I am not sure if it is because this is now my third year of vet school and exams are old hat, or if it's because I am so tired of taking exams I no longer care as much anymore but I have found it hard to get motivated to study for my exams this year. Normally, despite being a top notch procrastinator, I spend at least the day before and the morning of an exam stressed that I will never know enough to pass the exam and speed reading through material. Last year, I don't know of a single exam I didn't have a panic phase before, excluding the last couple of final exams where I was so tired of writing tests that I struggled to get to the finish line for the semester. This year starting off with the first exam I barely put in enough effort studying, even compared with first year when I was just realizing how much work vet school is. So far, my grades have all been fine, so obviously my retention has been decent enough- but I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely, eventually, I am going to hit a time where I go back to my panicky nature? The only exam I can think of that I actually put in a lot of effort, and actually was nervous for was my neurology/opthomalogy exam and that was because every single person I had talked to said the exam was horrendous. I am still waiting for the results from that exam, but when I left I felt like it could have gone worse, could have gone better. Normally after exams I wait for my friends to finish writing and we talk about questions that threw us off or we weren't sure about... while we still do this, I feel less like regurgitating about the exams because whatever happens, happens. I guess overall I am most nervous with this attitude- I am hoping that by the time finals rolls around I will have the drive to study harder, and the nerves to make me feel a little more like I did last year.
Maybe the nerves missing is a good thing, maybe it means I am finally comfortable with my place in vet school. I doubt that's the case and if it was, there is always something that triggers me to think "I don't have any idea what I am doing here, I really don't know that I will make it through". It's not an every day haunting feeling, but when I think about the future and what is coming up (4th year, rotations, the NAVLE, then real life!) I am plagued by concerns over my adequacy. I write each exam after essentially cramming information into my brain for 2 days straight and then once I write the exam I hardly recall what I wrote. I do get reminders every now and again that I retain more than I think, but vet school exams are a binge and purge style of living and it is not conducive to long term retention, at least not for me. This semester one of the lab based courses has us doing physicals on in-clinic patients and coming up with their problem list, rule outs, differential diagnoses and so on. It's highly useful for the rest of my career and yet when it comes to certain diseases or presentations of those diseases I blank. I know at some point I knew the pathophysiology behind a disease, the possible ways it presents... but I can't always draw a ready connection. This inability is worrisome for fourth year and beyond, as essentially that is what this career is. I am hoping that over the span of my fourth year and the remainder of this year I can pull things back together so that when I graduate I don't have a deer in the headlights glow about my new graduate face. I look at the fourth year students I have worked with or known over the last couple of years here and I think they all appear to know so much. I am hopeful that rotations instill the faith I need in myself to be successful at this job.
My semester projects/assignments/scary tasks I don't want to do list has dwindled down and for the most part aside from exams the rest of my semester is downhill. This semester there were two tasks I was most nervous for- the first was a presentation of a case we did an exam on in the hospital and the second was an shift in the ICU for a few hours. I wasn't terribly nervous for the ICU shift, as much of the tasks on our list we needed to accomplish were either things I had done before as a tech, or things that I knew they would show me when I got there. My shift for the ICU was scheduled the night after we wrote an exam and I was exhausted as I had been up since 4:30AM, and the shift wasn't scheduled to end til 9 (which as with all shifts in the veterinary world means later than that). I got to the ICU, was shown the cases in the hospital by the technician who was supervising myself and a second year student, and then we got an idea for the layout of the unit. I worked on my task list, item by item, and by the time 9:30 rolled around and I had finished the sufficient number of tasks I was more than ready to go home. I actually really enjoyed doing the ICU shift. Being a teaching hospital means that the school has "toys of the trade" that I wouldn't normally get to play with in a lot of other clinical settings. I got to see some neat cases that were there and it was a good learning experience. It took away some of the nervousness I had associated with fourth year as well. Overall, despite being tired I was glad the shift went how it did and I had ample opportunity to do things!
The second thing I dreaded doing this semester was the case presentation. Each time your group has the lab, you get assigned a case in the large animal hospital to work through. One member of your group is responsible to present your findings in a precise manner to the rest of class members present. I agreed to do the presentation for my group on the day of my birthday- thinking maybe it would be good luck! This presentation involves public speaking, something I am both not good at and not comfortable with. Despite being thrown into countless presentation situations over my academic career I have never built up a comfort level with presenting. The closest to comfortable I have come is with this group of people in my vet school class, because I am with them so often and as a class we tend to be respectful of our peers who are presenting (it's much appreciated!) My group got a case, began working through it and I furiously scribbled notes down about the case as we tried to figure out what we were finding. About halfway through the clinician overseeing us for the week came in and gave us a little bit of a hint about what we were seeing- and told us we were missing something. We sort of discovered what she meant, but not quite and by the time she came back to us to show us what she meant and discuss things a little bit I realized I needed to rework a lot of my findings/notes to present as what she said changed the clinical picture. Unfortunately because she came to us last to check back in, and decided we would be presenting first I lost the opportunity to chat with the group memebers and reorganize/confirm what I was going to say. Nonetheless, I figured I could probably combine and pull things together. So, as the other members of the class came in to hear my presentation, my nerves pounding away I began. I think I made it through about 2 sentences before the voice of the clinician interrupted me. Not only did I then lose my train of thought, but I lost a huge chunk of the "confidence" I was trying to fake. So, she told me to continue and again I made it through about two sentences before she interrupted me to tell me what I was doing wrong, again. At this point I was shaken. There was nothing I could do to mentally get back my presentation back on track. I took a deep breath and moved to the next section. Thankfully, she interrupted me a third time shortly after that, to bring up a point about the case and instead of making me stumble my way through the end she got so wrapped up in her point that I did not have to finish. I know that I was not presenting things well... I also know that I might have recovered after the first interruption but after the second I had no hope. I was pretty sure I failed the presentation, and by far I knew I was the worst presenter from the class since we had started doing them a few weeks before. She was a different clinician than we had the first two rounds of presentations and we didn't know what to expect from her. We didn't know how she ran the lab sessions (which it turned out was different from the previous clinician), and we didn't realize how she would chose to critique presentations. When she finished her spiel about the case, the final nail in my coffin was when she asked the rest of the class what their critiques for me were. If I could have shrunk into the wall and never be seen again, I would gladly have done that. Thankfully (I don't know if any of my classmates know how thankful I really was) not a single person offered any critique. They could have- there was plenty they could have said... I would probably have dissolved into tears... but thankfully no one did. We moved on to the remaining two cases, for which their presentations were more straight forward and both presenters did a good job. In the end, my grade for the presentation is not a grade I would normally be happy with- but given how it went, I was just happy I passed.
So, since the two things I was nervous for are done, I am left just plugging away on exams until the semester draws to a close. I can't believe in just under 2 months I will be done this semester and heading home for the last time in a long time. Once we finish writing our finals for the spring semester (which ends in 197 days by the way!) we have a couple days and then rotations begin for fourth year. I won't likely be going home again after this break until August. However, the true grit of fourth year- the busy pace and lack of sleep- will make time fly by and before I know it I will probably be writing some post about how I can't believe fourth year is almost done.
On a non-school related note my dad came up for Thanksgiving day weekend, as he did last year. This year, we didn't have much planned as he was only going to be here Friday night through Sunday early morning. When he got here I took him out to see sunset at one of my favorite spots on the island, and then we came back and watched The Heat- which he had never seen. Saturday we were busy, but he very kindly agreed to put my new office chair and desk together!! For sometime now my kitchen table has doubled as a desk, and not only was it cluttered and messy looking, the chair was NOT comfortable for studying 8 hours at a time in. I would finish studying and be super sore- my back, my arms- it made studying even less enjoyable. So, I splurged and dad and I made me a new little office space in my living room. Saturday night we went to a hockey game which was a lot of fun and was a great game, despite our team losing the game in overtime. I was bummed he didn't get to stay longer, but I also would have had to spend time studying if he was here any longer since we had an exam this Tuesday. Also aside from school I've been having my favorite fuzzy man spending some time with me weekly- Mr. Ryker comes on Wednesdays usually and then I bring him home Thursdays on my way into class (which best of all doesn't start til 1:30!) I look forward to laughing at his goofy antics while he is here, his cuddles... it allows me to have cuddle time with a dog, while not having to worry about how some days I am gone too long. It's been fantastic! I am not sure what my schedule next semester will shake out to be, especially because Jr. surgery on Thursday morning will mean being at school very early, but I am sure I can find some time to spend with the monkey!
So, there you have it... the school semester so far. If something worthwhile comes up I will probably gladly procrastinate for a bit to write a post about it... however I am not anticipating a lot of excitement between now and the end of the semester. I am however looking forward to Halloween. For the first time in a long long time (or maybe ever?) I bought a costume and planned an outfit in advance! We have 2 exams the week of Halloween, however the exam the week after Halloween is on a Tuesday and since Halloween falls on a Friday there is not a good reason not to go out and celebrate a little! Last year on Halloween I was just beginning the Cherokee saga with her infected knee, and I didn't go out because I was watching her while she recovered from her sedation from school. This year, I will go out and I am sure we will get to have fun. I am not going to say what I am going as yet- but I will say that it hopefully isn't too cold because my outfit is not one that would pass a New England Winter Halloween Prep test (aka... no way does a snowsuit work with it!)
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