9.5 more days

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Guess what I’m doing right now? No, not blogging. I’m writing up the pre-lab for my LAST! CHEM LAB! EVER! I mean, it’s a 3 part lab, so it isn’t like I’m completely done. But it WILL be the last time I ever have to sit here slaving away all Wednesday afternoon in my yellow lab notebook, before going to spend 3 hours in a dark Chemistry lab… on my anniversary no less!

I have been DRAGGING today… no energy. I’m sure not eating breakfast had a lot to do with that, but I forgot my granola bar today. I ate an orange at 1pm and felt instantly better. Then I had lunch and took a lemon, ginger, and cayenne shot. Woo!

10 more days

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Well, I don’t know if today really counted as a schoolday because I went to my morning class, then ditched the rest of the day. I stayed home from math and RVT club with the intention of catching up on math homework. I did do one homework assignment, a midterm, and a quiz. I got bad grades on the non-homework items, because I COULD. NOT. FOCUS. Like my brain cannot be bothered to compute schoolwork right now… I don’t know what is going on. Somehow, my grade wasn’t affected. I also did my last Health article write-up, which I need to remember to print out tomorrow!

I also didn’t feel too bad about staying home from RVT Club because I told myself from the beginning that I was not going to sacrifice my schoolwork to do something extra curricular that wasn’t required of me. I am doing my small part, but I can’t make it to every meeting.

Tonight I walked to dinner with my husband which was nice. We watched Mad Men and now I am writing here, thinking about Farm Duty tomorrow morning, which isn’t so bad, but then I have Chemistry and Health and then Chem Lab tomorrow night. It’s also our two-year anniversary… so it kinda sucks that I am spending it all day in school. :(

Day by day

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Can’t….wait…til…summer….. barely….holding….onto…. sanity

Well maybe that’s a bit dramatic. But I am officially counting down the days til summer. Literally, I have a countdown on the whiteboard in my kitchen. 33 days til summer vacay!!! And really, only 14 of those are class days. And of those 14, only about 11 are actual lecture/lab days, the rest are finals. Sooo… we are in the home stretch! Spring semester is so much harder to stay focused, I’m learning. Spring Break + beautiful weather at the end do not make it easy to stay focused. Plus, my two year anniversary with my husband is Weds (!!) and his birthday party is the weekend after next, and my sister is getting married the weekend after that. Even more reason to get my butt in gear.

But my grades are keeping up, for the most part. I did get an A in my medical terminology class, which is nice. I figured I would, and it’s only 1 credit, but still, nice! I have 3 of my 4 Chemistry exams done (not counting the final), and I’ve gotten Bs on all of them. My quiz average is a low A though. My last 501 quiz was pretty sucky, I got a B again. I wanted an A. But I really don’t like the way he teaches material or gives tests. I studied what he said to study and still there were about 10 questions I swear I never heard of before. What are ya gonna do? At least our next midterm is online. Health continues to be a cake walk. I am behind on Math but what else is new. I got a 97% on the last midterm in that class, pretty positive I will walk away with an A when all is said and done.

Hoping for a big surge of energy the next week or so, so I can play catchup on my math homework. Oh yes, and I will keep you all informed on how registration goes in 11 days. I am trying not to stress about it.

Toodles!

Farm Walk

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Yesterday was probably one of the best days I’ve had in a while, and definitely one of the best days I’ve had at school to date! It was our school’s annual Farm Walk celebration/fundraiser. We do all kinds of fun things – hay rides, face painting, pony rides, etc. It’s got a strong educational spin on it so the community can learn about everything we do here at school and all the great experiences provided to us by having the farm. I was scheduled to work at the information booth in the morning and at the goat unit in the afternoon but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the info booth had too many people so I got to spend all day at the goat unit.

This is what our Boer kids look like! So cute!

The RVT Club sponsored the “looking zoo” and we sold t-shirts and Jamba Juice. It was a super success! I got to spend all day talking to little kids about – ha – little kids (baby goats) and helping them feed the goats. Of course the babies were really uninterested in eating out of most people’s hands, especially that of a little wiggly kid. They aren’t used to being around that many people so they were pretty shy. We rotated the kids out every few hours so they weren’t away from their mama too long, the second group did much better than the first group. I wasn’t expecting to get so much hands-on time with the goats, but around noon all the other volunteers kind of disappeared so I gladly took over hanging out in the pen. At the end of the day I helped the more senior students return the goats to their enclosure, which meant I got to carry one of the goats. Sure this may not be everyone’s dream task, but – I GOT TO CARRY A GOAT!!! It’s hard to describe, but I honestly felt honored that I was trusted to be that involved with the animals. At the end of the day I was so happy I felt like I could do it all over again. I also got to chat with two of my favorite professors, who were at the unit all day supervising.  I will take any opportunity to talk to them, because they have so much experience and wisdom. I look up to them so much! I am so glad they will be teaching most of my classes for the rest of the program. They gave me a lot of advice about volunteering and such, and during one conversation, one of them told me that I was definitely in the right field – which just about made my life. They also complimented me on my attitude towards school, and told me that without me the day couldn’t have been possible. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it really made me feel like I was glowing from the inside out. Getting a compliment from someone you have so much respect and admiration for is just about the most wonderful feeling ever. I literally felt on top of the world on the way home. If I am able to get even a quarter of that kind of high from working in this field, it will be one hell of an awesome career.

When I got home, however, I was more tired than I think I’ve ever been. I didn’t partake in much manual labor, and though it was hot outside, it wasn’t that bad, so I’m not sure why I was so exhausted. I was so tired I could hardly sleep, if that makes any sense. I had to lay down for a few hours until my husband came home that night. He had been in NY for four days so I was very happy to see him. And now I am at home on a Monday afternoon and it is pretty great knowing I don’t have to go back to school today for medical terminology. Instead, I will keep catching up on that Math homework! And study for one of my two exams on Thurs.

More sweet kids (not the ones from the farm).

Back to business.

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Well, things improved with my attitude towards school just as I hoped they would. After a few days back in from Spring Break it was like I never left. I guess having a break in the middle just felt too much like summer break and I didn’t want to go back! But since then I’ve had a Chem exam that I got a B on, took my 401 final so now I am DONE with medical terminology, and basically that has been it. I haven’t had a couple of exams that I thought I was going to have, and my Chem professor didn’t give us a quiz on Thursday like he had originally scheduled. We are probably going to have it on Monday now. My husband is out of town this weekend so I am using the time to tackle as much of my math & chem homework as I possibly can… I am pretty behind in math but somehow even with “overdue” midterms, quizzes, and homework, it says I have an 85% – so I know in reality I have a solid A. I am pretty sure I have As in all my classes except Chem, that will probably be a B.

Let’s see, this weekend is Farm Walk, a fundraising event that the agriculture department has every Spring to raise money and invite the community to see all the neat stuff we have going on at the farm. We’re required to work 10 hours, so I will be there all day tomorrow, working the information booth and hanging out with the goats. Exciting! It will be A MILLION degrees so I’ll be wearing lots of sunblock and drinking plenty of water. I about died yesterday morning when I was there, doing manual labor, sweating in the sun. I love it though. I’d take that over being in an office cubicle ANY day.

We had an RVT from the LA zoo come talk to our 401 class on the last day, it was pretty neat. Sometimes I think it would be incredible to work with zoo animals, but other times I’m not sure. Perhaps if it were all big cats, monkeys/non-human primates, and bears, I’d be okay. I’m just not sure if I’d enjoy working with all the odd species and reptiles/amphibians as much, but who knows, maybe I’d love it. I am going to try to start volunteering at the Wildlife Waystation this summer so I can get more experience with exotic animals and wildlife. I updated my resume last night so I can try to volunteer at a local animal hospital too. I really need to start getting that experience under my belt. I will be taking a work study class in the Fall and I’d like to have an existing relationship with a small clinic here that I can get my tasks checked off without having to go to some corporate animal hospital where I don’t know anyone.

Another thing I’d like to do this summer is take horseback riding lessons. I’ve been on a horse a few times, but never had real lessons. I’ve always loved being around horses, but I am not a “horse girl” – you know, the kind of girl (or guy) that really only cares about horses. We have an equine science department at our school so we have a lot of horse people there!

The fall schedule of classes came out this week and I promptly made about 4 different schedule options for me. We got our registration dates and mine is May 18 – later than anyone else I talked to. :( I will be SUPER bummed if I don’t get into the classes I need. For the record, here is what I am planning on taking:

Microbiology
Anatomy & Physiology of Animals
Phys Ed (Yoga)
Work Study

It’s only 10 credits, the bulk of my studying will be Micro & Anatomy/Phys. They are both tough classes. The Anatomy class only has ONE lecture so if I don’t get into that one, I am screwed. I can try to crash the class when it starts, & I know the teacher is pretty good about letting a lot of people in (he is my Principles of Animal Science teacher this semester), so maybe I will have a good chance. Micro has several sections, only a few of which might work for me. If I HAD TO, they have evening classes, and I could do it, I’ve done it before. But I will avoid that at all costs. Yoga has several sections too but is a very popular option for PE and since PE is required for all students you can imagine how quickly it fills up. They have Friday & Saturday classes, but I would HIGHLY prefer to have my weekends free. Friday I could deal with, but Saturdays…. NOOO PLEASE. I like to be able to take weekend trips!

I really got lucky this semester with having my early registration, part of the reason why I took advantage and enrolled in as many classes as I could possibly handle! But all those classes are required for me to get into the Upper Level RVT program. The program director is flexible, she knows that sometimes you can’t get into your classes, and my grades are good, so if I weren’t able to get into PE, or Micro, I think she’d allow me to start taking the uppers as long as I agree to take it as soon as possible. But Anatomy? I don’t know if she would allow me in without that one. And I’m not trying to be in school for 3 more years. 2.5 is bad enough. Blahhh. No use borrowing tomorrow’s problems though. But I can’t wait until May 18 so I can at least know what classes I CAN get into. And then I can spend all summer worrying about whether or not I’ll get into the others, just like last year. :)

Back to homework…. xo

Spring Break

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I’d like to be as honest as I can be on this blog, since the whole point of writing it is not just so I can look back at my experience, but so other future students can read and get a feel for what it is like. I don’t always have time to write every detail (though I always plan to…) because I spend the bulk of my free time studying & living life. But I try.

So today I have to be brutally honest. I am OVER school right now. Maybe it’s because today is the last day of Spring Break, or that the weather is finally starting to be nice & warm everyday, or maybe just because I’m burned out from this too-hectic semester, but I have been hiding from my homework & studying all week and whining to my husband about having to get back in the classroom tomorrow. Waahhhh I want to stay home! I don’t WANT to study Chemistry. I don’t WANT to write an essay. I don’t WANT to do my math homework. I don’t WANT to take an exam. I don’t WANT to write up a lab.

Blahhh. Before Spring Break I was hooting & hollering, “I’m halfway done!!” and now, a week later, I’m whining & crying, “I’m only halfway done?!?!” I am so looking forward to summer!

Cry cry cry.

I will never, ever take this many credits in a semester again. It is just too much for my little brain to handle. I’m thankful to have had this week to spend with my family & friends. I flew home to celebrate my sister’s bridal shower & my Mom’s 50th birthday, then spent the rest of the week here at home with my husband, eating, relaxing, watching Mad Men, cleaning up the house, etc.

Aside from going to the farm on Thursday morning to take care of the chickens & sheep, and taking my 501 midterm online last Friday (first day of Spring Break – I got a 98.7), I haven’t cracked a book. The emails from my professors telling me I need to be studying “every other day” or that I need to do a pre-lab writeup by Weds for a FOUR-WEEK-LONG lab are just making me dread it even more. I have an exam on Beef Production on Thurs, and an exam in Chemistry. I have my final in medical terminology on Monday, and an essay due the same day. I have a lot of math homework, which I will probably start working on here shortly so I can feel a little productive. Right now I am feeling kinda glad that I busted my butt to get As the first half of the semester in case I slack off second half. But, I know I will likely jump back in tomorrow & feel better about things, get back in the groove, feel more optimistic. Right now though? The last thing I want to think about is schoolwork. The thought of it makes me sleepy.

I’m going to approach the last half of the semester with a more balanced mindset so I don’t let myself get so crazy stressed that I can’t even function. I will try and be more accepting of getting Bs instead of killing myself for As, just to prove I am smart. And next semester…. I am taking only TEN credits!! Which technically isn’t even full-time, but really it’s all I need to take before I apply to the upper level program. Matter of fact, this will be my last ‘full-time’ semester of the entire program!! That is hard to believe. But most of the upper level semesters will be anywhere from 5-10 credits. Here’s how I have it laid out on paper (pending I am able to register for the classes):

FALL 2012

AS 511 – Anatomy & Physiology of Animals (3)
AS 512 – Anatomy & Physiology of Animals Lab (1)
AS181 – Work Study (1)
MICRO 20 – General Microbiology (4)
PE 225 – Yoga (1) or Tennis (1)
TOTAL: 10

-apply for Upper Level courses-

SPRING 2013

AS 470 – Laboratory Animal Care (2)
AS 402 – Topics in Vet Technology (2)
AS 430 – Clinical Pathology (2)
AS 431 – Clinical Pathology Lab (1)
TOTAL:  7

FALL 2013

AS 410 – Small Animal Nursing I (2)
AS 411 – Small Animal Nursing Lab (1)
AS 420 – Clinical Procedures I (2)
AS 421 – Clinical Procedures Lab (1)
TOTAL:  6

SPRING 2014

AS 412 – Small Animal Nursing II (2)
AS 413 – Small Animal Nursing II Lab (1)
AS 422 – Clinical Procedures II (2)
AS 423 – Clinical Procedures II Lab (1)
AS 480 – Clinical Experience for Vet Techs (6)
TOTAL: 10

FALL 2014

AS 435 – Veterinary Radiography (2)
AS 436 – Veterinary Radiography Lab (1)
AS 441 – Large Animal Nursing (2)
TOTAL:  5

SPRING 2015: GRADUATE! & have a baby. Haha.

 

Looking at that makes me feel a lot better. I’ve got this! If I can get through this semester… I will never have to sit through 4 straight days of nonstop classes again! (Unless I decide to finish my Bachelor’s one day, but I think you can probably guess that the idea of that is looking pretty unappealing to me right now.)

Stress

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Sometimes, life is stressful. Sometimes, it’s too much to handle. Like today, because I have too much going on in my life (all good things – but even too many good things at once can make a person go crazy). Somehow, writing my pre-labs for Chemistry lab has taken my heart rate back down to a more healthy level than it was about an hour ago. Writing formulas and procedures that are systematic, tried-and-true, no questions about it, makes me feel calm. It can be challenging, and our lessons can be hard to understand at times, but there is always a right and a wrong way to do things, and for that, I love it. I love the way everything just “works” in science. It may take you some time to get there, but the solution is set and for that, I am grateful.

Closer to caught up

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It’s been a while since I’ve updated because it’s been my very own version of a hell week. My brother came into town last Friday evening with his three roommates, who were here for the weekend before leaving on a cruise. My brother ran the LA marathon on Sunday, and then was here visiting with us til Thursday (awesome). I love having him here. But I am not used to having to divide my time with family and school… besides just going to class, I had a couple big quizzes and two exams. Not to mention my husband was crazy busy as well and then left for a business trip on Wednesday, so we have hardly had any time together! By the time Thursday night rolled around, I was SPENT. I seriously crashed and it felt so good to just sit on the couch and do nothing. I spent the weekend playing catchup on a lot of homework and studying. I did several of my overdue homework assignments for math, two online quizzes and an online midterm (As on all!). I am nearly at a point where I am “caught up,” but I’m not sure if this semester will ever really allow for that. I am proud of myself for staying afloat and getting all As & Bs so far. Last semester I cringed at every B, now I am like, “hey, it’s a B!” :) Somehow I feel like I am not completely lost on all the material either, and I actually got an A on my last Chem quiz, which was awesome.

So yeah, all in all a good but busy week. Got to hang out with my brother. Got to play catchup on a bunch of studying, & I started running again which feels great. I ran 4.5 miles on Sat and then did 5k tonight. It’s not always easy to fit it into my schedule, but it always makes me feel so much better.

But now I am tired. And tomorrow morning we are meeting at the goat unit to do hoof trimming, tagging, vaccines, and more fun stuff I’m sure. Yay! Goodnight!

The grossest thing I’ve come across so far

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I don’t get grossed out by too many things in my studying (so far), but I have to admit, syndactylism is totally skeeving me out!!!

Syndactylism is ‘joining together of two or more digits’ – this can mean fingers OR toes. I don’t know why, I’m sure it’s relatively harmless, but it really gives me the heebie jeebies. At least when it’s a human condition… I’m sure if it were a cat with two ‘toes’ stuck together I wouldn’t mind. Yet another reason why I am destined to be an animal nurse… NOT a human nurse!

First Chem exam

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85.5%. SUCK. I wanted an A so badly. I could have had one, if it weren’t for some mind-boggling stupid mistakes I made, like writing law instead of hypothesis and saying that precision is necessary for finding accuracy in measurement when I know it’s true value. BARFF!!!! It is still a high B, so I am happy, and he does drop the lowest exam score, so maybe (hopefully) this will be mine.

But if I end up with a B in Chem, I will still be proud of myself.

Speaking of Chem, lab reports are one of my least favorite things to do. Writing them up takes FOREVER and is painful because the carbon paper we use is so crappy I have to press SO HARD for it to show up on the page behind it. My hand/arm always aches after I’m done. At least it is just once a week… and we are almost halfway through the semester!