Lazy Day

Gah it's less than a week until finals begin and I feel totally unmotivated to study! I have an entire semester's worth of anatomy to know, half a semester of physiology, half a semester of pharmacology, and an entire semester's worth of material for both physical diagnosis and radiology. Those last two hopefully won't be too terrible, but I'm not quite sure how to approach studying for them. We have exam reviews tomorrow for both classes, so I'm hoping I have a better idea of what to expect and thus a good idea of where to start after class.

I've pretty much accomplished nothing this weekend. Awesome. I studied avian anatomy for a while today, and we had chicken for dinner. What does that have to do with anything? Well when you're a vet student, you find yourself more interested in the intricate structures. Yes, this does mean we poked and prodded our dinner (probably much to the disgust of our med school roomie). We were disappointed to find that none of our anatomy books had hind limb muscle guides, but you could clearly see them! We also popped open the joint space to look at the menisci and cruciate ligaments. Fun dinner! It was also extremely tasty! Yummy barbeque sauce and baked in the oven with italian pasta and peas.

Sleep?

Here's a (not so brief) run down of the last 24ish hours:

I  cleaned my room and finished off writing a letter to someone.

I went for a nice long swim! That pretty much made everything all better. I saw another new fish, found kind of a weird snail/slug type critter on a rock, added more "tan" to my back (I think I will just forever be pale in front), and saw the barracuda again! He is such a beautiful fish. He is at least 2 feet long and extremely people shy. Supposedly they are very curious, but not this guy (and rightfully so!). I wish he'd stick around for 2 seconds longer so I could watch him even more, but he sees me and he takes off. This is a very good move on his part, because although I would never hurt him, there are plenty of Grenadians and students that would happily turn him into dinner! I also found a few hermit crabs, some pretty sea shells, and mutually scared myself and a crab half to death but setting my hand on top of where he was buried in the sand! Yikes! I'm very glad he was more interested in getting away as fast as he could than punishing me for being clumsy!

(I swear it isn't dead, it's just the water/slime in my hand!)

(The sandy patches are where I swim out to the reef, where the waves are is the reef)

 

I went to the bank and the grocery store and stocked up on food for the week. IGA is officially out of cookies-majorly disappointed with that! I foresee cookie baking in my vet roomie and I's futures : D.

I spent 10 hours at the small animal clinic (usually it's 7) and got home at 3am. I walked in to doctors and techs in the middle of fixing two security dogs who had gotten into a dog fight. We had to anesthetize one and then the other to take care of their puncture wounds. That took about 4 hours to finish up. We spent the remaining few hours of our shift discussing medical stuff, classwork, and just randomly chatting. We finished off taking care of all our patients at 12:15a and were just getting ready to leave when the phone rang. Yay! I guess I'm really glad it happened before we left rather than get all the way home (and up the mountain) just to find out I needed to come back. One of the upper term students needed her cat to be seen, and by the time we finished up with them and kindly helping finish off other treatments, it was 3am! So late!

This morning I woke up at 8:30a to spend the morning and early afternoon playing with horses. Our large animal society had their horse handling labs today. We started the morning off haltering and leading the horses around, followed by picking up their feet and cleaning them. In the afternoon, we talked more about a lameness exam, learned how to hoof test, what structures to palpate in the distal limb, and how to place a leg wrap. It was a ton of fun! I don't really have much experience working with horses, so I definitely enjoy any opportunity to become more comfortable with them and put my book knowledge to use on a live animal!

 (Alamo wanted no part in being haltered but was a good sport for picking up feet!)

 (Hoof testers and limb palpation-does not hurt the horse, looking for abnormal pain)

 (leg wraps for support)

The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to a heavenly shower (that I had been waiting for since last night but didn't because it's a jinx to shower and be clean while still on call!), uploading 200 pictures, and taking a lovely 4 hour nap.

Then it was dinner time : D. Eggs for lunch and pancakes for dinner! Very tasty. After dinner my vet roomie and I watched The Finder together and I worked on some avian anatomy. I am currently waiting for my laundry to finish drying so that I can go to bed. Hope it finishes soon!!!

Pouting

That exam was hard!!! I am currently pouting over how difficult it was and my grade (I'm being petty, I'll get over it). I really should be celebrating the fact that I didn't miss more than I did because I swear I had at least half of the exam questions starred as questions I was really unsure about my answer. Hmph.

My plans for the rest of the day? Cleaning up my room because it's a bit of a disaster, some beach time, a trip to the grocery store, a nap if I can squeeze one in, and then working at the clinic from 5p-12a/8a. Tomorrow I might get to do a horse handling lab for several hours (as long as SVECCS doesn't keep me up all night with calls).

I guess I really can't complain too much, my "therapy" for post-exam time means going to the beach on a tropical island. : D

Time For Another Final

Eek, bacteriology final exam tomorrow morning! At least this one is tomorrow at 9a, now hopefully the professor will remember to show up at the correct time haha. As long as that happens and the exam isn't too unreasonable, hopefully I will do well!

A Pharmacology "Pep Talk"

Just thought I'd share a summary of the 8am pharmacology pep talk we received yesterday morning. It's all about next semester by the way. It started with the professor talking about the speech he gave the 3rd term class on day one of this semester. He said he essentially tried to scare the crap out of them on day one in hopes that they would study more and be more serious about the course. The guinea pig class from the fall fell flat on their faces the whole semester, and he was really trying to avoid that. And for awhile, it seemed to work. However, 50% of the class still failed the midterm exam. Which was still a great surprise to the pharmacology team (look at our notes, listen to our lectures, you will feel surprise at their surprise). They are looking at re-structuring the class in terms of exams, to see if they can avoid running into this mess again. Instead of two tests, a midterm, and a final, they're looking at four tests and one comprehensive final. The current system makes the midterm and final only half cumulative (up to the midterm and then after the midterm). I have a stack of 350-400 index cards on my desk right now, one for each drug we've covered this term. Now, we have in no way covered that many drugs, but we have covered a substantial number, and mentioned a whole lot more in passing. Split that stack between a midterm and final, it sounds a little more bearable. But that whole stack for one exam?? YIKES!! We were also promised said final would just cover the most important and basic information. Okay, that doesn't sound too bad right? Sure, if either they were going to notify us what was really relevant or it was easy to figure that out, but our pharmacology class is one big game of trivia. And almost 100% of the time what seems important is not on the exam, it's some other obscure detail that you may or may not have remembered to look at (if it was even in the notes).

In short, pharmacology 2 does not sound fun. It sounds terrifying. And I am amused that the professor has decided to try and instill fear into us 4 months ahead of time. Maybe that will work this time. HAHA yeah right!

I Fixed It!

I am very proud of myself, I solved my internet issues today : D. The problem from Monday kind of intensified yesterday (particularly last night) and I got really tired of the constant connect/disconnect happening! I'm not really sure why the problem resolved, but I tried all of the tricks I could think of and now it's happy again, yay!

We are pretty much down to two classes left. We finished off our final pharmacology lecture yesterday, so pretty much all that is left is anatomy and physiology for 2 more days. Crazy! It also means having class at 9am instead of 8am, which I am a huge fan of (I miss things starting slightly later haha). I don't get more sleep, I just get to stay up later and wake up later. And somehow this makes me feel better!

My bacteriology final exam is Friday morning-yikes!! My study guide is all sorts of colorful. 6 different highlighters for different categories (if I had more than 6 different colors, there would probably be more categories!) and now I'm annotating it. Lots of fun. We have a ton of bacteria to know for this exam and I'm not really looking forward to that. This is a 4 credit class, so I am really hoping to do well! Fingers crossed!

One of my Hokie friends was accepted to SGU's fall DVM class today-congrats! My vet roomie and I are very excited to have more Hokies here!

Not Much New On The Home Front

No much exciting going on down here in Grenada. 2 weeks of class left and then finals week begins! Finals have already technically started since we finished immunology a week ago, have bacteriology on Friday, and physical diagnosis next week, but eh details.

I have been fairly productive today and very productive yesterday. It feels so good to get so much studying done! In three weeks from now it will all be over and I'll be snuggled in my bed with Penny! Now to keep up the study motivation for 21 more days...oy!

The internet has decided that today seemed as good a day as any to be problematic. Yay. I just love weird connectivity problems showing up after 3 months of dormancy. I am glad I at least get to pick between wifi and ethernet, most rooms don't randomly get our FIrefly network. Unfortunately, Firefly wireless is Grenadian and therefore certain websites don't work. The biggest ones are TV network shows and pandora-must have music while I study for hours on end! Luckily I can get around this by using a special secure VPN to my home university! The ethernet has a NY IP address so it's usually not a problem (just today when it randomly decided to go on the fritz).

The Ocean Called...

 ...The fish would like to apologize for being slow to get cell towers installed underwater. Better luck next time!

It has been a very productive day! I made a long list of things I would like to accomplish this weekend yesterday, and I got several things done today. I also went for a lovely swim and my vet roomie and I made a delicious dinner!

The tide was extra high today allowing me to swim in places I haven't before which was kind of exciting. The places themselves weren't terribly exciting, but now I finally know what is there! Lots of fish as usual, and today I got to see two box fish! That's a first-they're very pretty! I also found some pretty sea shells (my roomie found some really neat ones!).

I really love going to school here for all of the unique and fun things we get to do. The education is likely the same across all schools (with obvious variations and such) so if you're looking for a good education, it doesn't really matter where you go. I love that when I'm not studying, I get to do things like go hiking in the rain forest and go swimming over coral reefs. Break time is rare in vet school, but I am so glad that I chose to make that time very memorable. I know that I will look back on this time fondly and I know that it is helping to shape and mold me into a unique individual.

 Oh yeah, and to explain the title and start to this post, we found a cell phone in the water today while swimming. I think the funniest part about it all was unless this person had an international calling plan (very expensive!!!), this isn't a phone that would work in Grenada. And even then, I'm still a little bit fuzzy on whether or not any old phone works internationally, or if even from there you still have to have a fancier model to get service from Verizon. Silly people! 

Herping in the Rainforest

Tonight was the date for the Herp Club's Herp hike. I have pretty much been looking forward to this since we got back last term! Really, it doesn't get much better than hiking through the rainforest at night looking for critters!

I remind you that it is currently the "dry season" in Grenada. Except not today! Today it did tons of raining in True Blue (which doesn't necessarily mean it rained anywhere else, but it certainly did). We arrived at Grand Etang national forest just after sun down. It was a little misty on our drive up. So many steep and winding curves! Although they are very good at driving, they still make me very nervous! Anyhow, because it rained so much today, it was very muddy in the forest. Oh well! Just adds to the fun and excitement, right? Dress accordingly and just be prepared to come home absolutely filthy!

We climbed up and down, and through tons of mud. Several people fell a few times but I, luckily, was not one of them! I am super clumsy so it's pretty amazing I didn't fall! Don't worry, I made up for it by pretty much smearing mud all over my legs haha. I really cannot convey with words just how sticky and muddy it was haha. And this mud is a nice clay-based mud that stains quite nicely. When I got home, I went straight to the laundry room and stripped my shoes and socks off to throw in the wash before I came back to my room.

We didn't see as many critters tonight as we did last fall, but we did find another Grenadian tree boa and I got to hold it! Such a beautiful snake! We also found a little scorpion-see if you can find it in one of the pictures! Unfortunately I can't upload my pictures of the snake and the search I did online didn't give me anything I like-sorry!

Neuro Exams

Today was our last day and lab of the semester for Physical Diagnosis 1. They saved the best for last-the neurological exam! Last term we had Clinical Orientation which was an introductory class to physical exams and history taking for small animals, horses, and large animals. This continues on into Physical Diagnosis 1 (small animals) and Physical Diagnosis 2 (large animals). The 2 classes are completed in series between 2nd and 3rd term.

Physical Diagnosis 1 is a more in depth look at all of the body systems with regards to a physical exam for small animals. We covered the basics, musculoskeletal, ophthamology, cardiology, respiratory, urogenital, gastrointestinal, dermatological, and neurological exams (potentially missing a couple, not sure-I'm tired!).

Today's exam covered neurology and we got to test out various neurological tests such as proprioceptive placing, hopping, wheelbarrowing, patellar reflexes, cranial nerve tests, and a few others. Lots of fun! I'm sure our pets were confused by it all, but as always they were very patient and put up with us anyway. Good news-they all appear to be neurologically normal!

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Not much to say about today. Pretty mundane and normal, unless you count my physiology professor's story of how she pulled over in South Africa one time to watch 2 giraffes play around for two hours. She apparently was really hoping to get some pictures of them mating, but the female wasn't interested in anything more than being a giant tease to the male. She did take pictures never the less for her lecture though haha.

I leave you with tonight's beautiful Grenadian sunset.

The Six Hour Nap

Guilty as charged, I came home after class today and went to sleep for 6 hours. Just slightly less than what I got last night. I swear, as the end of the semester approaches, I just can't help sleeping for as much as I possibly can. Life is exhausting! I'm already stressed about final exams too-yikes!!!We didn't have much in the way of classes today too, so it isn't like I was being crazy delinquent haha.

We had our final SVECCS (student veterinary emergency and critical care society) meeting tonight and elections for next year's board. Although I wasn't really interested in running for a position (I'm really trying to make sure I focus on keeping good grades!), I ended up being elected treasurer. I was kind of surprised at first, but now I'm pretty excited! I've never been treasurer for a club before (but my father just gave up being my brother's hockey team's treasurer so I'm excited to have his mentorship!!), and I'm a little anxious about being in charge of funds! I'm also looking forward to the new experience though, it should be a good life lesson for me! Not that I'm irresponsible financially, but I think it will be a great experience for me to be in charge of something else's budget. We'll see. The exec board looks excellent in general, so hopefully it will be a lot of fun!

Now I am off to try and go back to sleep (good luck to me hah!). Class in less than 8 hours...whee! Oh well, sleep is for the hibernating animals, right? : D

Hokies

For most of the world, today is Monday. It is a day just like any other in the middle of April. But for the Hokie Nation, today, April 16th, is a day of remembrance, sadness, reflection, and celebration.

5 years ago today, the lives of all Hokies who came before us and those to come in the future were forever changed. We remember what happened, what has come from it, and we celebrate and live life in remembrance. The Hokie family is stronger than ever. Evil cannot and never will prevail.

I am so proud and grateful to be a Hokie. When you attend orientation at Virginia Tech, they as you "what's a Hokie"? I imagine it's because they get this question all the time from curious students and parents. The response? "I am." A Hokie is someone who is loving and loyal, is a friend and a caretaker, is someone who steps up in times of need, someone who does "the right thing," someone who has courage and honor, and pride and spirit. What's a Hokie? "I am." A Hokie is each and every one of the amazing individuals that makes up the student body, the alumni association, and the support group for each of these people. The Hokie spirit is infectious, you can't help but smile, laugh, and feel good about yourself in the presence of these people.

I wasn't at Virginia Tech in 2007 and I didn't personally lose any friends that day, but I lost valuable and amazing members of the Hokie community that day. The world lost these wonderful individuals, robbed too young of their talents and potentials. Luckily for them, hundreds of thousands of people have picked up where they left off, living out their legacies in ways these people probably never dreamed possible. I am a Hokie. I will forever live my life for myself, my family, my friends, but also for these 32 angels whose time was cut much too short.

It's an emotional day for many people. Remembering the events of that day, the memories they had with their lost loved ones, and reflecting on life in general. I mourn for my friends who were so deeply touched that day, for the friends and families of the wounded and lost who had their lives changed forever, and for the heart ache and heart break still experienced by so many. I can't help but shed tears of sadness at the memory of such a senseless tragedy. But I also celebrate their lives, the time I've spent with those I cherish so much, and what the Hokie community has done since that day. I smile at the event related memories I've made, because even though there is an aching under-tone, without them, I wouldn't be who I am or where I am today.

To all of my friends and family, I love you all so much. I am so grateful that each of you is a part of my life.

More Sand For My Bed

Vet roomie and I went for a "quick" walk down to the beach tonight to take a break from studying for physiology exams. I say "quick" because we thought we'd be quick and ended up being gone an hour!

The evening weather here always feels so lovely. A gentle breeze and calmness about the area is really relaxing. We stuck our feet in the water and it felt wonderful. The sand was soft and the water was warm. We had a flashlight with us so we poked around a little bit to see if we could find any fish or crabs. No luck at our first spot, so we meandered over to the dock. One thing I love about nighttime in Grenada is that you can see every star in the sky at night. You look up and you see beautiful twinkles staring back at you. I imagine people who live way out in the country in the US have the same view, but I feel like I see more stars than when I was on the outskirts of Blacksburg at night.

We shined the flashlight into the water at the end of the dock to see if we could find any fish. The water was crystal clear everywhere tonight. I was pretty surprised-I've never seen this one area when it wasn't murky! I'm not really sure what would make it murky during the day and crystal clear at night. The tide was certainly similar to other times. Anyhow, it's probably about 6-8 feet deep at the end of the dock. Mostly sandy with patches of seaweed on the bottom. We both spotted this small object that was bright red. As the bright red object moved around and tried to hide itself in the seaweed from our spotlight, we decided it must have been a crab! We spotted another not quite as red crab not too far from the first one too. Pretty neat!

Next we wandered the other shoreline to see if we could find anything fun. I found some sea glass and a few tiles, and we stumbled upon a few surprised crabs too. It didn't even occur to me to snap pictures of them (I guess I was too surprised and excited at seeing them run around on the sand!). We stumbled upon a dead rat being feasted upon by a million ants. The pattern that they had been munching left it looking unique, but I'll spare you the pictures!

We spotted this little guy on our walk back home. Tiny frog! 

One Down, Six to Go

Hello again! It's been a pretty bland couple of days. This morning we had our immunology final exam, so that's pretty much been the main focus of attention.

My oh-so-fun way of starting the morning: on the university issued schedule, our exam was scheduled for 8am and has been since sometime last fall when they made the schedule. In addition to this nice official schedule, the professor printed on her syllabus that the exam was scheduled for 8am today. So guess where my entire class was at 8am this morning? Waiting to take the exam of course! The problem? The professor was already teaching another class at 8am and had "planned" the exam for 9am. We were quite thrilled. Everyone loves getting up an hour earlier than they have to, particularly when they've been up late studying. The best part? No apology, no acknowledgement of the mistake, no nothing. I am still a tad bitter haha. The exam went well, but I was super tired and would have LOVED to have gotten an extra hour of sleep.

Next on the agenda is a physiology exam on our endocrine unit. I am not at all excited. Hopefully the class average is better than 25% of the class in each grade zone (A, B, C, F), because that last test certainly was a bit frightening. The chapter pretty much builds off of that one too, so there is definitely potential for more scariness (even though I did okay).

After physio we just have one more anatomy exam before we start finals. Home in 4 weeks! I do not look forward to the crazy study madness that is descending upon us quickly or all of the packing I will need to do, but I definitely can't wait to sleep in my own bed with my own pets and my own family. Oh yeah, and I definitely can't wait to eat a more varied diet! I am so sick of my limited options!!! I am going to have to spend the summer brainstorming and being creative so that I have some ideas for next fall. I am so sick of chicken, ugh!

Happy Tuesday!

It is very exciting that it is Tuesday! Only 2 more days of class left this week and then my immunology final on Friday (eek!). I like quick weeks :). We also now only have 34 days left on the island! Yay!!! Too bad leaving doesn't occur until after all 7 final exams are completed and my 2 remaining tests haha.

Today was pretty boring. Did a bunch of studying for various classes. My group is done dissecting our goat and now we're kind of bored in lab waiting for the other groups to catch up. I was able to successfully remove the brain today though, so I was pretty excited about that (I LOVE brains and neurophysiology!).

Teeny Tiny Surprises

Vet roomie and I finally managed to fit in some sun and sand time today (okay she went Friday, I was lazy)! I am of course no tanner because of my obsession with looking down. Today the tide was unusually low and I was able to easily have my face in areas I've never been before (usually because it's just slightly too deep or too rough). A small tidal pool revealed a cute little hermit crab, a large snail, a hungry crab, and some small fish. All you have to do is sit and watch!

When I finally got it, I explored very close to the shoreline (think 8" water) and found some teeny tiny surprises! Lots of micro shells and hermit crabs! The tide also brought the fish in closer and made the sea life just generally more active. Not so great for reef swimming (although it is plenty deep enough around the edges regardless) but it didn't matter because they came to us!

I thought I only brought home shells today, but I was just perusing my collection and found a (sea) hermit, much to my surprise! Since he was still alive (huge sigh of relief), we rushed him back down to the water! It's such a  beautiful night out too. Perfect temperature and breeze, and you can see all the stars and moon crystal clear (no clouds!). Hopefully the little guy makes it! I feel terrible about the mistake :(.

Another cool find today was a live conch. It was just browsing the grasses snacking on algae as it lugged itself along. It was funny to watch it move! I did some reef swimming and saw more new fish as well as hundreds of fish hanging out in the less shallow water. Apparently they aren't huge fans of low tide either.

An excellent way to spend my last afternoon of "break". I managed to get a ton accomplished this weekend despite declaring I would do no school work (which I knew was a lie even as I said it). Back to the grind tomorrow. Final for immunology on Friday-yikes!

 Low tide today! And no clue what that is haha

 Snail! And the little guy I found 8 hours later...oops!

 Itty bitty and an itty bitty inside a teeny tiny!

Surprise!

My surprise of the day was getting a message at 11:40 this morning begging me to come to the small animal clinic for a 12p-5p shift. Having no other real plans other than to study, I accepted and even managed to make it there at 3 minutes to 12p. Nothing like running around grabbing all my supplies, books, a cup for water, and a quick granola bar and begging my roommate to bring me lunch some time in the next several hours haha. It is also at least a 12min walk there.

Anyhow, it was pretty quiet. The other girl working and I mostly just hung around chatting (and not getting any work done haha). Our patients were pretty quiet. We did have a fun time trying to get a finicky blood pressure on one dog, and had another call about an emergency, but that animal came at the change of shift-nothing for us to do.

My vet roomie and I made a delicious "island" dinner for Easter that consisted of rosemary garlic potatoes, ham, and cauliflower. Easy things to come by on the island and they were all quite tasty! We laughed at the end of the dinner because the prep for this is so easy! We really should put more effort into cooking like this more often. It probably took 10 minutes of prep time in all and the rest was just waiting for things to cook! Very easy, healthy, and delicious!

Happy Easter!

"On On"

Went on another Hash today! This time it was over in St. Andrew's (exact spot), which although when looking on a map seems not nearly as far as the top of the island, it turned out to take as much time to get there. And we had the treat of spending 2/3rds of the drive there creeping up very steep and winding roads and spending the other 1/3rd coming down similar roads. It was a little scary at times haha.

I think today's hash was easier than last time. It was barely muddy at all, not nearly as steep uphill, and we spent a lot of time on flat(ter) ground. When the trail was picky, we had to climb down some steep hills and go along some very narrow short stretches of path. There were quite a few cows, goats, and sheep spread throughout (fun for veterinary students!). I didn't feel quite as exhausted at the end of this trail, and I didn't finish last! I kind of finished on my own though, because I was a slow poke going along the trail and had to take pictures of everything. It was very peaceful being "alone" on the trail, knowing that just a little ahead and behind there were other people.

 

check out that HUGE palm tree