Open House

So this Saturday is WesternU's open house. Theoretically, it's a chance for the community and prospective students to visit the school, and basically establish Western's presence. From talking to the 2nd year students, in reality, it's a huge clusterfuck, with over 3,000 boyscouts and girlscouts trying to visit all the club booths to collect stickers to get badges. Aparently, instead of answering questions last year, the Pathology Club spent most of their time fending kids off from trying to steal their specimins, and parents off from trying to steal their stickers. Since I'm a club officer for the path club, I've been roped into helping them. We all know that Karin + crowds is a bad idea and Karin + little kids is a bad idea, so Karin + a crowd of mostly little kids will be fun fun fun. I'm seriously dreading it, but since I <3 the path club, I openly offered to do it with no coersion. However, today in class, a couple classmates had to make an announcement before class about Open House. They basically laid a condescending, thick guilt trip on everybody about helping out, and told people that if they were a SCAVMA member, that it was required that they help out. Just the way they approached the whole thing made me almost want to NOT volunteer at all (well, I already don't, but if I were a flakey person, they would have tipped me into backing out.) I feel bad for the SCAVMA members who have already had plans in place for Saturday for weeks, but they're expected to drop it at the last minute, because they were only recently informed about this being required. I shouldn't be surprised, though. SCAVMA, or the student chapter of the American Veterinary Medical Association has pulled this before. There was a yearly symposium in Davis over Spring Break where student chapters from every vet school can meet up, attend lectures, seminars, and have some fun veterinary-related field trips. Apparently, in order for an individual school to have any sort of legislative vote for national SCAVMA stuff, they have to have at least 80% of the student body as members. I think we only had somthing like 50 or 60%. So we were deluged with weeks of the most obnoxious, condescending guilt trips about joining. They kept emphasizing all the "benefits" of joining, and acting like the only reason those of us who hadn't joined was because either we were too dense to realize the "wonderful" opportunity we were passing up, or we were too dumb to navigate the website and figure out how to go through the registration process. Personally, I hadn't joined at the beginning of the year because I was broke, trying to save money, and only joined 2 clubs that I really cared about (pathology and zoo/wildlife/exotics.) It costs something like $40/year to join, and you're required to attend all these meetings, and the benefits aren't really all that beneficial, until you graduate. After you graduate, if you're a member in good standing for 3 years, you get your first year of AVMA membership for free, access to cheap malpractice (and I believe health) insurance through the AVMA-PLIT branch, and a couple other perks. And during 3rd/4th year, I believe you can purchase cheap insurance that covers you on your rotations (I think I can get this same benefit from CVMA, which I am a member of, but I'd have to double-check). However, that doesn't involve dealing with the bullshit for all 4 years, and I'm only going to do the last 3 if that's all that's required. The way they handled trying to get their membership numbers up was so incredibly grating, that it basically sealed the deal of me not joining this year. Had somebody instead asked nicely, and framed it as "can you do us a favor" instead of "what's wrong with you stupids?" I probably would have coughed up the $40 for membership. Somehow their passive-aggressive methods of bitching at everybody for weeks actually worked, and they were able to reach their 80% before Spring Break. I'm rather shocked. But from today's speech about Open House, I see their methods haven't changed. Anyway, it makes me glad that I'm not a member.

Oh, Pomona!

Yesterday we picked a classmate up from LAX. On our way home, we were driving down Holt, the main street by our house, and about 3 blocks of Holt were completely blocked off by the police. I just looked it up. This was yesterday (Sunday), about 3 blocks West from our house. This was Friday, about 6 blocks East of my house, and about 5 blocks North of campus. Eep!

How Swede it is

Spring break's over, and I was thinking we would be jumping into a cardiology case this week, but I guessed wrong. We have a dermatology case with an itchy dog, so I don't feel too bad for not studying enough cardiology over spring break. After I got out of class, I got a phone call from Sweden setting up an interview in LA on Friday April 8th for The Great Swedish Adventure. After I got the phone call from Sweden, I got a call from the producer in LA to do the phone interview (I think they got their steps backwards!) They said they had over 1,000 people apply for the show, they looked more closely into 200, and they're only interviewing 40 in person. I don't know how many they're chosing for the show, but they loved the sibling aspect. I lucked out, in that my interviewer is in love with dobermans, and she said that my pups were what first caught her eye. The only downside is I will have to miss one class on that Friday to make the interview, but I'm really hoping that my professor will understand that it's not every day you have a possibility to get a free trip to Scandinavia. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

The Green Eyed Monster Rears its Ugly Head

A month or two ago, my sister sent me this link for a reality show. They were looking for Americans with Swedish ancestory to apply for the show that will be shot in Sweden. I clicked on that link so many times, and talked myself out of it each time. My sister, Kirstin ended up applying. And made it through round after round of cuts. She found out yesterday that she has an interview in LA in a couple weeks. I got a little (well, a lot) jealous, and was kicking myself for never applying. I went to their site, and they were still taking applicants! I made it through the first few rounds of cuts, and I have a phone interview tomorrow! What could be cooler than the possibility of my sister and I annoying the shit out of each other in Sweden this summer? I'm not getting my hopes up yet - I know I can be quiet, and reserved, and that doesn't make for good TV, but I have no problems dolling up and letting the freak flag fly, if it will get me to Scandinavia.

Spring Break!!!

Spring break is this week. It's basically a week of getting caught up - caught up on studying, caught up on housework, and caught up on sleep.

I decided that since I never have time to cook during the semester, that I needed to take advantage of having some spare time, and make some amazing food.

Tonight I figured I'd try my hand at German food, since there aren't any german restaurants close by. I made weiner schnitzel, spaetzel from scratch, and german potato salad. I'm not going to be modest here. It was better than the German food I've had at high-end restaurants. And the total ingredients to feed 3 of us and have some leftovers cost less than $10.

Not a fan of Daylight Saving Time

I'm already not a morning person. I'm not happy about feeling like I have to wake up a hour earlier for the next few weeks until I adjust.

However, I am happy about this weekend. One of my classmates and I ventured into LA to go the the LA natural history museum. It ended up being way smaller than we planned on, so we also went to the La Brea tar pits and the museum there for awhile. At both places, we had fun pointing to random fossils and quizzing each other on the bones, or the pathology apparent in the bones. I guess it's common to find saber toothed tiger skeletons with a lot of spinal injuries and ankylosis. I thought this wall was cool. There were 3 or 4 of these display cases behind me that had to be about 20 feet x 20 feet full of nothing but Dire Wolf skulls (1st picture sucks 'cause it was taken on my phone. 2nd picture was ripped from google images).

Anyway, this week's case centers on a boxer with a history of a mast cell tumor that now has swollen lymph nodes. I was thinking it was going to be an ear case (keeping with the "special senses theme), so I was pleasantly suprised.

One more thing from this weekend. I hurt so bad. My roommate does P90X, and Tyler and I started doing it with him. I'm sure in the long run it will pay off, but for now, ouch!

Yay!

Just got my grades back for my VBS exams last week, and they're much better than I was expecting. Somehow I managed to bring my averages up with neuro. I was kind of expecting it to screw me over, but I'll gladly take the opposite.

We've got an eye case this week. In anatomy, there was a bit of a "no you do it" with my group over who had to open up the eyeball. I think even though we had all read about the anatomy of the eye the night before, we were all kind of squeamish about it, and nobody wanted to accidentially pop it (and no, it didn't pop). I thought it was funny just how many of us are squicked out by touching eyes. Even worse, opthalmic pathology is freaking gross. I've been reading through the eye chapter in my path book, and every time I get to a picture, I just think "ewww." I think when it comes to eye stuff, I start to empathize too much, and start picturing that happening to me. I can't even watch the episode of the Simpson's where Homer sunburns his eyes without getting naseaus.

And I don't know how many people reading my blog are potential students, but I know they hear whether or not they got in within the next week. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you guys, and I know just how stressful it is waiting to hear what will be happening with the next four years of your life. Anyway, just a few more days, until that exciting letter is in your hands! I know I get stressed out by school quite a bit, but at the same time, I still adore it. I'm looking forward to getting a "little sib." Good Luck!

Clothes!

Yesterday I hit up Ross. Ross tends to be hit or miss, and yesterday was a "hit" day. I managed to find a bunch of great deals on quite a few tops. I was trying to avoid the usual black, and managed to find some olive green tops, and some jewel-toned tops. So many of my clothes are still from high school, and I'm trying to phase out the older stuff, and replace it with more professional clothing, but it's a slow process, especially when you're living on a student's budget. I found a really interesting fashion blog a few weeks ago called Already Pretty. It's really helpful to me, seeing how to work in color, and how "normal" people put outfits together. It's not that I can't style an outfit, it's just that if it were up to me, they would all involve corsets, stompy boots and dreadlocks.

So, I was already giddy about my retail therapy finds yesterday, when I got an email that the SCAVMA shirts I had ordered from school were in. I didn't even buy a black one! Sorry for the grainy photos, I was too lazy to grab my digital camera, so these are taken with my cellphone in low-light.

Yep, that about sums up midterms.

I'm pretty terrified to find out what my grades are next week.