This story was originally published on my vet school blog, “Wet Cleanup on Aisle 5.”
I’d intended to write a blog entry on my very first day of vet school. And my second. And here it is the third, and it seems like I’ve already been in school for three weeks. My head is going to explode!
Our first day started out with anatomy, and it bodes well so far. The professor was enthusiastic, empathetic, funny, well-spoken… just, wow. She really made me excited for the coming four years, and indeed my new career.
Here are the classes I am taking:
- Anatomy, a million or so hours per week
- Histology & Physiology, a half a million or so hours per week
- Immunology
- Radiology
- Perspectives in Vet Med (an overview of the profession)
That’s only five classes, right? How bad can it be?
Monday was totally doable. Tuesday was beginning to seem like a lot of information. By today, our brains had turned to mush.
Not that any of the information we’ve had thus far has been difficult, per se. It’s not like o. chem, where you really have to struggle to understand a concept. This information is fairly straightforward, but the sheer volume is overwhelming. I have already used up an entire package of note cards, which would have taken several weeks in undergrad.
The other piece that makes this overwhelming is the class schedule. It’s just bizarre. It seems like any given class meets at a different time each day, and none of us really knows where in the heck we’re supposed to be. I just try to follow the herd and moo a lot so it seems like I belong.
But here’s the amazing thing. Even though we are turning into zombies, we are excited to be here. I had such fun today studying pelvic bone anatomy with some of my classmates. We are all so interested in and motivated to learn the material, and all of us had something interesting to contribute to our discussion, because we come from such diverse backgrounds.
Now…
The writer in me wants to tweak this post so that the prose flows better, and so that it really expresses the whirlwind of feelings that I’m experiencing–joy, excitement, nervousness, confusion, exhaustion, belonging, fascination–but the vet student in me is saying, “Eh, I need to sleep. They’ll get the idea.”
Welcome to Zombieland. It’s gonna be a good four years.
“This information is fairly straightforward, but the sheer volume of information is overwhelming.”
That is SO TRUE!!! People always say, “Wow, you’re in vet school?!? Is it REALLY HARD?!?!?” and I always say, “Well, no, actually — it’s not that any of it particularly HARD, there’s just a LOT of it.” None of it so far has been conceptually difficult, it’s just that I come home at the end of a day where I’ve had 8 solid hours of lecture, and I know I’m supposed to review all my notes within 24 hours, and I sit down to start, and then it’s like, wait a minute — I’m going to be sitting here until 4 AM if I actually review all of this!!!
Not getting behind is really, really hard, though. I felt like I was on top of things until the first exam of first year (Devo) and then I feel like I’ve been putting out fires ever since.
And isn’t the scheduling bizarre? We get this gigantic PDF master schedule at the beginning of the semester, and there literally is no pattern whatsoever to the classes (well, Anatomy was every day from 9-12 first semester, but that was it). If I ever lost that thing I’d be completely hosed!
I’m glad you’re enjoying your first week!!!