A quickie

A couple months ago I applied to a reality show, The Great Swedish Adventure, along with my sister. We were both turned down. A few days ago, my sister got a call from the producers - they had somebody bail out at the last minute and needed a replacement. Right about now, she should be landing in Copenhagen. I'm excited for her, and curious to download the show when it's available.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck here in Pomona. I've been applying for jobs like crazy, and not having much luck. I had an interview at Petsmart, but haven't heard back from them. Most places I've talked to don't seem to want somebody who will only be around for a few months. I've talked to a couple vet clinics that have basically told me to re-apply once I've graduated. Which would be great, if I were planning on staying in the area after I graduated, or didn't need a job NOW. Grr.

I stopped by Tuesday Morning a few days ago, and found the world's cutest dog toys.

Unfortunately, they're stuffed toys, and it's been a few days, so they've been reduced to shreds, but damn, they were adorable while they lasted.

Year 1 finished!

That's right! I just finished up my last test, and that means I'm 1/4 of the way to becoming Dr. Karin!

The past week has been brutal. Finals started tuesday, with a test covering our first 4 cases of the quarter. Wednesday covered laboratory animal law and ethics. Thursday was (my nemesis,) the practical exam. It covered 8 cases worth of anatomy, histology, pathology, pharmacology radiology and parasitology. Friday was our clinical exam (mostly hands on stuff) and then molecular and cellular biology. Monday covered the last 4 cases of the block, and today was the ACT, a brutal 2 hour written test where they give you a case, and you have to come up with 2 differential diagnoses, describe the pathophysiology behind them, and why they're causing a certain clinical sign, and how you would test to rule them in or out. It's hard to study for, since it could cover anything clinical sign caused by any disease that is allergy, respiratory or cardiac related. So you just kind of study everything, and hope for the best. I lucked out. The case involved something that I have researched the hell out of, due to this guy:

Anyway, done with finals. Tomorrow I can go in and find out my grades on the two tests that covered the cases. It will be a few weeks until I found out how I did on today's test, which should be pretty freaking well. We're graded on our language, and I remembered to put "erythrocyte" instead of "red blood cell," and "doberman pinscher" instead of "dooberpoop."

Summer plans? I've got a couple. I enrolled in a Neurology course (for funsies.) I need to find a job so I don't end up homeless before next school year starts. I need to really take the P90x thing seriously, since vet school makes you fat (sitting around reading and studying all day + stress eating = chunky Karin). I also need to work on my business plan for that idea I had a few weeks ago, because if I can make it work, there's a metric buttload of money in it. Also, I'm not sure how well this is going to go, but I'm going to try to write a book and publish it on Kindle. I figure if I can write something and charge $4 for it, people may be willing to give it a shot, and if I go through amazon, you get to keep a big chunk of what they charge, so it might be worth a shot.

Anyway, now that I don't really know what to do with myself, since I don't have to study anything right now, I think I'm going to go celebrate with some friends, and see just how many of those new neural connections that I've made over the past year can be broken. :)

A quick distraction from finals

The 2nd one is from 2 British physicians called the Amateur Transplants. It's worth pulling them up on youtube if you want a silly distraction.

Big Ideas

Today in our "vet issues" class, we had the president/CEO of the Morris Animal Foundation, Dr. Olsen, come speak to us about her work setting up a new research foundation that will be paired with the American Humane Association. Basically, they're looking into how to do research that benefits animals, but is noninvasive/humane. She was asking our class for ideas - things that need to be funded/looked into, that might otherwise be ignored by more academic research.

While she was talking to us, I was daydreaming/zoning a little bit. And I believe I hit on a great idea. An idea for how to get massive amounts of veterinary epidemiolgic data into a central database, that could be accessed by researchers, veterinarians, or breeders. An idea that could be integrated seamlessly into practice. An idea that could be profitable. Possibly massively profitable.

That last bit there made me bite my tongue. I wasn't just going to throw it out there where anybody could snatch it up. I'm debating what to do with it now. I can contact Dr. Olsen and pitch it to her, and hope it can snag me some sort of summer job/grant/job after graduation. I can figure out a way to raise investment capital. I can figure out a way to sell the idea to a larger business that could maybe integrate it into an existing product. Or I can sit on it, and hope nobody else thinks of it until I can figure out how to implement it. Decisions, decisions.

Last Clinical Rotation of the Year

Yep. Today was my last one for this school year. I spent the morning on VACS (the mobile veterinary clinic my school owns that does a lot of low-cost spay/neutering.)

I spent the morning doing physical exams on some dogs, and placing catheters. Next year when I come back, my VACS rotations will be in the afternoons, so instead of prepping patients for surgery, I'll be scrubbing in and assisting. Squee!!!

Tomorrow's my last PBL session of the year. Apparently vet school functions as some sort of crazy time machine - there's no way a whole school year has almost passed! And if next year goes as quickly as this one, I'll be doing rotations in no time.

Anyway, the blog will probably be a little neglected until finals are over. Maybe a freakout post or two, but don't expect any interesting updates.

Summer's looming around the corner

I've got one more week of class, then a week and a half of finals. Eek, I'm *thisclose* to being 1/4 of the way through vet school!

I've been trying to catch up on topics I may have missed, while reviewing previous cases all weekend. It certainly feels like there's so much to be done, and not enough time.

Speaking of not enough time, I'm pretty angry about something. Last week, we had a group assignment due. We basically had to answer 8 questions, and email the answers to the instructor. I answered 2 of them and emailed them to the rest of my group, figuring each person would pick one or two to answer, and the last person to finish would turn it in. No big deal, right? Well, aparently some of the people in my group didn't take it seriously, and copy-pasted from the internet. The instructor ran everybody's assignments through a plagiarism checker, and 7 group's assignments between our class and the 2013's flagged for copied work. Friday, each group had to go through their essays and if something was flagged, people had to take credit for it if they did it. You would think that the reasonable thing to do would be to just get the people who copied, right?

I guess not. They're making everybody in each group attend some 2 hour class on Monday about correctly citing sources. Monday's my big day for getting studying done. And the jerks in my group just stole at least 2 hours of it from me. During week 8. The worst part? Most of the people who have been guilty of plagiarism have been on the dean's list. Makes you wonder about how they got there.

And then to make the whole thing even more irritating, the people who have been guilty of plagairism have been completely unapolagetic about it. They've been bitching and moaning about how they "didn't understand the assignment," or how they didn't think the instructor would read it. How the hell do you get through undergrad and into a professional school without realizing that maybe copying shit off the internet is a bad idea? Or without feeling guilty that your terrible choices just screwed the honest people in your group out of valuable study time right before finals?

One of my close friends in another group had two people who's answers got flagged. One person didn't paraphrase a sentance or two well enough, and has been apologizing profusely the whole week. The other copied a paragraph from THE INSTRUCTOR'S OWN PAPER, and hasn't once apologized. The apologetic one suggested that they do the majority of the "learning issues" for their group next week as a way of making it up to people. The upapologetic one apparently asked in a snotty voice "why would we do that?" I'm surprised my friend had the restraint not to bitch-slap her for that remark. However, during the meeting on Friday, the snotty-needs-a-bitchslap girl from my friend's group asked what the reprocussions would be for those admitting to plagairism. Before the faculty could even answer her question, she starts breaking out in these huge heaves of tears. Seems she's only concerned about the consequences when they affect her.

Oh, and to make things even more annoying, the mandatory class tomorrow is from 3-5. Tyler works at 2. Which means I can either waste an hour each way to drop him off, then pick him up from work, further cutting into my time, or I can get stranded on campus from 2-10, or if I'm lucky, I can find somebody willing to go out of their way to give me a ride.

I'm ready for summer.