Report from Week One
Today was an especially long Friday because my fellow classmates and I were forced to suffer through four hours of “information” (I use that term lightly) on personal finances. Originally we were under the impression it would be two, two-hour presentations, with one being on Building and Maintaining Good Credit and the other on Student Loans: Dos and Don’ts. However, it turned out to be more like Random and Brief Overview of Fifty Personal Finance Topics, Including Anecdotal Evidence, Questionable Statistics and a Term Known as “Crap Out Date.” Certainly not exactly how I envisioned spending this beautiful sunny, dry and cool day.
I have high hopes for this semester. Personally, I feel very confident, very happy and very collected right now, and I hope it can last because it is wonderful to be so secure. I feel like microbiology and physiology will be my most interesting but most challenging classes. I have always really like the study of bacteria and viruses, but find the nitty gritty details (when I’m more of a big picture kind of girl) to be tedious to study and remember, the same being for physiology. Embryology and Large Animal anatomy are already proving to be the most boring of the classes, and I will probably suffer through them as well, as I find I tend to have lackluster performances in classes I don’t enjoy. The professor in anatomy is kind of a patronizing bully to my classmates, so I dread having any interaction with her. Neurology doesn’t start for another six weeks, when Embryology ends, and I have heard good things about that class, so we shall see. Correlates will be the same as always, and I am thankful to have my horse feeding rotation in late February after the first round of tests and before Spring Break. The only other course I have is a class in Public Health, which I studied for at least two years as an undergraduate, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s an online course, using the dreaded Elearning/WebCT interface, which is probably the crappiest use of internet technology for educational purposes, but, what can you do.
I think I have finally come up with some resolutions for this New Year. Being more confident and more of a risk taker is definitely high on my priority list. So far I already feel like I’ve been more confident and I think when spring elections come up I may cast my name for officership in the AHVMA (student chapter of course). My slogan will be, “Holistic med - it’s not all crackpots and hippies!” Hahaha. Rehabilitative medicine (ie: physical therapy) has really caught my interest as of late, and I feel more connected to the members in this club than I do in any of the others in which I am a “member.” Also known as “eater of free food.”
Like I was telling a friend this morning, I can’t help but be myself. I’m tired to trying to be less weird or less nerdy or less whatever socially unacceptable thing I am, and just to be myself. I think that I’ve made too many mistakes in the past trying to make friends with certain people or make myself fall in love with certain people so that I can have a certain image of myself in my head - something other than what I am, something that I have previously aspired to or thought was better than myself. But it’s never worked out and maybe that’s a sign that I’ve been doing it all wrong up until now. I don’t know for sure, but it’s all I can figure.
Beau is barking outside, so I better let him in. At least someone is getting some vitamin D today.
old stuff | Comment (0)It’s only Tuesday, apparently
This morning I am at my desk, latte in hand (with a dash of cinnamon I might add), watching the clock like a hawk. It is Day Two. Also known as Day When It Hits Home I Am Already Behind. I knew this yesterday, especially after 50 minutes of furiously taking notes in microbiology ((II) apparently?). I mean this is vet school - I’ve only been here one semester, but seriously, when did we have to start taking our own notes? I also knew this because in lab when we started dissecting the horse, I found myself asking, that’s the what muscle again? Seriously? Those are lymph nodes? Oh, and when I looked at notes for renal physiology and decided this already precludes another not-so-hot semester in that class.
I came home, however, yesterday afternoon in good spirits, ready to sit down and do work. And I did do work, which was shocking unto itself. I reviewed all my notes, I recopied the micro notes, the renal physiology notes, I read the assigned textbook chapters, and when I saw the clock it was only 8:30. This was a little difficult to believe, but I had been productive for about two and a half hours. Straight. No TV or anything (Futurama doesn’t count since I’ve seen every episode four-thousand times). I didn’t play any Guitar Hero, I didn’t really watch any TV after I was done. My head hurt, so I went to bed, and although my sleep was restless (hence the latte this morning) I woke up this morning with a weird sense of “Wow, maybe I can do this this semester.”
So now that it is the Dreaded Day Two, I watch the clock in anticipation of 7:30, when I will leave for school to go print (out of black ink here at home) some notes, sit in class, go to 6 hours of lab, come home and work again some more. I’m hoping to maximize on this weird… sense of duty? or sense of accomplishment or sense of motivation… whatever it is, I am going to try and capitalize on it as much as is possible.
Oh, and the pre-construction meeting is Thursday, so that’s something to look forward to.
(Please let this be a good semester!)
old stuff | Comment (0)Day One
It seems odd to me that it is already 2008. Afterall, I can still vividly remember some point in the ’90s in which I was calculating exactly how old I would be 2000. And now it’s the year in which I was supposed to graduate from college, but am instead trying to make my way through vet school. 2007 seems now like a non-descript year long in the past, although it certainly wasn’t. I remember anxiously awaiting news from the vet school from January through March, getting my job at the Aviary in February, the acceptance letter’s arrival before Spring Break, traveling with the polo team, the most decadent birthday in the history of my life, graduation, my summer job in which I was able to bring Beau to work or work from home, my first semester of veterinary school and how I somehow managed to survive. 2008, I am sure, will hold as many interesting things for me.
I have never been one for resolutions, I find them hard to keep. I always think in the New Year I will become a “better” or perhaps “more likeable” person, yet in December I seem to always be my same old self, if not just a little more jaded and a lot more tired. I think patience will be my goal for this year, to develop it a little more, to find strength in it. I might even try to be a little more of a risk taker (except with my driving, in which I will continue to strive for an even higher level of grannyhood), although so far, even in Day One, I haven’t been particularly successful at it.
Well, cheers to the end of a year that wasn’t so bad, and here’s to high hopes for the next.
old stuff | Comments (2)