Life and Living the Dream!

Greetings from Vet school :)

Apologies for not updating sooner but life doesn't always go as planned.

I moved out to Iowa the first week of August with the help of my Dad. He drove the U-haul and planned to stay an additional 2 days to work on unloading and minor assembly/repair projects around the trailer. His 3rd night here he had a stroke in the middle of the night and I took him to the emergency room when I got up the following morning and had realized what happened. Long story short he got transferred to Mayo where they discovered he had a heavily calcified mitral valve & annulus. A few small bits of calcification had broken off and hit 3 separate spots in his brain- which had the cumulative effect of a minor stroke and about 12+ hours of memory loss. He was able to be discharged just in time to come for my white coat ceremony, then last Friday he had his open-heart surgery to repair/scrape the annulus and replace the mitral valve with a new mechanical one. I am happy to say it went well and he and my mother finally made it back home today.

Needless to say it was a rough start to my first days in veterinary school. Things are starting to settle down for me now in terms of stress but I'm feeling a little behind from all the personal chaos.

I was also a little hesitant to post here because during orientation it was heavily drilled into me that posting any details online pertaining to school was basically... strictly forbidden. So I will be carefully censoring any information I share on here in the future- my further apologies. But fear not! I will still share plenty!

Orientation was 3 very longs days of every minute scheduled with lectures and activities from 8-5. Mostly people talking at me with useless information and MANY MANY team-buildingesque activites. Surprisingly little helpful information. Or not so surprisingly.

Class schedules are pre-determined. I have: Cell/Molecular biology, Histology, Anatomy, Nutrition, Clinical Foundations, Case Studies I, Radiology (Clinical Imaging), Veterinarians in Society, Freshman Seminar Series, and accompanying labs to Histo, Anatomy,  & ClinicFndtns.

A lot of the material is fairly review-based in nature. Anatomy is A LOT & FAST. Clinical Foundations just throws you in with little to no real instruction.

I am coming up to my first exam which will be in Anatomy on Thursday.

It's a little daunting. The lecture and lab are combined for the exam and over the cat and dog- muscles and bones. I mean complete and total knowledge of the muscles, bones, joints/joint capsules, tendons, and ligaments-also the insertions, attachments, and functions- of the cat and the dog in just 3 weeks. (Get what I mean by a lot and fast?) The difficulty is in how much information is thrown at you and how quickly you are expected to know it and move on to new material (pretty much one day from forelimb bones to muscles to hindlimb bones, & so forth...).

I'll plan to start discussing clubs/organizations next post- if I survive this week! ;)