Vet school orientation

I just finished day 2 of vet school orientation.

Day 1, we showed up, picked up our orientation packets, which included our parking passes and white coat ceremony tickets. Then we had to go through several stations, which included ironing out any admissions issues, setting up our laptops (basically setting up our email clients to get the pop3 western mail,) and photos. The photos were funny. Basically, we took one for our IDs, and then they through a gown/robe on us, then had us take our graduation pictures. Taking my grad pictures before classes even started cracked me up a bit. I also picked up my white coat and nametag, and got a "Western U CVM 2014" t-shirt.

After that, we sat through a series of introductions, had Chipoltle brought in by Purina (They apparently try to start buying our loyalty early,) then 3 more hours of speeches of what to expect.

Day 2, they had the financial aid office talk to us, then talked about the cirriculum for awhile. Then Schering-Plough supplied pizza (once again - jumping in early to buy our loyalty), then we did a practice PBL session about a dog brought in for a wellness check, more lectures about the school, then an "expert meeting," where we circulated around and met with different faculty, talked about their areas of expertise, and they reccommended which books they prefer.


There are some things that are a little disorienting about the way Western's set up. They don't have any required books - they just tell you to test books out from the library, then only buy the ones you like. I did, however, enjoy the practice PBL session. Its going to be hard for the next 4 years, but it'd be hard at any school - at least this way I don't have to sit through lectures.

We got a list of required supplies, which I suppose I should start trying to accumulate - surgical tools, stethescope, scrubs, coveralls, boots, otoscope, and a couple other things.

We also got our schedule. It looks like mondays we'll be in class in the morning, then have the afternoons off. Tuesdays and thursdays have us in clinics in the mornings, then in the lab in the evenings. Wednesdays and Fridays are more classes. I'll probably scan my copy of my schedule later in the week.

Tomorrow and thursday sound pretty unpleasant. The schedule says "leadership training," but the 2013 students make it sound like forced teambuilding. Nobody will tell us what it involves, just to wear comfy clothes that we won't mind getting dirty. Now, I'm sure some people like the teambuilding crap - but I'm not one of them. Hopefully its not too bad, and hopefully its over soon. I think one of the days is almost 12 hours. I'm definitely to the point to where I'll be happy when this week is over, and real classes start.