only 1 testicle though).

I’m hoping to go to India for 3 or 4 weeks this August to work in an animal clinic in Goa. So that’s jolly exciting. I’m trying to arrange things at the moment. It’ll be a bit scary because except for the other weekend when I took the train home alone from Brighton, I’ve never travelled alone before. It’ll be great for gaining a bit more clinical experience. Id also like to work on welfare projects in the third world once I’m qualified so I’m hoping this will be a good first step.

I’ve just spent the weekend back in Bristol. It was a really great weekend which kicked off (ha hee) on the Friday night with a footballers and footballers wives party. I spent Saturday forgetting to drop my keys off at the student hostel and waiting for tired boyfriend to return from checks. Also helped boyfriends flat mates to eat 28 sausages.

The Hereford social scene is also more plentiful than I’d originally imagined. Amazingly quite a few Glasgow graduates have come down here so we it’s been quite nice to meet them and have a few drinks. The vet world really is a small place.

Anyway tomorrow is more work experience. This time at another place in Hereford.

Also I got a 2.1 in my degree, which was nice J

Ok this will probably be my last BOG for a while. More late this Summer.

I'm back at home in Hereford now. The last few days in Bristol were great and spent hiking in Cheddar gorge. eating sausages and drinking pims. very quaint.

Spont the weekend watching the football and hiking, horse riding and doing some more eating with my family and slightly overwhelmed boyfriend.

This week I started work expereince at a local mixed practise. It's got 5 vets and two are new graduates. One is from glasgow so there's plentle of gabble to catche up on there. It's reasonably busy and the staff are all really supportive and helpful, which is great. We had a few lame cows to go to on Monday and yesterday i went to my first batch of TB testing. I'm trying to get as much hands on as possible. It feels like I haven't seen live animals for a while and my clinical knowledge has packed its bags and gone to The Bermuda Triangle I think. I'm just trying to fill in the rather large gaps by reviding a couple of hours worth each night.

Today I took a day off work to take the train to Uckfield to meet a man from an animal charity in India. I'm going to work there this summer in their spay and vaccination clinic. i'm also hoping to visit the bear sanctuary they run near Delhi. It's all really exciting and I can't wait. Just got to sort some flights.

Anyway I knackered as was up at 5 so off to bed now.

Hello. Well after having a few days off after finishing the exams Friday it was time to start work again. This time we had to write project talks. This meant condensing our dissertations into a ten minute power point presentation. I took a while to get going on mine. The aim was to start on Thursay, but instead I spent that day organising a distant trip to India and arranging the minutist details of my summer work experience (what to wear, where to park etc). Some people would call this procastination, but I call it efficient work(wo)manship, becuase by Friday morning I had developed a good level of panic which allowed me to finish the draft version for that night. Phew.

On Saturday I went to Bath and West show. It was a real scorcher that day, so it was brilliant. We all revised our cattle, sheep, alpaca and pig breeds too so it wasn't just about leisure. Had a great icecream and sup of Somerset cider and then managed to get heat stroke so went to bed for 2 hours before getting up for some BBQ left overs, which are always welcome even if you did have sausage sandwiches for lunch.

Sunday and Monday were all about more talk preparation. There were only eight of us on the course so we were all able to listen to each others talks to iron out the creases.

The talks happened on Tuesday morning and even though we were all a bit nervous, it was actually really nice to hear what everyone had learnt through doing their projects. I really enjoyed giving my talk too. In theory by the time we gave our talks the examiners were supposed to have our provisional degree classifications (based on the course work we've done and our exam performance) and then our talks were able to shift the grades either way by 3%. However because of the AUT strikes, they couldn't give us the final grades, so the good news was that we all got away without doing a viva, but the bad news was that we didn't know our grade classifications, but now the strikes are over, we'll all find out soon.

Of course Tuseday night was deemed to be another massive intercalators night out, although we were all a bit knackered so we decided to go to the local Greek restaurant, where we drunk wine until we literally fell asleep. Which was nice.

Going on a big girly walk today. (The walk is big, not the girls)

I'm starting work experience on Monday, so I'll carry on writing my BLOG for a while as it's all new to me. I'm a bit daunted by it all as I haven't done anything clinical for a year now. Eek.


So that's it in Bristol. I'm packing my bags and heading home tomorrow.

k Bye

Hello.

Sorry have been a bit elusive lately. I've been emerged in exam hell which only ended on Friday. Spent the last 3 weeks revising in the library and forming a very close relationship with Mr. Mcvite (chocolate digestives). Also have developed a passion for pork pies, which I have discovered are almost as satisfying as yorkies when it comes to crushing feelings of emense despair and boredom.

Only kidding. Revision was ok really. It was quite nice to get to go through all of the stuff we'd gone through this year. I think most of the exams went ok. We had 5. One was in animal cognition (can monkeys count?) another was all about animal behaviour therapy (What do you do to your cat when it wees in all the rooms of your house?) and pharmacology (what drugs can you give your cat when it wees in all the rooms of your house?). Another was about welfare (What's the kindest way to make a chicken pie?). Then there was one on advanced scientific method when we had to design a quick experiement. We also had a computer exam when we had to faff about with SPSS (a statistical package). That was a tad gruelling and lasted for three hours.

So this weekend I did lots of nice things and drunk quite a lot of wine. Friday night was rather large and was spent mostly moshing in Propaganda. I've never moshed before, but it's much better than normal clubbing except it hurts your feet. I don't think I'll dress as Barbie next time either. On Saturday I cleaned a kitchen and went to Bath, to eat cakes and stroll. I spent the rest of the bank holiday being spoilt at my Grandma's in Devon.

This week is all about writing my project talk, which will be assessed on Tuesday. I think we're all getting vivas on Tuesday too. Eek

K bye