Second semester – go!

Performing exams in northern MN with SIRVS.

Greetings, friends! A month or so ago a friend remarked to another friend: “Tell Brett to update his blog.” Right – my bad. My last post? October 2011. As you can see, once vet school got rolling, a lot of things fell by the wayside. And so here I am, starting semester two tomorrow.

First, the brief retrospective. What did I think of first semester vet school? It’s a combination of fairly intense feelings: it’s tremendously interesting, a lot of fun, and a terrifying amount of work and stress. I have never felt such chronic fatigue in my life – I was tired after about the second week and never did really feel rested until the semester ended. Some of that was the nature of vet school, some of that was me needing to adjust to it. I’m pretty optimistic for second semester because I think I can do a better job of staying on top of classes now that I know generally what to expect.

My favorite class? Equine Neonatology, hands down. It was an easy class (that’s not why I liked it) because it was simply 7-8 online lectures with a highly abbreviated quiz following each (just to ensure you actually watched the lecture). We did have a couple in-class sessions that were largely case reviews. What made it my favorite class was that it  was straight-up practical medicine: here’s the neonate, here’s the type of problems, here’s how we deal with it. In your early didactic training you don’t get a lot of that (most classes are basic science classes), so it was a breath of fresh air every time I sat down to listen to a new neonate lecture. While other classes felt like ‘work’, neonate felt like ‘fun work’.

I’ll try and say more about first semester soon. But since second semester starts tomorrow, here’s the low down on classes. The pressure ramps up a bit, with more core required classes and a higher credit load (27 credits). We’re taking:

• Critical Scientific Reading (2 cr)
• Professional Development II: Communication (1 cr)
• Organology (3 cr)
• Veterinary Neurobiology (2 cr)
• Veterinary Physiology (6 cr) (6?? Gulp.)
• Veterinary Pharmacology (2 cr)
• Host Defenses (2 cr)
• Virology (3 cr)
• Applied Veterinary Genetics (1 cr)
• Basic Pathology (2 cr)
• Clinical Skills II (1 cr)
• Behavior Core (2 cr)

My wife, Kelly, getting to experience the inside of a cow's stomach firsthand.

Oh, but that’s not really all: we have the second half of our GOALE course (more or less an orientation/introduction course designed to acclimate new students to the school and profession), and more large-animal clerk duty to fulfill the requirements of first semester Clinical Skills I (we all automatically got a grade of ‘Incomplete’ until we finish our clerk duty this semester). Also, I have an ‘Incomplete’ in Equine Neonatology because we don’t technically finish the class until foaling teams conclude this spring. So a few first-semester classes are still in play.

As well, I’ll have monthly VeTouch clinics in Minneapolis (more about that later, but in short it’s a free clinic put on in downtown Minneapolis that utilizes vet and vet tech students to provide a free well-animal care clinic once per month), another SIRVS trip to northern Minnesota in March, and a RAVS trip to South Dakota right at the end of the semester. I’m flying to Florida this Thursday to the VBMA conference (I am the president-elect of our local chapter.) and also will stay a couple extra days to attend NAVC, one of the largest veterinary conferences in the United States. Along with other club activities and trying to nail down a job or research opportunity for summer, this semester promises to be every bit as busy as the last.

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