This past Friday, my second-year class was honored with our white coats! The White Coat Ceremony is held each year to recognize the second-year students as they prepare to enter the clinical portion of the professional curriculum and continue to advance forward in the veterinary profession. We all had our families and friends at our ceremony, and it was wonderful to have them there to celebrate our joy with us. It was a great feeling to be recognized in the middle of our veterinary school curriculum, knowing that we are one more year closer to becoming veterinarians. We have learned so much in the past two years, and I know third and fourth year we will learn even more. I can’t wait to get into the clinical portion of veterinary school, so we can finally put into practice what we have learned in the classroom.

So far the spring semester of my second year of veterinary school has been great! There are so many things that I get to look forward to this semester. We started anesthesiology/surgery, which is a class I have been looking forward to since I started vet school. We have already gotten to participate in exciting labs. For example, we’ve gotten to place catheters in dogs and goats, correctly pre-med dogs for anesthesia, place live dogs under anesthesia and monitor them, and give an epidural to a goat. Everything is starting to become more real now that we are moving out of the basic veterinary courses and getting closer to clinics. Every time we get to work on live animals, I am reminded of how close we are getting to becoming veterinarians. In April of this semester, my second-year class will be getting our white coats at our white coat ceremony! The ceremony is definitely going to be an encouragement before finals to keep pushing forward. After this semester my class will be halfway done with vet school, and it’s going by so fast!