New Semester, New Beginnings

Six days left until my glorious Christmas break finally ends, and as much as I'm going to regret saying this I'm so ready to be back to school.  However, the two things I will miss most when school starts are 1) Sleeping in and 2) My daily routine filled of watching How I Met Your Mother -- of course it's no Big Bang Theory, but I still love it.

I have a whole new set of classes this semester and am looking forward to most of them.  We have four core classes this semester (last semester we only had three) - I'm also in two hours of electives.

Here's the rundown on my core classes:

Gross Anatomy II - basic anatomy of cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, and lab animals.  Also includes large animal dissection, which will be a whole new experience for me.

Physiology II - digging deeper into the functions of the cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory, renal, digestive, reproductive and thermoregulatory systems.  This class will also focus on the criteria necessary for evaluating an animals health.  This class also has a lab period (something that Physio I didn't) so it will be interesting to see what exactly we do in this lab.

Immunology - learning and understanding the immune system and its role in fighting diseases.  Basically we'll hear the words "antigens" and "antibodies" about 50 times a class period - or so I'm guessing :)

Epidemiology - this is a new word for me.  After skimming over the class syllabus I've learned that we'll be learning about describing diseases, disease transmission, diagnostic methods and tests, and population health management.  I can't say it sounds like the most exciting class this semester, but hopefully I'll find some parts of it interesting.

Aaaaand here are my electives:

Comparative Embryology - learning about developmental anatomy and normal structure and function of the anatomy as it develops.  It also covers developmental diseases.

Bovine Theriogenology - this class is focused on cattle reproduction. 

So here's a little explanation for the electives... we basically had four options to choose from and I chose the lesser of the evils.  Neither of them are exactly what I would choose to learn more about, but hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised and maybe I'll even develop a new love for cattle.  However, I wouldn't bet on it - I think baby cows are cute and I like steak, but that's as far as our love goes.

So that's what's in store for the next 5 months!  Hopefully they will go as well as the first 5 :)