Is it spring break yet?

We are still two weeks away from Spring Break, and the first-years are getting noticeably bi-polar as we approach next week (or, as we fondly refer to it, Hell Week). It's our first experience with four exams in one week- Monday Immunology, Tuesday Organology, Friday Physiology AND Pharmacology. Plus we have an Immunology quiz due the same day as the test, and a paper due on Sunday the 11th (but who wants to turn in homework after break has already started?). Not to mention that our glorious 9 AM start time is being pushed back to 8 AM to allow us to shove Virology into the mix.

So my classmates and I are either giddy and making dumb lab jokes like "I'll show you my cilia if you'll show me your ascinus," or we're snarking at each other for stealing chairs or cutting in line for lunch. I suddenly understand why the second years are so perpetually grumpy (no offense second years!), considering their test schedule is like this fairly regularly.

We are still getting reminders to balance our lives, find time for physical activity, don't forget family and friends, do yoga, don't be a workaholic... But if we aren't workaholics, we won't pass our classes, and where will that leave us? Well-balanced and kicked out of school. :-/

Okay, okay, vent over. In happier news, the Holistic Club is really getting off the ground! Wahoo. Lots of good interest, and our first speaker will soon be scheduled. I have gotten a few snarky comments ("Well, I want to go into large animal medicine, and Chinese stuff won't get me far in THAT world."), but almost everyone has been really positive. We'll see where we go. Next step is to get our acupuncture wetlab scheduled...

Winnie is being a doll, and she loves this deep snow. We'll be talking to her vet about weaning her off her anxiety medication, since she seems to have "plugged back in". I think her vet may suggest waiting until after the move, since moving is one of the major triggers of anxiety, but we'll see what he says.

Win is losing her winter fur, and there is a cardinal in front of school every morning singing "pretty pretty pretty pretty". The critters think spring is coming- that means it must be close, right? East Bearskin feels impossibly far away.

Small vent...

... and then I'll start studying, I swear...

At the beginning of lab last week, a professor instructed us to get into our Foal Team groups. They were short an instructor, so instead of one instructor per group, one group had to split up amongst the others (so we had to make five groups out of six). The prof told our group that, since we were the smallest, we would be split up. I told her that our other group member was on her way down to lab, and she replied with, "Well, it's 9:00 and we have to get started, and she's not here." Okay, not a problem, fine by me. I don't care if we get split up. But then she added, "I understand your desire to cling, but we can't hold up the entire lab while we wait for her." Uh. Excuse me? My "desire to cling"? You think I'm worried that people who aren't on my Foal Team have cooties?

The admin makes such a big deal about "treating each other as future colleagues." I think that should extend to the profs too- after all, we are their future colleagues as well. I never had a prof at Olaf talk down to me like that, and I was certainly farther from being their future colleague than the vets who are teaching us now. I may be a first year, but I am a first year in professional school, not high school. Please don't treat me like a snot-nosed kid.

Maybe it wasn't that big a deal, and I was in a sour mood because I a) really wanted to be in bed, and b) knew the lab was going to end with a dead goat. Who knows. But this wasn't the first time that it has struck me how un-student-centered vet school is compared to Olaf. I understand that it's a teaching hospital, and that there are important things going on there, but I don't like feeling like I'm in the way when I'm a vet student in a vet school.

That is all. Time to study!