With finals less than a week away, diligently studying (aka
"cramming") is pretty much on all of the third year students'
minds. It gets to a point where you attend lecture, but may
end up studying material for another class at the same time.
With several semesters of finals behind us, a study strategy has
become very important. Every hour counts. Whether the hour is
for studying, napping, working out, or a late night run to Dairy
Queen, we are quite aware of how this time is spent.
I am sure pre-finals week can be just as frustrating for
professors, many of whom will stop just short of standing on their
heads to get our attention. I realized today that as much as
students rely on strategy, so do our professors. Today we got
to bring our own dogs to school for our last Small Animal Medicine
Lab. Coincidence? I think not. Although years
have passed since our instructors had vet school finals week, they
are ever so wise to students' obsessions about studying. They
knew that the only force strong enough to pull us from our books is
our love for pets and getting to practice real live veterinary
medicine.
As you can tell from previous blog posts, veterinary students
have a way of collecting pets, so there were plenty of rambunctious
dogs to work with during this lab. We are studying small
animal orthopedics and practiced placing limb splints and
performing orthopedic exams. It was quite a sight to have a
room full of perfectly healthy dogs with multiple legs bandaged,
although they were quite content lying on the floor and getting
plenty of attention and petting. Up to this point, the only
experience I have had with orthopedic casts was at the age of four
as the result of a jumping-on-the-bed incident that quickly took a
turn for the worse. Placing casting material is much more fun
than wearing it!
After our bandaging session, we performed orthopedic exams on
our dogs.
Many of our pretend patients seemed bored by this portion of the
lab, but it was enjoyable to watch them interact with one another
during down time. After more than two years of school
together, many dogs have become just as great of friends as the
students have and show recognition with one another with happy tail
wags.
So to all of our instructors who know much more than we do,
thank you! Thank you for showing us that the joys of veterinary
medicine are often far greater and more rewarding than multiple
choice exams.