Hey guys! I know that I already talked a little about the classes that I’m taking, but I wanted to talk a little more about our clinical competencies class! Surprisingly, we don’t have the opportunity to work with “live” animals very often until third year when we start clinicals. While there are so many extracurricular opportunities to get hands on experience, the curriculum itself doesn’t provide many experiences. That may change with the new curriculum next year, but as of now that’s how it is. You can imagine, then, that my favorite class this semester is the one where I get to spend time with living animals! After all, isn’t this one of the driving factors for why we want to be veterinarians? We call this class “clin com” for short and it is the HIGHLIGHT of my week. We have a lab a week and each week has a specific species focus. Most of the time is spent learning how to handle large animals, as most incoming students have more small animal experiences.
The first two weeks were spent at the MSU dairy barn. Personally, I love cows, so to spend time at the farm was great! Some students in my class came back from the farm and were slightly disgusted and overwhelmed by the amount of manure cows produce. Haha. It’s probably a good thing we have this class for that reason. After all, every vet has to learn every subject regardless of what you think you’re interested in. I change what I think I want to do with every new experience I have. It’s really great. At the cow barn, we practiced haltering, palpating lymph nodes, taking temperature, respiration, pulse, and we also listened to lung and gut sounds. If you didn’t know, cows have a rumen, which is a chambered stomach and it sounds really unique! It’s fun when you get to hear those sounds. The next segment was about handling wildlife. For this lab, the potter park zoo brought a lot of animals to the college. I got to hold a snake, ferret, rat, turtle, and a blue skink! We also watched a vet anesthetize and trim the beak of a red-tailed hawk. Our prof also let us shoot a dart gun…not at an animal of course, but still cool nonetheless! If you’re interested in wildlife, there is a wildlife ward within the hospital that students can volunteer at. Horses were the next animal in the class. I grew up riding horses, but the veterinary aspect of handling horses is very different than that of training. I hadn’t thought of this before, but as the vet, you are the “bad guy” in the eyes of a horse and have to take extra precautions because of that. We learned in this lab how to “twitch” a horse. For those of you who don’t know what that is (I definitely didn’t), it’s a method used to control a horse during a procedure. A twitch can be used if a horse is misbehaving or can be used to simply distract the horse from what’s coming, like the poke from a vaccination. During these labs we also learned how to do a complete physical exam, learned where to draw blood from, and palpated lymph nodes. If you aren’t comfortable around horses, these are the best animals to learn on because they are extremely well behaved and friendly! This week, we are spending time with sheep! I’ve heard from some classmates that this lab is really great because you have to chase and tackle the sheep for control. Who wouldn’t want to do that?! Anyways, this class constantly reminds me why I’m studying so much and am tired all the time. It is the light at the end of the tunnel. :) Until next time!
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Hello there! My name is Liz and I’ve never written a blog before, so this is going to be really, really informal. For those of you who don’t know me, I am a first-year vet student at MSU and I graduated from GVSU. I have a passion for large animals and grew up raising 4-H calves. I thought I would start these off by talking a little bit about what my schedule looks like and what classes 1st year students take. The first 2 ½ years of vet school is called the “pre-clinical” phase. During this time the vet school plans your schedule for you….like every single hour. I’m currently taking 20 credits and have 7 classes. I wake up around 6:45am and am out the door by 7:15am. I have four 50 minute lectures every morning. We stay in the same room for all of these and after each lecture a new moderator comes in. Oh, in vet school you have several professors for each class – they team teach. So the main professor – the one that would update the grades and send the majority of the emails, etc. is referred to as the moderator. After morning lectures we always have at least one hour to eat lunch. Some afternoons we have back to back labs and other afternoons we have a three hour break after lunch and will only have one lab that afternoon. There was one day this semester where I had class from 8am until 7pm with a one hour break for lunch. Talk about a mentally exhausting day. After class I usually go home, make dinner, and then study until 11pm. Vet school isn’t like undergrad where you have some classes and then wait until the week before the exam to look over the material again. There is WAY too much information for that. This is my third week of school and I have four exams. From now until thanksgiving I have anywhere from 1 to 4 exams every week. Last Friday I studied until 8pm and then “took the night off.” On Saturday I was up at 8am and studied until 6pm. I slept in until 9am on Sunday and then studied until 10pm, but I took a few hours off in the middle of the day to regain my sanity at the dog park. But I have survived thus far and am making time to write to you guys, so if I can do it, so can you! Something else that is weird about vet school is that the lectures aren’t mandatory. They are all recorded so you aren’t required to be in class. You can stream the lectures from home. An upperclassman told me during orientation that he sleeps during morning lectures, shows up for afternoon labs, sleeps until 9pm and then studies until 6am. If that works for you, great! If you’re like me and know that you would get behind on the lecture material, then force yourself to go to class. It’s just like high school again! We even have lockers! So what classes am I taking…
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Elizabeth RitchieElizabeth Ritchie, a 2017 graduate of Grand Valley State University, is a first year veterinary student at Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine. ArchivesCategories |