I'm officially in my third week of the semester and so far so good. I'm enjoying
all most of my classes and already feel like I'm learning a ton! Here's a quick rundown of my new found knowledge :)
General Pathology: One of my absolute favorite classes! I actually enjoy studying for this class - it all seems so applicable to the veterinary profession. Like I said last time, my professor for Gen Path is the nephew of my boss from home - and they are SO similar. This makes it "fairly" easy to pay attention in class :) First, we reviewed normal cells and their structures. Now, we're discussing abnormal and injured cells and tissues. Today we began discussing the reasons for and mechanisms of cell necrosis. Necrosis is basically the death of a cell due to injury. It is NOT a good thing :/
Pharmacology: ...not one of my favorite classes. We haven't covered very much yet and most of it seems pretty common sense. We've talked about pharmacokinetics, which is a fancy word for studying drug movement into, through, and out of the body. We've talked about how to affect the rates of elimination and absorption of drugs.
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| Round worms in cat feces :) |
Parasitology: This is the class that is ruining every food and every outdoor experience I have ever had or will have. Basically there are parasites everywhere and in everything. So far we have covered hookworms, tapeworms, roundworms, and more! We are expected to know their genus, species, superfamily, hosts, geographical locations, recognition characteristics, life cycle, diseases they cause, ways to diagnose if animals have this, clinical signs, ways to treat animals with this parasite, and lastly (but most importantly) it can be transmitted to humans - and what problems these parasites can cause in humans. Pretty much we are expected to know every detail there possibly is about all of these parasites. We also run fecal tests (we look at animal poop) every Tuesday and Thursday in lab - which is gross and smelly, but really interesting! This class is going to be challenging, but I really enjoy it so far.
Bacteriology: Boring. I really like this professor, but I don't find studying bacteria very interesting. We've learned different traits about bacteria and general information about spreading bacteria and disease/infection. On Monday we talked briefly about different antibiotics and bacterial resistance to antibiotics, which was really interesting - so hopefully this class will continue getting more interesting :)
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| "Auntie A - get off me!" |
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| Study buddy! |
Outside of vet school life is great! We haven't had any tests yet this semester - our first is a week from today - so I've had a nice time balancing school and actually having a life. I've gotten to babysit Mr. Eli, spend time with Cole and actually get some sleep - it doesn't get much better than that! We also had our annual vet school party "Shaft" - which happened to be on my birthday! Shaft is a party thrown by the second year class for the first year class (and the entire school) to celebrate them successfully completing their first test! Turns out, this tradition started 30+ years ago by a student with the last name Shaft who threw a huge house party to celebrate being done with the first test. Turns out the idea caught on :)
That's all for now! Happy Hump Day :)
