Be back soon

Sorry I haven't been updating that much. Finals are next week and we are all buckling down. For the professors that means shoving as much information down our throats as possible. For the students, it is mostly just trying to keep our epiglottis closed so we don't aspirate.

In other news, our yellow-bellied sapsucker is going to be sent to the sanctuary soon. He's been improving in leaps and bounds. Another successful case!

I have a lot going on right now, but I don't want to dump it on whatever readers I might have. Hopefully things will get better once school is out for the summer.

Summer jobs and beyond

Right now I am waiting to be interviewed by the instructors of the Anatomy lab. I applied for a position over the summer to help them get the cadavers ready for the incoming 1st years. It is a really exciting position for me because I concentrated in anatomy in undergrad. I love being in the lab and getting down and dirty with the cadavers. I know you must think I am some crazy freak to want to play with dead animals all summer, but it will also be really educational! Pretty much everything in vet med boils down to anatomy. If you don't know your anatomy, how are you supposed to figure out if something is wrong?!

Hopefully, I will get this job. If not, I will have to scramble to find another position so that I can pay the bills this summer. Another upside to this job is that I keep it during the school year part time. This would be really helpful money wise, but will also be convenient as I am in the building for classes anyway!

So wish me luck! I'll let you know what happens as soon as I find out!

Now onto the fun stuff!! Zoo trip

Alright, I am sure you are sick of hearing about my school's curriculum and my silly personal life. This blog is supposed to be about being a vet student and all the awesome things I get to do!

Well, unfortunately for you, being in vet school is kinda boring to the outside viewer. We go to class, we sit in lecture, we go home and study, sleep, repeat. I could tell you about how I confused a cow for a horse today - which was perfectly reasonable seeing as how I only had the pelvic region and half of the legs to go by. I could also tell you about how my friends and I snuck over to the large animal clinic this morning to look at the week old foal and his mama. That is our new favorite pastime.

Instead, I will treat you to a more interesting subject (and very dear to my heart): Behavior and Training! I am the Class of 2014 representative for the Behavior Club at my school. I love learning about animal behavior and I believe that this knowledge is important for veterinarians as we cannot verbally communicate with our patients. It saddens me that more vet students are either uninterested or unwilling to learn more about animal behavior and change the way they deal with animals. There is a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of people buy into it.

Anyway, I was selected to go on a trip to the Brookfield Zoo last weekend to learn more about how they train their zoo animals. Not only was this relevant for general behavior interests, but these zoo animals are being trained to tolerate veterinary procedures, so it is relevant to our profession.

We didn't know what all our trip would entail. At first we heard that it was just going to be a powerpoint presentation with a little tour of the zoo after that. That was enough for me! But the day turned out to be much more amazing than expected.

Our first stop on our tour was the public training of the polar bear, Hudson. It really made me happy that they show the training of the animals in public displays like this.

Hudson "standing" for exam

Targeting

We then moved on to other animals like this Argus Monitor Lizard. This is a natural behavior called "tripoding." The lizards stand like this to look for food. The keeper put this behavior on cue so that we can see natural behaviors in unnatural settings.

Tripoding and targeting

At this point, I was already over the moon about the trip. I felt like a five year old on her first trip to the zoo. But the day just got better from there. We went to the Dolphin house and got to sit in on a training session. It was better than sitting in on a show because we could hear the trainers and keepers talking to each other. It was sort of an organized chaos but the dolphins were so eager. How the keepers and trainers are able to tell all of the dolphins apart is beyond me!

Demonstrating some basic tricks

After the dolphins, we moved on to the pinnepeds, or seals and sea lions. Amazingly, the keepers allowed us into the exhibits to watch the animals train. I was in with the seals and they were literally a foot away from me. It was really cool. Unfortunately, we couldn't bring cameras then, but I snapped a few photos of the sea lions later.

Doin' his sea lion thing

And then to top off the most exciting zoo trip ever, our last stop was the Black Rhinoceros enclosure. We were also not allowed to bring our cameras in here because we were going to feed the rhino! We all got to feed him biscuits and rub his face and horn. He was very sweet, though he thought I was holding out on him and tried to eat my jacket to find more treats. I have never touched a rhino before! His lips were very soft but otherwise he was fairly rough.

It truly was the best day ever and I learned a lot about how zoos are changing the way they keep their animals. Tim Sullivan at the Brookfield zoo is an amazing guy and really seems to love his job. He's all about positive reinforcement with both people and animals so he really made us feel comfortable and excited the whole tour.

This is just a snippet of the kind of things I am a part of now that I am in vet school. It is such a priveledge to be able to do these kind of things. I only hope that I will remember these experiences once I am practicing and use them to become a better veterinarian.

Introducing the Boyfriend, the Maddog, and the PLAN

As you probably know by now, I am a consummate dreamer. Hey, that's the title of my blog, right? However, being a dreamer, I'm not usually one for concrete plans for the future. I like to think about what ifs, not what will. Unfortunately, no longer the fast paced single gal that I once was, plans are all I have at the moment.

This is the Boyfriend ('s feet) and Maddie a.k.a Maddog. They both live in Arizona. The Boyfriend graduates in December and is planning to move out here in January to live with Sport and me. It will definitely be a full house with two people and two dogs, but I am very excited. The Boyfriend also has plans to attend medical school so depending on where he goes, that where be where I look for a job after I graduate. We're just planning away here.

It's strange for me to ever think about where I want to be and what I want to do. In high school and college, it was so easy to say, "I want to go to vet school." People would oooh and ahhh and congratulate you on your ambitions. But no one would ever ask you what you wanted to do after that. Vet School. The end.

Unfortunately, (and fortunately!!) life does not end at vet school. Now that I am in it, one cannot just be satisfied with the generic "vet school" answer. Questions are beginning to pop up like, "Where do you want to practice?" or "What kind of animals do you want to treat?" More difficult ones like "What do you hope to accomplish in your career?" and "Do you want to start a family?" begin to haunt me.

When I got accepted into vet school, my life changed more drastically than I ever imagined. I have to begin planning for my future and it honestly terrifies me. Thinking years in advance makes me nervous. I would rather just dream about what ifs and wouldn't that be nice (nices?)...

As of right now, the furthest I am looking ahead is January of next year when the Boyfriend and dog move in. That's enough planning for me.

A little different way of thinking

One of the main draws of Illinois' vet school is its brand new curriculum. This was the major reason I was so in love with the school. It just started the year before us, so we are still technically guinea pigs, but everyone is trying really hard to make it all work for us. It is different than the other schools in the country and as of right now, I really think it works well.

In order to understand how Illinois' program is different, you must first understand how traditional schools work. In a traditional curriculum students spend their first year learning about what is "normal" - that is, anatomy, histology, physiology ect. In their second year they learn "abnormal" - so parasitology, immunology, ect. Then in third year they learn how to treat diseases and also begin surgery. Forth year, the students are no longer in class and are instead in the clinics diagnosing and treating real cases alongside clinicians. Most students do not get any sort of clinical experience at all in their first two years and limited exposure in their third year. While this is a fine way to learn (they have been doing it forever and producing amazing vets, so it has to work), it does create a steep learning curve for 4th year. Not only do you have to apply everything you have learned in the past 3 years, you have to learn how to present yourself in a clinic setting, learn to run and interpret tests, learn new computer programs, learn your way around... well, you get my point. There is a reason that the 4th years look like very scared zombies.

Our curriculum is different in multiple ways, the most evident being that we have 24 more weeks of clinical experience than traditional schools. In fact, we begin our education by spending the first 8 weeks of school in the clinics shadowing 4th year students. This gives the new students a chance to see how the teaching hospital is run and what is expected of them once they hit 4th year. We also learned basic handling, suturing, physical exams and other basic procedures. It is the hope that this experience will give us a good foundation to base our further education on.

In our second year, we get to spend another 8 weeks in clinics. This time we refine the skills we learned prior and also get to have more responsibilities in assisting the 4th year students. Then in our third year, we immediately begin surgery at the beginning of the year and the last 8 weeks of our third year we jump into clinics and take over for the leaving 4th years. This is because in the last 8 weeks of our 4th year, before graduation, we get to choose what to do. They explained this period as a time to interview for jobs, do off site rotations, begin internships, and other pre-graduation education. I'm not sure I really understand it, just yet, but I am sure we'll figure it out when it comes time.

My first experience with clinicals was amazing. I came into vet school with very little large animal experience, so I was thrilled that I got assigned three large animal rotations: Equine Medicine and Sugery, Farm Animal Medicine and Surgery, and Dairy Cattle Medicine. My dairy rotation was by far my most educational and fun rotation. Other rotations that I had included: Ophthalmology, Anesthesia, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, Small Animal Soft Tissue Surgery, and Emergency Medicine. All of them were very educational for me and I had a lot of fun on most. Some of my classmates felt overwhelmed, ignored at times, or bored with certain rotations. I feel as if the clinicians still aren't terribly comfortable to have us there, but that also this experience is what you make it. On my emergency rotation, I checked in when they weren't busy because I knew that things could change at any time while my other classmates on that rotation chose to stay in the back room to do their assignments.

Another big change in the curriculum is that instead of having several classes throughout the semester, we have one big superclass. Within this one class we have different professors teaching different material such as anatomy, histology, neurology, and physiology. However, we have one big test for all of the material. This means that our grades are usually composed of one midterm, one final and a couple of quizzes. That may seem scary to you. To have one test make up 30% of your 9-10 credit class is kinda weird. However, I really enjoy it. Not only does this make the professors work together to present the material and write the tests (so there is little confusion of opinions), but if you aren't doing so great in one section, you can still get an overall good grade as long as you do well enough on the other sections. This really helped me out last quarter as I was not doing well in respiratory physiology. If I had a test on respiratory phys., I would have failed it. But, because it was incorporated into a test with anatomy and histology (which I rocked at) and other sections, I was able to maintain my grade.

There are other little tweaks that I won't get into right now, cuz I have to get to bed, but this should give you an idea of our new curriculum. It really is an awesome way to learn. Our professors are always trying to tie in out experiences in clinics with what we are learning in class and it is extremely helpful for me. I am very much a "why" kind of learner and this curriculum is all about "WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS STUFF." That isn't to say that there are not downsides to this curriculum, but I feel as if this will someday be the norm among vet schools.

A recap

I never imagined that I would move to Illinois. After I got rejected from CSU in 2009, I knew I had a year to DO something. CSU told me that they would like to see me have more large animal experience (as in horses, cows, pigs, sheep, ect.). The thing is, I worked almost full time at the shelter and getting in with large animal people is hard with zero experience. As my graduation neared, I felt more out of control and lost than I had ever felt. That is largely why I gave up on this blog. I felt as if I had nothing to contribute and considered dropping out of the vet med race entirely.

In August 2009, I still hadn't started my application. I was scared to put myself out there again to be rejected. My rejection from CSU was so painful after I had put so much of myself into getting to that place. I didn't want to get hurt again. I also hadn't gotten my large animal experience. One day, my old veterinarian called me up. Her tech was leaving, she knew I didn't get into vet school, and she was wondering if I was interested in a full time job.

I have always loved this vet clinic. Dr. Muench's clinic and clientele are what my dreams are based on. Our clients are our friends, our neighbors, our partners. The clinic is cozy and clean and inviting. Dr. Muench is a caring veterinarian that I trust immensely. I jumped at the opportunity to not only become a tech, finally, but to just learn more from my mentor.

I started in mid August and talked to Dr. Muench about reapplying to vet schools. I had it in my head to apply to schools other than CSU this time. I had a feeling that CSU wouldn't accept me this year if I hadn't gotten the experience they wanted, but maybe other schools would. After all, CSU is known for it's competitiveness.

To speed up this tale - I applied to the University of Illinois, the University of Missouri, Iowa State University, Pennsylvania State University, Washington State University and Western University (in California). I interviewed at Iowa State and Illinois. Iowa State... was tolerable to me. I didn't love it, but I could see myself living there for four years, at least. Illinios was like... home.

To say that I loved this school right off the bat would be an understatement. I felt so excited and alive when I was here. I have never felt that way about any other vet school, not even CSU. As it turned out, I got waitlisted at Iowa State and accepted here at Illinois. I immediately withdrew my name on the waitlist at Iowa State and sent my confirmation card here.

I finished up my year at Olde Towne, learning as much as I could from Dr. Muench. I polished my skills and prepared to move my entire life to Urbana, Illinois for the next four years.

Then it hit me. I didn't want to leave Colorado. I loved it there. My friends and family were there (excluding the Boyfriend). But... this was my opportunity to pick up and move. When else will I have a chance to move across the country based solely on what *I* want? So with that, I packed up my car (and another car), strapped Sport into a seatbelt and drove to my new home.

It helps that I have family in Chicago. And my old roommate, Amber, is going to Purdue's vet school which is only about 2 hours from me. We see each other as often as our schedules allow. I miss home, but the vet school still has me under her spell. There are still days that I sit back and go, "Woah! I am really here. I am really a vet student!" And it feels good.

Okay, it's really late (so I apologize for the lack of photos - maybe I'll change that later, and the bad writing style) and I had a really exciting day today (post on the coming up). I will write tomorrow about UIUC's vet school curriculum and why it is so freaking amazing.

Goodnight!

A new, shiny week

I have started to see my life in five day blocks. Every one of those five days holds something different, but some constants remain.

I will always hate Mondays, even if it is grand rounds day (like today! Interesting lunch lecture about anticonvulsants... which reminds me that I need to email Kenya's mom... but it wasn't as interesting as the Littlest Lemur topic from a few months ago). I will always have to pack a lunch on Tuesdays as the Wildlife Medical Clinic rounds are held every Tuesday during our noon period. I will always feel like Wednesdays drag on FOREVER. I will alway be excited about Thursdays, even if my bereavement issues class makes me really depressed in the evenings. And Fridays can never come soon enough.

Right now we are learning about reproductive...everything. It's really interesting but it reduces everyone to middle schoolers - even the professors. One of my professors told us that we should have had egg harvesting parties when we were 17 because we chose our careers over our fertility. Today, his lecture turned quite a few girls off of ever giving birth. He is, for all his craziness, my favorite professor. Not only is he fun to listen to but you can absolutely tell just how much he enjoys his subject and most importantly, teaching it to others. I also like to daydream that he is like Indiana Jones and has crazy adventures when he isn't here teaching us about placentas and testicles. The middle schooler bit is getting a tad old though. It's making me annoyed and irritated with school in general. But that's probably just an excuse for my own laziness.

However, Mondays are always hard for me. Today moreso, since we just returned from spring break and I went from lazy days in beautiful northern Arizona to the crazy whirl of vet school in drab Chambana (that's Champaign-Urbana for you uncool people). I miss the Boyfriend. I miss the Boyfriend's dog. I miss nature.

The hardest part of moving to Central Illinois/the Midwest was not leaving my family, my friends, the only state I have ever lived in, even my job. The hardest part was leaving this:

I miss taking my dog for a quick walk and ending up on a hiking trail. I miss seeing the most beautiful sunsets in the world. I think my heart will always be in Colorado, even if I don't plan on going back for a while. I might even be like my sister and never return permanently. But I am thankful that I lived in such an amazing place and I will always dream about going "home."

Being in Flagstaff with the Boyfriend really reminded me of what I am missing here in the cornfields and cow patties. You can see the stars there. You can smell the pine trees. You can walk out your front door, down the street and BAM! You are on a lovely hiking trail. You can go outside at night and not be afraid that you are going to get stabbed (yes, a real problem in my neighborhood here).

But some things I am in love with/looking forward to in Chambana: The Farmer's Market! The dog park (and most of the people that frequent it)! The different wildlife species that I see in the clinic! Um... that's all I got, really. I still miss the West.

Okay forgive me if I haven't given proper background info for this post. I was just feeling melancholy. I promise to bring you up to speed in the next few days.

Okay, okay okay

So...

It's been two years.

I've never really said that I was good at this sort of stuff, did I? Things came up. Things got complicated.... Life changed.

Two years.

A lot has happened in those two years. Would you like to know about them? Probably, if you are still reading this you know about them all. But for those who don't, let's bring you up to speed:

Since my last post:

-Lacy got adopted. She is spoiled rotten. Literally - she is a nasty ankle biter now and her new mama loves it. :/

-So did Empress, then she got returned. Then she went to a different foster home. Then she was sent back to the shelter. For the last two years, that is where she lives. Go and adopt her. She needs it.

-I did graduate from CSU (yay!). I am now a Biologist and a Zoologist. thankyouverymuch.

-The shelter and I parted ways. I worked there until August of 2009 and left it to pursue another job. I still fostered for them for a little bit and I am still in contact with them a lot.

-I fell in love with a boy. He is now the Boyfriend.

-I worked from August 2009-August 2010 at Olde Towne again. I was the head vet tech and it was amazing. I owe everything to Dr. Muench.

-I got into the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois.

-I moved to Urbana, Illinois. (Sport came too)

-Life is wonderful.

So that's life in a nutshell. I am currently finishing up my first year at UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). I adore it, but I'll post another entry about that later.

Future posts will include:

Updates on the awesome Sport dog (and pictures! I promise.)

A look into life at UIUC

An intro to the boyfriend and his dog, Maddie

A review of this past school year

And lots, lots more!

Let's hope I post again before March 2013!

ETA: I changed the look of the blog. Let me know if it is too much.

Blah.

I am totally failing all my classes. Except maybe my writing class.

And by failing I am not exaggerating. I am literally getting D's and C's on my tests. I need to get a C+ in all my classes in order to graduate.

I used to get straight A's! I was on the Dean's List!

I think the combination of not getting into vet school (and thus not having anything to motivate me to get A's in my classes) and a serious case of senioritis is affecting me. I got to get better at this game. Or else, I am going to break my parent's hearts...

With good news... there must come bad...

I got my rejection letter from CSU vet school today.

I don't know if it has hit me yet. Actually I am sure it hasn't as the tears have threatened but not come. I was expecting it, but at the same time, hoping against it with all my might.

I am lost and heavy hearted. I'll look on the bright side tomorrow. For now, I am content to wallow in misery.

Now we wait...

I just submitted my vet school application. ((Big sigh of relief)) It is amazing to think about all that I have done leading up to this one decision. Putting my fate in the hands of a bunch of nameless, faceless people... it is scary indeed. But what is done is done, and I can only hope that I have done enough to impress someone on that board. Now we wait until.... February.

Today, I also went and paid rent and another pet deposit since I kept Sport. I was paying it, and the woman asks, "Do you know about our restricted breed list?" I respond with, a very shocked NO.

"Oh it's the usual. You know, Pit Bulls, Rotts, Dobies, Akitas, and German Shepherds."

Oh man, I was pissed. When I rented this place, I specifically asked if there were any breed restrictions and I was told no. Now I am told there are? Right when I am going to get a Pitty Puppy?! The worst part is, I rented this house even though it was more expensive and further away from school than another house I was looking at, just because I didn't want to support a company that supports BSL.

My roommate thinks we should take the pup anyway. He's just a foster, and it isn't in our lease.