Week 4. We had our first big exam today, a physiology midterm. It took me just over 2 hours to complete it. I felt pretty good about my answers. Not a perfect score, but a respectable showing. Better than "just enough to pass". I find it quite irritating when I hear people say "I only need to pass." What happened to excel?
After I handed my exam in, I rushed home for some puppy love. The dogs are gratefully stretched out in the flowerbeds soaking up the increasingly thin sunshine, making some vitamin D and turning their ears nice and pink inside.
The second-years colluded in a most fabulous fashion, and starting about half an hour before the exam began, they began traipsing into our classroom (there are dedicated first-, second-, and third-year classrooms) to deposit food on a table at the front of the class. Everything from fruit to chocolate to homemade cookies showed up. Someone made a quiche. Another one brought in tiny little corn muffins. Someone else brought in half a dozen jugs of juice of all kinds. Thoughtful people brought in cups, plates, napkins, plastic forks. There were dinosaur fruit jelly things and bananas and granola bars and strawberries. There were cookies with Halloween-themed frosting. There was even a bag of chips! It all made an enormous mound. Sure, a display of excess too, but it was quite a show of support--those second years, they were telling us, they've been through this, they survived, and we can survive it too. I wondered aloud to a couple of my peers if we would remember to be this generous when it was our turn next year. They all assured me yes, absolutely. I'm still a bit resistant to the kumbaya mentality but it's the vet school way. Plus treats. Who doesn't like getting treats?
On Tuesday, I did my part for herd immunity (and my personal health) and got my flu shot. Right arm because I'm left-handed. Oops...because I forgot that I was going to get my first of three rabies vaccinations this morning. Had to be in the left arm then. I'm feeling a bit light-headed now--and I can't tell if it is from all the sugar I ate instead of a healthy breakfast at home (my tiny portion of quiche hardly counted as carb input), or because the two vaccinations are now turning my immune system into a war zone.
Bizarrely, I have no problems poking animals, or even you, with sharp things. Not hesitation at all. But I am completely unable to watch myself being poked with a needle. Even watching the nurse prepare the needle makes me nauseous. I'm such a delicate flower.
No rest for the first-year vet student, weary or wicked as we might be. Our next big midterm in coming up on Monday (gross anatomy): bones, muscles, nerves, and veins/arteries of the thoracic trunk (neck and shoulder) and forelimb.
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