10-31 (aka Halloween)

Merry Halloween everybody!  School was off due to the holiday today so that was pretty nice.  I pretty much just sat around all day, so it was nice and relaxing..... Boy don't I wish the previous statement was true!  But, no, we did not have off for halloween, it was learning, and learning and learning as usual!  I even had my first quiz today.  It was forty multiple choice questions (about equivalent to an exam in undergrad but its just a quiz in vet school, makes me excited to see what an exam is like! (that was sarcasm there just in case you didn't catch it ;)  I felt pretty good about the quiz, there were a few anatomy questions I wasn't totally sure on (such as "What is the nerve that innervates the muscle(s) that attach to the popliteal sesamoid?")  I did go to a review trivia session last night, but wasn't real impressed by it so won't go back this coming Sunday anyways.  However, the rest of my weekend was real good (minus the 6 hours of studying I put in on Saturday).  I went to Eureka and spent time with Uncle Dan, Heather and Andrea (hi Andrea, I would say hi to Heather but she doesn't really look at this blog!)  They had a singing Friday night and then Saturday I studied, and studied, and......studied.  I did take a study break however and went to see the deer that a relative of mine raises.  Here's just a couple photos that I shot while I was there:

This one here is a picture of a few of the fawns in the fawn pen:

This one has a doe in the doe pen and also a fawn in the adjacent fawn pen:

It was neat to see the deer up close like that.  I will, however, get to see them even more close this coming Sunday afternoon when I head over there when the vet comes to inseminate the females.  I will talk more about that once it is over but I am quite excited to get the opportunity to watch/assist where I can. 

School does continue to challenge me, it is definitely the most intense schooling I have ever done.  However, the material, for the most part, is interesting and that helps make it easier to study (although I still don't always feel like studying!)  I can't believe that we are in our third week of classes already.  It really is amazing how the time just flies! 

Harvest Party

Tonight, the young group and sunday school kids gathered at Wayne and Char's and had a fall party.  We had pizza and soda for supper and then it was time for activities.  I have some good videos however the blog is not letting me upload them.  I may try again another day and see if I can get it to work, but here's the pictures anyways.

 The first activity was pin the stem on the pumpkin. 

Here is Seth on his way to the pumpkin:

There was plenty of an audience watching!

This picture of the row of girls is a bit blurry but I'm including it anyways.

Even my roommate Loren gave it a whirl!

Here he's getting ready thanks to Rachel:

Next up was the pumpkin seed spitting contest.  It was kind of funny watching everyone spitting and sputtering trying to be the one who gets the seed the farthest.

  The farthest was Stephen who got the seed from the garage and had it land on top of the car.  Here's a picture to show how far he got it:

So, he shot it from the garage and onto the top of the car to the left, it was quite impressive, although he is also the guy who plays the bagpipes so that might have helped him!

The final organized activity was the pumpkin pinata.  It was a literal pumpkin hollowed out with candy in it.  The kids seemed to have fun whacking at it until the candy was exposed!

Finally, we all hung out in the basement and played a variety of games.

It was a great time, a nice break from the studying! One more day of school and then off to spend some time with the family in Eureka!

10-26

This week has been going fine thus far.  Classes are all fine except for anatomy which just keeps loading on the information like you can't believe.  Just as I start feeling semi-comfortable with the dog hind-limb, its' time to start learning the horse hind-limb and then dissect out a horse and cow hind-limb.  Oh well, that's what studying is for right?  I have my first quiz this coming Monday, it is 40 (yes that is the correct number) multiple choice questions.  That would be an exam in undergrad but in vet school it is just a quiz.  I plan on heading to Eureka for the weekend and then coming home Sunday afternoon in time for a five o'clock trivia review at the vet school.  It will be interesting to see how hard the questions are.  This is always a tough time for me, not knowing how the professors ask their questions, or how hard the exams are.  Another thing that will make the quizzes and exams harder is that each one covers all the classes.  There are not separate exams for each subject (anatomy, physiology, etc.)  Each quiz as well as the midterm and final covers all the classes in one including questions that will combine stuff we learned in different classes.  It will be interesting to see how it goes!

Weekend

This past weekend was a lot of fun.  Friday night consisted of studying fat metabolism, nerves, and cells under the microscope.  Saturday morning I helped work on a house about half an hour away from Champaign which was in dire need of repair.  A lot had been done already but there was still plenty of work to be done.  I helped paint a room and then helped move a lot of loose clothes, curtains, boxes, etc from the kitchen to other areas of the house so work could be done in the kitchen.  The people who live there are kind of pack-rats so there was plenty of stuff to get in the way.  After I helped move some furniture it was time for lunch and then back home to study the muscles and bones of the hind limbs.  We had provings and baptisms here in Champaign which was nice.  There were visitors from Wolcott and Bluffton North, Indiana as well as Fairbury, Roanoke, and Princeville, Illinois.  Also, my Uncle Loren and Aunt Joan came down and visited me before they leave for Lester, Iowa and then back down to Arizona for the winter.  We went out to dinner, us three and Josh, one of my roommates, which was nice.  It was a great weekend but now its back to the real deal starting tomorrow morning!

First Week of Class

Well, I have finished my first week of classes.  It was everything that everyone said it would be, a whole lot of information thrown at you and you hope you can retain some of it.  Fortunately, I am comfortable with histology so that one wasn't bad at all this past week.  Neurobiology wasn't bad at either, pretty much basic biology of the nervous system.  Physiology has been almost all biochemistry so far which is not my favorite subject in the world.  The real killer is anatomy though.  The amount of information they want us to know is incredible.  They want us to know the bones and all the lumps and bumps on each bone of the hind limb, all the muscles on the hindlimb, where they are attached to, what they do to the hindlimb and what nerve controls them!  Now they are teaching us the arteries and veins of the hindlimb.  One of the kids in my anatomy group and I were talking today and saying that anatomy's motto should be "All you ever didn't want to know about the dog."  I am glad, however, that I do find most of the information interesting and know that it can be useful to what I want to do (unlike many of my undergrad classes).  Tomorrow morning I am taking a break from studying and participating in a World Relief project, although I'm really not sure what the exact project consists of. I will find out in the morning though!  Well, one week down, four more 'til Thanksgiving break, and seven more 'til Christmas break! 

My Professors

For those of you who would like to see who is teaching me this quarter, I am placing links to the professor's webpages.

Anatomy: Dr. Gerald Pijanowski

Physiology: Dr. Margarethe Hoenig

Neurobiology: Dr. Megan Mahoney

Histology: Dr. Marie-Claude Hofmann

For those of you who know Dr. Shapiro, the pediatrician in Vernon, I believe that Dr. Pijanowski looks similar to him.  There is also another professor who is helping with the histology lab for Dr. Hofmann, Dr. Rex Hess.  My clinical correlations course is taught by a number of different professors and only meets about once a week.  We also have two lab assistants, Scott and Sherry, who run the anatomy lab.

Also, just to give you a teeny peek at what we do in vet school, here is a website that we use to help us learn the anatomy of animals on x-rays.

 Imaging Anatomy

If you click on an animal, then click on a part of animal you want to see and click on an example # you can see x-rays of different parts of different animals.  When the image comes up you will see words on tabs just on top of the image.  Those are the names of the different parts of the bones that they would like us to know.  This is part of the reason why there is so much studying to do!

10-18

Classes went fine today.  After classes it was back to the anatomy lab to finish skinning and cleaning our dog's hindlegs so that tomorrow during lab we can work on dissecting out each muscle.  The smell of the formalin (the solution that is preserving the dog) is intense and sticks on your clothes.  It can get very strong at times and can make my eyes water.  It also irritates people's noses and throats although I have been lucky in that that has not happened to me.  It is not the most pleasent smell to have on my hands for the whole evening, but oh well, that's how it goes. Now I know what one of the higher level vet students meant when they said that we would smell like formalin our whole first year, I'm starting to believe them!