By the end of the second year, most vet students begin to say that we are "50% of a vet" because the end of this academic year will mark our halfway point. But we are not quite at that magical halfway point yet, thus I am, as of this post, only 38% of a vet.
I'm intrigued by the fact that, in the past two weeks, I've overheard about 1/4 of my classmates say, well, I've thought about quitting but I'm too far in now so I might as well continue on. Vet school is very difficult. There is so much material to learn, with so many species differences and so many fiddly bits that turn out to be really important bits. Then we are told that when we graduate, we will be barely functional as clinicians, and I agree, it's enough to make you want to throw up your hands and say, I give up! But we all push on.
The winter term that just finished was punishing but in a different way from the brutalizing first year. For example, for our pharmacology final on Monday of this week, we had to know all kinds of things about 231 different drugs: drugs for the heart, gut, kidneys, and liver; drugs for chemotherapy; NSAIDs; antibiotics for large and small animals, and parasiticides for large and small animals. We have to learn the official drug name, not the commercial name, so we learn about maropitant, not Cerenia. And I am here to tell you that a large majority of these drugs have formal names that sound like they should belong to some type of superhero, a situation that prompted this entertaining quiz: drug name or Tolkien elf name (pro-tip: Tolkien never used the letter X in his elf names). Just in case you missed it, one of my classmates counted: 231 different drugs. We had to learn the name, what it is used for, the specific situations in which it is used, its mechanism of action, its pharmacodynamics and -kinetics (how it acts and is acted on in the body, how long it acts, which of course varies with species), what toxicities and adverse results might occur, and various miscellaneous notes such as "expensive" or "never use in goats."
That pharm exam was just one comprehensive final of the four that we had to take this week. I can't bear to clutter my head with unnecessary words when I study, and that is doubly true when I am studying for big exams. I've been hunkered down for weeks without any words but those required for my exams. No news via internet or radio, no internet entertainment, not even songs with words (that pretty much limits me to music that is non-opera classical and non-vocalist jazz). And of course no blog posting.
But spring break is stretching in front of me. I should have time and energy to barf up some words on the blog in the next week. I've been storing up some blog-worthy stories for weeks so I hope you stay tuned.
Let me close with a funny story about words. Words can restrict us (learn only drug name, not commercial name), and they can expand our imaginations. We use specialized words to describe pathology and anatomy too. At a review session for our diagnostic imaging final, the resident asked Andrew what was the "order of the pooping, peeing, and baby holes" in the standard female mammal. In a lateral view radiograph, this applies to what organs we should see in what positions in the normal female animal. Andrew is the nicest guy on the planet, very smart with an extremely dry sense of humor. And he completely misunderstood her question. She wanted to know the order of the tubular organs from dorsal to ventral (that order would be pooping, baby, and peeing, or colon, uterus, urinary bladder). He stammered, hesitated, stammered some more, then basically failed to answer. The rest of us were falling out of our seats with laughter. Words matter. Maropitant might be the formal name of that drug, but "pooping, peeping, and baby holes" is hilarious.
This is the vet student equivalent of fart jokes. Never gets old.
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