Ran into a first year today who mentioned having read my blog when he was applying (yeah, the same one mentioned earlier in this blog) and it got me thinking about why I started writing this blog. It's obviously great to have a positive Internet presence especially when you have a common name like mine but that's not why I started writing.

When I applied to vet school, I found it really important to read firsthand accounts of student experiences at the schools I was applying to. I knew students (past or current) at UF, Ross, SGU, Auburn, LSU... For those I didn't know, there were blogs from students. I was pretty disappointed to find only one blog from a WesternU student and whenever I tried to reach out to her, I didn't get an answer. Her blog was still informative, but I wanted to do something more and be available for students that had questions -- pretty much why I'm still so active on SDN (plus it's good procrastination material and I find myself asking the upperclassmen or graduates questions).

As far as how school is going? Well, I survived exams! I heard small animal exams had a high of 71, large animal had a high of 69 and as for miscellaneous block? Well, I don't have any grades yet. No time to dwell on it though! Small animal block has a ridiculous amount of work and very long hours, so it's onward and upward.

I'm rotating at a small animal hospital south of me. It's about 30 miles away and took me an hour yesterday and an hour and a half today... Needless to say, I'm not loving the commute! The hospital is great though. Tons of doctors to learn from and tons of cases. I've seen DKA, respiratory arrest, incision complications, wellness visits, some ortho problems... It's been great! I've gotten to work on venipuncture, general restraint, clinical reasoning (of course), I got to run coags for the first time on an Abaxis machine as opposed to sending them out, I got to calculate how much plasma to give and what rate as well as set up the plasma! I also did my first small animal euthanasia today which was pretty sad. It's definitely a different feeling pushing Euthasol as compared to putting some mice in a CO2 chamber.

Our school has a pretty anti-social media policy and we actually have a section of our third year handbook that says not to post about cases on social media so I'm trying to be really careful and vague about what I see so I don't run into any trouble!

Almost done with miscellaneous block!

I just have one more week left of miscellaneous block, and then it's on to exams and small animal block! Miscellaneous block consists of surgery, zoo and wildlife medicine, pathology, and lab animal medicine.

I just finished up my zoo rotation at a site in Oregon which was AMAZING. I got to see some really cool animals and work with some fantastic doctors and really had a blast. There were two fourth years there, as well as another third year with me and it was really great. I would like to go back some time, definitely.

We had our pathology rotation at Antech, which was really helpful. I think the information was fantastic but unfortunately what we learned isn't on the exam... at all... So while I feel much more confident looking at cytology, histopathology, chemistries, and cbcs, it doesn't matter for the exam. The commute was pretty awful, about 1-2 hours each way every day, so that was really rough. On the bright side, they did let us out a little early to account for traffic, so I appreciated that accommodation. Not to mention, getting to see such a huge and well-known facility was really cool!

At the moment, I'm at UCD for a lab animal rotation and it's been a great experience. We have a lot of assignments but none of them are that bad or terribly time-consuming. The facilities are great and I'm learning a lot from the residents and veterinarians here. I've been lucky enough to sit in on a protocol review and some other meetings. I'm a bit ashamed to admit how little I knew about the duties of a lab animal veterinarian and their typical day-to-day life but this has been really eye opening and I've enjoyed it way more than I expected. We have a week left here, so I'm interested to see what happens next week!

I finished my first rotation! Surgery and anesthesia was definitely a great way to start off third year and I feel much more confident moving forwards. It was nice to get a review on how to monitor for ansthesia and the drug lectures were really helpful. I got to do a lot of different kinds of surgeries and ultimately help my patients get adopted, so that felt great. It was nice to see how far I'd come in just two weeks. My first surgery was a scrotal ablation and, while I knew how to do it, I paused between every step to check in with the surgeon and make sure I was doing okay. My last surgery was an ovariectomy and I just kept going, even with her peeking over my shoulder.

Next, I have my clinical pathology rotation which is supposed to be another really great rotation. I'm a little worried to be sitting down and looking at histopath and cytology slides all day long because it's not my forte but I'm sure it'll be extremely helpful in the long run.

It's been awhile...

Yeah, so I'm bad at this blogging thing. I'm now a big bad third year entering rotations so I don't know how often I'll be able to update this, but I'll try!

I was actually reminded about this blog by a current first year. Weird, right? Apparently he'd read my blog back when I actually updated it and still had red hair. Kind of funny to be recognized that way and kind of cool to realize that someone actually reads this!

Second year was great, but I'm very glad it's done. I got pretty tired of the PBL process by the end of it. The tiredness mainly stemmed from people insisting on discussing a specific topic for 30 minutes to 1 hour when I knew it wouldn't be on the exam or wouldn't be something important to the typical new grad. But, I made it and I'm moving on up!

I spent the summer working on a research project and scrubbed in and assisted on over a hundred surgeries which was definitely an amazing experience. It's already made me so much more comfortable to enter clinics this year.

I'm on my surgery and anesthesia rotation at the shelter at the moment. Monday was just orientation and CPR basics and then today was some testing in order to clear us for surgery (I got cleared, yay! One of the DVMs even said we should talk about residencies, which definitely made me feel awesome) and then we had an anesthesia lecture in the afternoon for a few hours. I thought talking about drugs for four hours would be really draining, but I actually really enjoyed it!

Tomorrow, I'm doing a neuter with scrotal ablation, assisting on a spay, and playing anesthetist for a neuter. Should be fun!