I volunteered at Pro-Bone-O in Eugene last Sunday. As always, it was exhausting and eye-opening. And as always, I was humbled to see how people with so few resources do the best they can to take care of their beloved animal companions.
A guy walked in with a small carrier containing a grey cat. He was probably an Iraq War veteran, was about the right age, had that military stance and carriage even though life had beaten on him pretty hard for quite a few years. He also had a military-style haircut--a lot of veterans keep that hair style for their entire lives. He lives in a tent in one of the homeless encampments in Eugene. This winter has been an endless misery of rain, and I wondered how he was able to cope with that.
He feeds the feral and stray cats that hang around the encampment, and had noticed that one of the cats was no longer eating regularly. He told me and the veterinarian that he thought she might be sick.
We took the lid off the crate, and on a filthy towel was an ancient female cat, nothing but five pounds of skin and bones. She was covered with fleas. She had an upper respiratory infection and was having problems breathing. Mucous was coming out of her nose, and her eyes were crusty. A bit of fresh blood was coming out of her anus. She had only a handful of teeth and they were in an advanced state of disease and infection. The tip of one of her ears was cleanly cut off, a sign that at some point in the distant past, she had been trapped, spayed, and released. Her belly was slightly swollen, mostly likely with peritoneal fluid, and she was terribly dehydrated.
I really admire the way the veterinarian took the time to examine her thoroughly. He looked the guy in the eye, and said, "She's very old and very sick. Very old, sick cats often have kidney disease or heart disease. We would need to run blood tests to figure out why she is sick, but we can't do those tests here [at Pro-Bone-O; it is basic triage and treatment, no diagnostics except what you can see with your own eyes]. If you can't afford the blood tests at the community vet clinic, I think the best option is to euthanize her today."
He didn't sugarcoat it or talk down to the guy. He calmly and quietly explained the situation. The guy sighed, and said, yeah, my buddy and I thought that might be the case.
The veterinarian said, is that what you want us to do? And the guy said, yes.
Pro-Bone-O operates on a shoestring with donated supplies and meds. They have no controlled substances except for one: the phenobarbital solution used for animal euthanasias. The veterinarian injected propofol under the cat's skin--she was so dehydrated that there was no way we were going to be able to use a vein. I waited with the guy and the old cat, both of us petting her together. After she was heavily sedated, the veterinarian injected phenobarbital into one of her kidneys. Her heart stopped less than a minute later.
The point of all this is not to tell you a gory story about euthanizing an old, sick cat.
This is a rant about a man, very likely a man who fought in a war for this country, a man who now lives in a tent, who has nothing himself but manages to look after stray cats. A man who one day noticed that one of the cats was sick, and knowing that he could not help her or fix her problems, managed to get her to us.
Where is the human decency in eliminating social programs that provide assistance to people like this veteran? This homeless man, whom many of our current elected leaders would consider a burden, has the charity and kindness in his heart to look out for the least amongst us. What a world it would be if we all tried to do the same.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Border Collie In A Fox Terrier Suit
The endless rain we've had in the Pacific NW this winter has made it impossible to do anything outside. To compensate, I try to play with my dogs as vigorously and as often as I can. But in the past three weeks or so when I was buckling down to study, I wasn't playing as often as Archie would have liked.
So he took action. Standing just out of my reach, he would take a ball and drop it on the floor, letting it bounce a couple of times: BUMP-bu-bu-bu. He would grab it and drop it again: BUMP-bu-bu-bu. Over and over: BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu. I tried ignoring him, thinking that he would get bored, but it was like a form of water drip torture. BUMP-bu-bu-bu. BUMP-bu-bu-bu. I would finally crack and grab the ball and put it on my study table.
He'd run off to gnaw on the cat, then after a few minutes, he'd be back with another ball. I clean my house often and I pick up the balls when I vacuum, so I am convinced that he was materializing them out of thin air. BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu. He was relentless. The only way to get him to stop was to close my computer, put down my pencil, and focus on him for 15 minutes. That would buy me at least an hour of peace.
Then he devised a truly inspired variation of this game. He would lay down, again just out of my reach, and form a sort of Hot Wheels track with his front paws. He'd then gently set the ball on his paws and nudge it with his nose so that it would roll down the track and bump to a stop at my feet. He's not quite grasped the concept of aim but he has the general idea. You'd think this would be easier to ignore. Certainly this game was quieter. But then he would stare at the ball, his laser eyes boring a hole in it. It was palpable, and maddening. He might as well have been poking me with a stick.
At one point, I grabbed the ball and said to him, "Are you really a border collie in a fox terrier suit?"
It's common enough for terriers to engage in repetitive, OCD-like behaviors; border collies are of course well known for this. Harry was so successful in flyball because he was like a machine in the repeatability and consistency of his performance. Archie has a lot of the same intensity. I am still struggling to learn how to handle him in agility. I want to find a way to mold the craziness that would cause him to pick up and drop a ball 50 times in a row. I'll be watching the fast border collies and their handlers more closely at the next trial. No, I don't want a border collie. Their temperament is not my cup of tea. My nutty little fox terrier will do just fine.
So he took action. Standing just out of my reach, he would take a ball and drop it on the floor, letting it bounce a couple of times: BUMP-bu-bu-bu. He would grab it and drop it again: BUMP-bu-bu-bu. Over and over: BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu. I tried ignoring him, thinking that he would get bored, but it was like a form of water drip torture. BUMP-bu-bu-bu. BUMP-bu-bu-bu. I would finally crack and grab the ball and put it on my study table.
He'd run off to gnaw on the cat, then after a few minutes, he'd be back with another ball. I clean my house often and I pick up the balls when I vacuum, so I am convinced that he was materializing them out of thin air. BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu, BUMP-bu-bu-bu. He was relentless. The only way to get him to stop was to close my computer, put down my pencil, and focus on him for 15 minutes. That would buy me at least an hour of peace.
Then he devised a truly inspired variation of this game. He would lay down, again just out of my reach, and form a sort of Hot Wheels track with his front paws. He'd then gently set the ball on his paws and nudge it with his nose so that it would roll down the track and bump to a stop at my feet. He's not quite grasped the concept of aim but he has the general idea. You'd think this would be easier to ignore. Certainly this game was quieter. But then he would stare at the ball, his laser eyes boring a hole in it. It was palpable, and maddening. He might as well have been poking me with a stick.
At one point, I grabbed the ball and said to him, "Are you really a border collie in a fox terrier suit?"
It's common enough for terriers to engage in repetitive, OCD-like behaviors; border collies are of course well known for this. Harry was so successful in flyball because he was like a machine in the repeatability and consistency of his performance. Archie has a lot of the same intensity. I am still struggling to learn how to handle him in agility. I want to find a way to mold the craziness that would cause him to pick up and drop a ball 50 times in a row. I'll be watching the fast border collies and their handlers more closely at the next trial. No, I don't want a border collie. Their temperament is not my cup of tea. My nutty little fox terrier will do just fine.
Friday, March 24, 2017
Diary of A Second-Year Vet Student: Thirty-Eight Percent of the Way There!
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 01, 2017
Circus K9 and Archie Update
I'm cheating a bit by dumping these disparate things into one post. Bit busy these last few weeks of the term.
Here are two cute CircusK9 photos.
And here's a video of one of Archie's runs at the agility trial last weekend. He did not Q, as you can tell from the judge's signals. He didn't complete the weaves on the second try, then ran on then off the teeter before I could pull him back for a third try, and we violated the four-paw rule when I continued on with the teeter. Not completing the weaves was sufficient for the elimination which is why I decided to make him do the teeter anyway. All of the errors were due to sloppy handling. But because he was still with me and fully engaged, I chose to complete the course. I pulled some "great dane" arm signals, as one of my instructors calls them, and I also totally mishandled the jump after the Aframe. Despite all of its flaws, I am uploading this because I don't have any other videos of Archie.
His contacts deteriorated over the weekend to the point that he launched himself from the top of the dogwalk on his last run on Sunday. I stopped the run and scooped him up, thanking the judge as I ran past her. When the leash runner handed me his leash, she said, "he's just adorable!" I could barely restrain my eye roll even though it was a nice compliment for such a naughty puppy.
The trial was a mixed bag of results. No Qs at all, but he didn't try to leave the ring by diving through the fence, and he never left me to check out the corners of the ring, although he did visit ring crew during a couple of runs. Of all the training issues one could have, I'll take this one. I'd rather have a social puppy than one who is scared of the people in and around the ring. He was much more focused on the game and on staying with me, and I consider that a big step forward, even if we didn't bring any ribbons home.
Here are two cute CircusK9 photos.
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| Archie: Master of Mayhem and Chaos |
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| The dogs arrayed on the couch for a nap. Archie has his head on me. |
And here's a video of one of Archie's runs at the agility trial last weekend. He did not Q, as you can tell from the judge's signals. He didn't complete the weaves on the second try, then ran on then off the teeter before I could pull him back for a third try, and we violated the four-paw rule when I continued on with the teeter. Not completing the weaves was sufficient for the elimination which is why I decided to make him do the teeter anyway. All of the errors were due to sloppy handling. But because he was still with me and fully engaged, I chose to complete the course. I pulled some "great dane" arm signals, as one of my instructors calls them, and I also totally mishandled the jump after the Aframe. Despite all of its flaws, I am uploading this because I don't have any other videos of Archie.
His contacts deteriorated over the weekend to the point that he launched himself from the top of the dogwalk on his last run on Sunday. I stopped the run and scooped him up, thanking the judge as I ran past her. When the leash runner handed me his leash, she said, "he's just adorable!" I could barely restrain my eye roll even though it was a nice compliment for such a naughty puppy.
The trial was a mixed bag of results. No Qs at all, but he didn't try to leave the ring by diving through the fence, and he never left me to check out the corners of the ring, although he did visit ring crew during a couple of runs. Of all the training issues one could have, I'll take this one. I'd rather have a social puppy than one who is scared of the people in and around the ring. He was much more focused on the game and on staying with me, and I consider that a big step forward, even if we didn't bring any ribbons home.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
CircusK9 Agility Update
One of the nice collateral benefits of all the training I've been doing with Archie is that Mimi gets lots more training too. She gets to go along for every fun run, which she totally adores. I've mentioned that I test my backyard setups with her first. And even though she is far more enthused about playing around in agility than competing, I enter her for agility trials too. The lower jump heights in the AKC Preferred class mean that she jumps 12" instead of 16" but I think that even that is rather too much so I no longer ask her to run Jumpers courses. She has managed to pick up several Qs and a title because even though she isn't all that fast anymore, she's reliable and her contacts are much more consistent than they used to be--all that contact board work makes a difference!
I have yet to get decent (and decently priced) photos or video of Archie running at a trial but I did get some very nice photos of Mimi a couple of weekends ago. There are several vendors in this area that take photos or video during agility trials then sell those to handlers. In the low light and large open spaces of the typical enclosed horse arena where dog agility trials are usually held in this part of the world, it takes a specialized camera and lens to get good shots. Of course, many people have friends film their runs with iPads or their phones. Sometimes you want a really nice photo, so I always look at the vendor photos of Archie and Mimi at the shows, although I usually pass because the cost is just not reasonable. However, I picked up five digital photos of Mimi, full resolution, for $15. Here are two of them.
Mimi looks so happy that you would never believe that she isn't into competing. One run a day seems to make her feel included without making her too stressed.
Even if I don't have competition photos of Archie, I do have one that I took at home after a big trial weekend. The green ribbons are for qualifying runs (Qs) and the purple and black ribbons are for a new title. He earned all of those ribbons in one day--pretty good for a naughty baby dog.
I have yet to get decent (and decently priced) photos or video of Archie running at a trial but I did get some very nice photos of Mimi a couple of weekends ago. There are several vendors in this area that take photos or video during agility trials then sell those to handlers. In the low light and large open spaces of the typical enclosed horse arena where dog agility trials are usually held in this part of the world, it takes a specialized camera and lens to get good shots. Of course, many people have friends film their runs with iPads or their phones. Sometimes you want a really nice photo, so I always look at the vendor photos of Archie and Mimi at the shows, although I usually pass because the cost is just not reasonable. However, I picked up five digital photos of Mimi, full resolution, for $15. Here are two of them.
Mimi looks so happy that you would never believe that she isn't into competing. One run a day seems to make her feel included without making her too stressed.
Even if I don't have competition photos of Archie, I do have one that I took at home after a big trial weekend. The green ribbons are for qualifying runs (Qs) and the purple and black ribbons are for a new title. He earned all of those ribbons in one day--pretty good for a naughty baby dog.
Friday, February 17, 2017
Diary of A Second-Year Vet Student: Exam Time!
I've been meaning to write this post for some time now. The idea came from a comment a friend made to me in an email. I told her that my grades for my classes were mostly As and a few Bs. She replied that she supposed it didn't matter if I didn't learn everything now because I would learn it later when I began practicing. I was quite surprised and had to read her reply several times. It seemed like she was suggesting that a grade of a B in a course meant I had learned less than someone who had earned an A in that course. And that's not how it works at all!
We are deep in the throes of midterms. Vet school is a succession of "midterms" that begin as early as the first or second week of the term and relentlessly continue up to the final exam. Week after week, term after term, for the first two and a half years. It's sort of cute/not cute that the instructors retain the old-fashioned name "midterm" for these exams. I'm far too busy studying for all of those exams to have the energy or the time to engage in a heated discussion of semantics with my instructors. They can call it whatever they want to call it.
But here's the connection to the comment my friend made. The grade that you get on an exam, and in a class, can be distinctly unrelated to what you have learned in that class. This is true not only for vet school but for any sort of formal testing situation.
Take systemic pathology. In this class, we study the specific changes that cells and animals experience when certain disease conditions are present. It's a super interesting course with lectures and textbooks chock full of beautifully staged and lit photographs of horrifically diseased organs. We are methodically moving through the body systems during our second year (skin, renal, cardiovascular, reproductive, etc). Each system is taught by a different instructor, and every week or so we have to adjust to a different style of instruction. One common thread is that all of the instructors give us assignments in addition to exams. The assignments involve lots of research, reading, and assimilation of concepts. I excel at that kind of work and knock the darned things out of the park. Every single instructor comments on my assignments: "Well done!" "Great job" "Impressive that you found a disease for every lesion on the list". You get the idea. I asked around and found that almost none of my classmates get comments on their assignments, even those who get full marks like I do. So I know that when I have time to ponder and cogitate, I demonstrate sufficient mastery of the required learning that it drives my instructors to comment. Woohoo for me.
But when I take tests in this class, I fall apart. At this point, it is entirely a mental thing. I have so much test anxiety for sys path exams that I will find myself staring at the exam sheet with a completely empty brain. I am engaging in one of the hardest courses of post-graduate study there is and I never have text anxiety in any course except sys path. I know this material. I proved that I know it. Yet I suck at taking the exams. I make a B in the course as a result despite perfect marks on the assignments.
(As an aside, I had similar test anxiety for gross anatomy during my first year. I really struggled in that class. But I signed up last term to be a teaching assistant for gross anatomy labs. I put on a lab coat and gloves and wander around the lab looking for first-years with sad faces. I go into the labs cold, with no review of the material, and discover that I actually know what and where all the fiddly bits are, despite my troubled exam performance during my own first year. I actually learned an enormous amount of anatomy but it has taken my returning to the scene of the crime to demonstrate that.)
Let me give you another example of the disconnect between test-taking and what has been learned. We are taking diagnostic imaging this term, a course that introduces us to radiology (x-rays). It's really an interesting class. Like sys path, it is also team-taught. When discussing osteosarcoma, one of the instructors put up a slide that said it can be primarily lytic (loss of bone), primarily productive (inappropriate new bone forms), or both. Three bullet points, one after the other. Very clear. Then she throws up a question on the recent "midterm" that asked whether osteosarcoma was (a) focal lytic, (b) focal productive, (c) diffuse lytic, or (d) diffuse productive. Can you see the problem? Based on the information she gave us, it could be either lytic or productive--she attached no relative percentages of likelihood to her three bullet points. And she did not define what "focal" or "diffuse" meant in the context of the question. The question was written exactly as I wrote it above. Was the lesion to be considered focal to the bone it was in, the limb it was in, the whole animal it was in? Productivity can be a function of activity of the lesion; was the lesion referred to in the question active or inactive? Acute or chronic? How in the hell could I know what she had in mind? Was I going to be tested on how well I could read her mind? How well I could guess?
I nearly lost my shit right then and there. Based on the information she had given us in lecture, which I had most assuredly learned, the question was ambiguous, and even worse, it was unanswerable as posed. As such, there was no way that question could objectively evaluate my learning. I wrote several careful but heated emails to the course coordinator and the instructor in question (screencapping her own damned powerpoint slide in the email because I'm an asshole like that), and the question was dropped from the exam.
Our culture generally accepts a "test" in some form to be a reasonable evaluation of "learning." If the "test" is poorly phrased or ambiguous, it cannot be used in this way. If the student demonstrates learning in one testing format but does not perform as well in another testing format, that does not mean the student has not learned.
I've mentioned before that I probably could make all As but I have made other life choices (a naughty puppy comes to mind). In other words, I make grades commensurate with the amount of studying that I do (which is considerable; one does not make even a single A in vet school without a lot of hard work). They are not automatically equivalent to the quality or quantity of my learning.
I attended a lunchtime talk yesterday given by a rep from one of the commercial test-prep sites for the national vet board exams, which we take in December of our fourth year. I learned that the board exam is pass/fail and you only need to get 70% of the questions right to pass. Your actual score is never seen by anyone but you. Next time you visit a vet for your pet, consider that they could have made 70% (or worse, curves do exist) on every exam in vet school AND on the national board exam, and yet there they are, getting ready to inject your pet with some medication. Now it is possible that they might have indeed learned less. There is a woman in our class who consistently makes the lowest score on every exam in every class. Her under-performance is impressive in a sad way. I've not yet been forced to do any group work with her but I hear that she is also consistently unprepared and hapless. I truly believe that she is an exception. For the most part, that exam score doesn't reflect what we have learned.
We are deep in the throes of midterms. Vet school is a succession of "midterms" that begin as early as the first or second week of the term and relentlessly continue up to the final exam. Week after week, term after term, for the first two and a half years. It's sort of cute/not cute that the instructors retain the old-fashioned name "midterm" for these exams. I'm far too busy studying for all of those exams to have the energy or the time to engage in a heated discussion of semantics with my instructors. They can call it whatever they want to call it.
But here's the connection to the comment my friend made. The grade that you get on an exam, and in a class, can be distinctly unrelated to what you have learned in that class. This is true not only for vet school but for any sort of formal testing situation.
Take systemic pathology. In this class, we study the specific changes that cells and animals experience when certain disease conditions are present. It's a super interesting course with lectures and textbooks chock full of beautifully staged and lit photographs of horrifically diseased organs. We are methodically moving through the body systems during our second year (skin, renal, cardiovascular, reproductive, etc). Each system is taught by a different instructor, and every week or so we have to adjust to a different style of instruction. One common thread is that all of the instructors give us assignments in addition to exams. The assignments involve lots of research, reading, and assimilation of concepts. I excel at that kind of work and knock the darned things out of the park. Every single instructor comments on my assignments: "Well done!" "Great job" "Impressive that you found a disease for every lesion on the list". You get the idea. I asked around and found that almost none of my classmates get comments on their assignments, even those who get full marks like I do. So I know that when I have time to ponder and cogitate, I demonstrate sufficient mastery of the required learning that it drives my instructors to comment. Woohoo for me.
But when I take tests in this class, I fall apart. At this point, it is entirely a mental thing. I have so much test anxiety for sys path exams that I will find myself staring at the exam sheet with a completely empty brain. I am engaging in one of the hardest courses of post-graduate study there is and I never have text anxiety in any course except sys path. I know this material. I proved that I know it. Yet I suck at taking the exams. I make a B in the course as a result despite perfect marks on the assignments.
(As an aside, I had similar test anxiety for gross anatomy during my first year. I really struggled in that class. But I signed up last term to be a teaching assistant for gross anatomy labs. I put on a lab coat and gloves and wander around the lab looking for first-years with sad faces. I go into the labs cold, with no review of the material, and discover that I actually know what and where all the fiddly bits are, despite my troubled exam performance during my own first year. I actually learned an enormous amount of anatomy but it has taken my returning to the scene of the crime to demonstrate that.)
Let me give you another example of the disconnect between test-taking and what has been learned. We are taking diagnostic imaging this term, a course that introduces us to radiology (x-rays). It's really an interesting class. Like sys path, it is also team-taught. When discussing osteosarcoma, one of the instructors put up a slide that said it can be primarily lytic (loss of bone), primarily productive (inappropriate new bone forms), or both. Three bullet points, one after the other. Very clear. Then she throws up a question on the recent "midterm" that asked whether osteosarcoma was (a) focal lytic, (b) focal productive, (c) diffuse lytic, or (d) diffuse productive. Can you see the problem? Based on the information she gave us, it could be either lytic or productive--she attached no relative percentages of likelihood to her three bullet points. And she did not define what "focal" or "diffuse" meant in the context of the question. The question was written exactly as I wrote it above. Was the lesion to be considered focal to the bone it was in, the limb it was in, the whole animal it was in? Productivity can be a function of activity of the lesion; was the lesion referred to in the question active or inactive? Acute or chronic? How in the hell could I know what she had in mind? Was I going to be tested on how well I could read her mind? How well I could guess?
I nearly lost my shit right then and there. Based on the information she had given us in lecture, which I had most assuredly learned, the question was ambiguous, and even worse, it was unanswerable as posed. As such, there was no way that question could objectively evaluate my learning. I wrote several careful but heated emails to the course coordinator and the instructor in question (screencapping her own damned powerpoint slide in the email because I'm an asshole like that), and the question was dropped from the exam.
Our culture generally accepts a "test" in some form to be a reasonable evaluation of "learning." If the "test" is poorly phrased or ambiguous, it cannot be used in this way. If the student demonstrates learning in one testing format but does not perform as well in another testing format, that does not mean the student has not learned.
I've mentioned before that I probably could make all As but I have made other life choices (a naughty puppy comes to mind). In other words, I make grades commensurate with the amount of studying that I do (which is considerable; one does not make even a single A in vet school without a lot of hard work). They are not automatically equivalent to the quality or quantity of my learning.
I attended a lunchtime talk yesterday given by a rep from one of the commercial test-prep sites for the national vet board exams, which we take in December of our fourth year. I learned that the board exam is pass/fail and you only need to get 70% of the questions right to pass. Your actual score is never seen by anyone but you. Next time you visit a vet for your pet, consider that they could have made 70% (or worse, curves do exist) on every exam in vet school AND on the national board exam, and yet there they are, getting ready to inject your pet with some medication. Now it is possible that they might have indeed learned less. There is a woman in our class who consistently makes the lowest score on every exam in every class. Her under-performance is impressive in a sad way. I've not yet been forced to do any group work with her but I hear that she is also consistently unprepared and hapless. I truly believe that she is an exception. For the most part, that exam score doesn't reflect what we have learned.
Thursday, February 02, 2017
I Heart George Blagden
Because I don't do much leisure reading during school terms and I've been avoiding news and political commentary of late, I felt a little bereft when I finished the last episode of Versailles. I was poking around Amazon Prime looking for something else to watch when I decided to look into Vikings. I had been avoiding it because of its association with the History Channel, which for some years has been pandering to the lowest common denominator of viewer. However, I got hooked quickly. Vikings is like Versailles, only colder, wetter, and significantly muddier and bloodier. And while watching the second episode, I thought to myself, hey, I've seen those enormous blue eyes before.
Yep. The British priest Athelstan captured by Ragnar during his first raid in Northumbria is acted by George Blagden. And George Blagden is also Louis XIV, the Sun King himself.
I heart George Blagden. Seriously, go look at some of the stills from either series. His eyes are just fabulous. Here he is in 21st century garb. Of course it is probably 'shopped. Don't care.
And here's a very nice gif of him as Louis XIV. See what I mean? Putain!
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