From the Classroom to Actually Practicing Medicine
I feel like I say this all the time, but I can’t believe how quickly the semester is flying by! The kicker is that this semester is my last semester of formal class in veterinary school, which is both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. I’m trying to soak up as much information as possible during this last semester because I know there is a time in the not-so-distant future when I’ll be expected to put this knowledge to use. It’s funny to think how eager I was first year to finish the classroom portion of vet school and get into clinics, and now I’m wishing I could review anatomy with the first years one last time. Don’t get me wrong: I am excited to be done with the classroom, especially after four years of undergrad and almost three years of vet school. It’s just that I’ve finally gotten the studying down; I really am a professional student. In May, I will have to start over, in a sense, and build an entirely new skill set as I begin to practice medicine.
I keep thinking: isn’t there more they need to teach us before we start fourth-year clinics?! There’s still so much to learn! But I just need to remind myself that I’m not the first vet student to feel this way and the process obviously works, because every class says the same thing around this time in their third year, and then they end up graduating in May. As one of our professors said, “We want to make the transition from the classroom to actually practicing medicine as smooth as possible, but there’s no way to do that except kick you out of the nest. You will fall for a bit, but I promise we’ll be here to help guide you.”
I know that my class, the Class of 2016, will be just fine once we start clinics in May. We just need to have confidence in all that we’ve learned here at Texas A&M!