The story of my life as a Ross Vet Student!

AND ITS A BIG ONE.

Ok, not THE big one (graduation) or even the big one before THE big one (finishing on the island), but its the big one before that which is A big one.  6th semester is coming to and end.  This is the first semester that I won’t have four finals during finals week, meaning I will be done the Wednesday of that week instead of Thursday.  That right there is one of the kind of rights of passage of getting this far... you get to 6th semester and you finally get to wear green scrubs because you’re in surgery and you finally get to only have finals til Wednesday.  I don’t know, its really such a small thing but its also extremely exciting, probably especially because I am actually going home this break and I am leaving RIGHT after my last final which is before most people in other semesters are even done their second to last one!  

This semester has been intense.  I set myself up well in the first round of midterms with pretty good grades.. which turned out to be a good thing because in the second round of exams I did not as well in two of my classes.  I managed to get through surgery lab without needing to remediate ANYTHING and shockingly apparently went through the OSCE (another practical exam) without needing to remediate anything there either (which I just found out today).  So officially, all that stands between me and home is my special species final this Wednesday (my easiest class and I currently already have an A in the class) and then my three “real” finals next week during finals week - Large Animal Medicine on Monday, Small Animal Surgery (the scariest one and the one I need to do best on) on Tuesday, and then Small Animal Medicine on Wednesday.... oh and of course I need to pack for myself and for Minnie and get her health certificate and paperwork squared away for her to be able to fly but anyway.  I feel like I am actually well prepared for finals for once.... not like I could take them right now but as for how much time I have to accomplish all the studying and everything I need to accomplish I am in a good spot.  I finished my Special Species study guide on Friday which is like a world record for how far ahead of an exam I’ve completed my notes for it!  Tomorrow I am going to comb through and edit it and print it and then just refresh and review the info in my free time tomorrow, Tuesday, and then again before the final Wednesday.  I also need to find my study guide from the midterm to review the info that was on that because there will be a bit of cumulative info on the final but not too much.  Since surgery is my lowest grade (still passing and fine but of course I want to give it the most attention) I have spent all of this weekend working on watching lectures and writing up my study guide for surgery and when I needed a break from surgery I looked at small animal medicine - there are only like 10 new SAM2 lectures on the final so I’m using SAM2 as my “break” from surgery when I get sick of it and just need to look at and think about something else.  Each day since thursdya I have set a goal for myself of the number of lectures I want to get through and... I’ve actually accomplished it each day!  (need to do one more for my goal today but... I will get it done!).  So I am feeling in a very good place.  I do need to get cracking on Large Animal Med starting tomorrow because there are the most lectures for that one (I think there are 27 or something insane like that) so since tomorrow will be “one week until” the LAM exam it just feels like I need to get to work on those or else my next weekend will be spent in a frantic panic which I don’t want!  I want to actually get through ALL of my lectures for ALL the classes THIS WEEK so that the weekend can literally just be spend editing, organizing, and reviewing the info for all three of my finals.  That means I have 27 LAM lectures, 10 SAM2 lectures and 8 Surgery lectures to get into study guide form in the next 5 days.

TOTALLY DOABLE RIGHT.

I have a big exam tomorrow and a bigger one on Thursday and another big one the following Monday and then another one the following Monday, so naturally I needed to do something to procrastinate.  This is a list that has been growing for a while.  I give you, in no particular order:

THINGS FROM THE USA THAT I MISS DEARLY [that I am 100% sure you take for granted]

1.  Having an electrical outlet in the bathroom.  No, I don’t know why there ISN’T one, all I know is that outlets inside bathrooms are simply not a thing there.  And its not just my bathroom or my house, its pretty much ALL bathrooms in homes on this island unless they are very new and built and managed by Americans.  Apparently wanting to look in the bathroom mirror while blow drying or fixing your hair is an entirely American thing.  So yes, I literally have to run any hair appliances to the nearest plug in my bedroom, which would literally require an extension cord to reach my bathroom, so I just awkwardly pull up a chair in front of my one dresser that has a mirror and a plug near it and try not to light anything on fire by sitting a straightener or curler on any of the 4 wooden and/or cloth surfaces nearby.  Yes, this is why I have straightened my hair a grand total of 3 times since I have been down here.

2.  Cart corral in the grocery store parking lot.  I am pretty sure if you’ve asked me what I miss about America any time within the last ~2 years you have heard me say this already.  There are simply NO cart corral down here, you must return your cart to the sidewalk in front of the store where they live.  I miss the days of only having to push the cart to a cart corral like 3 spaces over.  There is something about not just being able to load the car and quickly get in and go that makes any shopping trip 100x more tedious.  And yes, this does mean that I will struggle with carrying way too many bags to my car rather than having to push a cart to my car unless absolutely necessary.  This also means that I am now judging all Americans who have ever just left a cart loose in a parking lot because THERE WAS A CORRAL RIGHT THERE.  Harumph.

3.  Being able to buy everything in your cart at the grocery store.  Now, in America, if its on the shelf, you just assume this means an item at the store is available for purchase.  In St. Kitts, this is not the case.  I am pretty much used to this but it is still annoying - whenever they get a new item, rather than waiting to price it and THEN put it on the shelves, they just stock it and then when you get to the checkout line the cashier will scan it, see that no price comes up, and just sit it aside.  I’d say 75% of the time she doesn’t even give you a hint about what’s happening by saying “no price” .... they just automatically sit it aside.  Nope, they won’t try to check the price, ask a manager, nothing, its just simply - if it doesn’t scan you can’t buy it.  So yeah, by now I know if I see a new product that I have never seen in the store before, don’t get excited and don’t try to buy it until its been there about a month or so (and God knows how many other people have unsuccessfully attempted to buy it, thus resulting in it sitting by the cashier and then being restocked God knows how many times before they finally deemed fit to enter it into their system).

4.  Being able to expect that certain things will be at the store.   Just because the store carried something yesterday or last week or last month does not mean that they will have it now... or that they ever will again.  And I’m not just talking about seasonal items.  One time they had CozyShack tapioca pudding, I ate it for dinner for like 3 days straight because I was so excited.  That was about 8 months ago and they have never had it since.  You also need to know what days the stores get their fresh foods delivered because if you go on that day or a day or two after you will (maybe) be able to actually purchase everything you’re looking for but go the day BEFORE they stock and you’re pretty much eating rice and beans.  Along with this goes being able to expect that anything will be the same price that it was before.... I recently was entertained by the fact that a half cantaloupe packaged  in cellophane was about $4, while a whole cantaloupe was $9.50.  Needless to say I bought two halves.  The next time I was at the store, luckily I looked at all the prices again because they apparently realized their mistake and the whole cantaloupe was only $7.  And price changes are not done seasonally, but rather on a whim it seems.

5. Water pressure... or water in general.  Although its not going on currently, there was about a year of the time I’ve been here while there was a water rationing program going on, meaning that the water for the house was turned off from around 8 pm to around 5 am daily.  Trust me, you become acutely aware of just how much water we use on a day to day basis when you’re washing a sink full of dishes or trying to wash your hair from water in a jug.  Now that our water rationing has ended, its really exciting to be able to take a shower or wash dishes WHENEVER I WANT but its not perfect... water pressure has been horrible lately - every time I’ve taking a morning shower this semester there has been barely enough pressure for me to even pull the little tab in the shower to make it go from the spigot to the shower head, pretty much meaning that I literally am washing my hair and self under a trickle of water.  At first I just assumed that either my roommate or someone else in our building was also showering or washing clothes at the same time but after doing some investigating.... nope... that’s just water pressure in my shower these days.  I never thought I would be excited to get back to the “horrible” water pressure you get with well water at my parents house but it turns out even that much pressure is a luxury.

6. Drive thrus and “fast” food.  Now drive thrus I really do miss.  Want a cup of coffee or a bottle of water or a bowl of oatmeal and you can get it in like 5 minutes and be on your way.  Drive thrus simply don’t exist down here.  I apparently used to take for granted how fast they are too, because the last time I was home when I got coffee from Dunkin and the woman was already handing it to me and asking for my money by the time I drove to the window I felt SO FLUSTERED and rushed and startled that she was already handing me something.  And I don’t miss “fast food” in the traditional sense but along with the drive thru sentiment there are simply NO options for food down here that are literally FAST.  It takes LONGER to get food out somewhere here than it is to cook pretty much anything yourself.  Sometimes when I am studying like crazy and strapped for time I just want to be able to run in to some place like Panera or Wawa or even a grocery store where they have ready made sandwiches and salads and grab something and know I will be back to studying in 15 minutes but here, even if you go to one of the VERY FEW “fast food” places you can assume your wait will be at least 30-45 minutes and your order will most likely be wrong.

7. 24 hour anything.  This kinda goes with above - if I’m studying in the middle of the night and I want to grab an energy drink or a snack or some gum or a water bottle... you can’t, you simply can’t because there simply is NOTHING that is open 24 hours here.  You must plan all late night study snacks and beverages FAR in advance.  Now I grew up where its at least a 20 minute drive to anything 24 hours but... if you needed or wanted something THAT BAD you could still get it, right?  Here, it simply does not exist.

8. Dryers!  Apparently having a clothes dryer is a very American thing, just like plugs in the bathroom, only the very new and very American housing options have them... and even some of those don’t.  I hate it.  I mean, have you ever line dried a plush bath towel?  It gets crunchy, not fluffy!  Last time I came home I even had to pack all my clothes dirty because I was worried if I washed everything it wouldn’t have enough time to dry and then would get musty in my luggage.  Yes, my living room and spare bedroom may smell lovely after I do laundry (because I have to hang it on every chair and spare surface in those two rooms to dry it, lest I hang it outside and forget it for a moment too long and therefore it gets sunbleached and/or downpoured on and has to stay out there for even LONGER) but gosh dang it I cannot wait to be able to wash and WEAR something on the same day!

9. AC throughout the whole house.  This one is not such a big deal to me but on those REALLY hot days where its so hot in the rest of the house that I barely peek out of my bedroom, I definitely miss having full house AC.  Now, I’m not even talking central AC, I just mean the ability to cool the entire house.  Its simply not possible here.  There are only AC units in the bedrooms and they work pretty well but if I tried to cool the whole house with them it would probably leave the bedrooms feeling like a walk-in freezer and the rest of the house luke-warm at best with an electric bill in the thousands.

This semester has been a busy whirlwind already!  This past week my whole class had our aseptic exam where you basically have to prepare for surgery in a sterile manner, all the way from opening your surgical packs to scrubbing in to gowning and gloving yourself and draping your patient - basically everything up to cutting into the patient for a surgery must be done in a certain manner and we were tested on that this week!  It was our first true practical exam of vet school where we have to perform this series of actions with one professor watching our every move and grading us on it, but we will have several more practicals this semester and if we don’t pass them we do not get to move on to 7th semester.  Needless to say this first one has been a big source of stress - luckily I got to go on the first day in the second time slot so I got it over with early and now I have just been waiting for my grade which we were told to expect NEXT Tuesday.  I don’t believe I made any errors but its one of those things that you won’t know until you see the result because I definitely could have made an error or touched something incorrectly without even realizing it or feeling that I touched it.

We also are closing in on some exams, we have several major exams all throughout the month of February so I really need to use this weekend to get a head start on studying and making my study guides for these exams, especially because the first class we have an exam in is the hardest one for me to pay attention in and her power points do not have all the information so I will actually have to go back and watch the lectures to get all the info out of them that will be on the exams.

Other than that we have a lot of labs all the time!  I have one today that should be interesting and three next week, one of which is shadowing the 7th semesters as they care for their animals/patients to see how we will do it next semester... doing that makes the end of time on this island seem so near!

So this past winter break was exciting for two reasons - first, passing 5th semester meant that I am officially 50% done with getting my degree! and second it was my last christmas break that will be spent on the island.  From here on out I will actually have to experience winter, which I am kinda disappointed about honestly!

This past break was a ton of fun.  I did some petsitting which left me with some cash in hand, but definitely watched a lot less pets than I did last winter break because I didn’t want the stress of having so many critters in my care and having to run all over to watch them.  My family came down the Saturday after finals and stayed almost 2 weeks - 1 week at the Marriott and then about 5 days at my house.  While they were at the Marriott I went over there any basically had pool days all day every day with them.  We went to lobsterfest on the one friday they were here, and then on Christmas day they moved over to my house and we just cooked and watched christmas movies and football all day long.  The day after christmas we went on a catamaran trip which was a lot of fun and then the rest of the days we basically spent going to the beach - we went to reggae, took minnie to gong, went swimming a few days at my friend’s house and then finally they had to leave way before I was ready for them to leave.  They left early in the morning so I had one day mostly to myself - I got my hair done and cleaned up the house and then the following day I welcomed my friend and her hubby to the island to visit with me for 5 days.

Their time with me was also so fun!  We went to lobsterfest on their first night, did the crater hike on NYE (or attempted to in my case... my back started becoming extremely painful part way up so I ended up going back to the car after a while), and then spent lots of time at the beaches.  They left just in time for all my friends to start getting back so the last few days of my break were spent just being the friend-shuttle from the airport and then going to the beach with my two best friends down here as well as my roommate on the last day of break.

Its been way too long since I posted!  One semester has ended and another, 6th, has begun and we are already two weeks into the semester... although its been so busy it feels like much longer!

5th semester ended in a busy haze.  I had all Cs and C+ going into finals and was not feeling optimistic at all about pulling any of those up because all the classes in 5th were HARD!  The first final that we had was toxicology and man I studied my ASS off for that final.  The final was 80% made up of new materials which was around 100 plants that we needed to know the name of, what the toxic principle was(molecule that made them toxic basically), and what the clinical signs for that plant/toxic principle would be.  We also had a few other new items on the exam such as illicit drugs, animal venoms, and some old items from previous tests.  I had literally gotten only a 72 on each of the midterms so I was feeling close to the edge.   Luckily studying my ass off paid off because I ended up getting a 100% on the final - I know I definitely got 2-3 wrong so he definitely gave back some questions, but I will still extremely happy with that and it brought my grade up to a strong B!  The second final was Small Animal Medicine.  On one hand I wasn’t that worried because I had my highest grade in this class and only needed like a 45% on the final to pass, but at the same time there was the most new info to learn and the most old info to remember for this class and the exams are notoriously hard because of detailed questions.  When I left that exam I felt certain I failed it and was just praying that I didn’t fail it worse than a 45%.  Luckily when we got grades back I got a B on it, which brought my grade from a C+ to a B in that class also!  The next exam was Diagnostic Imaging, this was the class that I was best at all semester, I would have had a B going into the final if it wasn’t for a scheduling error on my part that led to me missing something worth 10% of my grade... so I felt good going in but of course the exam was hard and it was also the longest final.  I ended up getting a 78% on it, which was fine, and had me keeping my C in that class.  Finally there was anesthesiology, my “other” worst class.  I just felt like the questions on these exams always happened to be what I did not study so I REALLY tried to cram in the info for this final.  Amazingly, as I was taking it I actually felt like the final was easy!  And what I got the grade back I had gotten an 88% on it which was great and pulled my grade up to a B!  So basically I went into finals expecting my GPA to take a massive hit and instead it only decreased a bit, an amount that I can definitely rectify this semester.

So far this semester I have been going to class every day, even though classes begin at 8 am.  I am definitely tired with this schedule but I am forcing myself to keep going because our 8 am class has attendance as 10% of the grade and I refuse to leave those points on the table.  Last weekend I got struck by a major cold and am still coping with the end of that.  We have already had several labs this semester including surgery labs where we have been learning how to do aseptic technique and sterile prep for surgery.  We will have our aseptic exams next week, mine is on Tuesday, where we basically have to prepare everything from arriving to surgery in scrubs, scrubbing, putting on sterile gown and gloves, draping the patient, etc. all the aseptic technique basically all the way up to the point of cutting into the patient.  It seems so basic but there are a ton of little details and steps and this is one of the major exams of this semester!

Aaaaaand then suddenly here we are, a week into the second half of 5th semester.  Can you believe that every single day that goes by brings me closer and closer to the end of my time on this island?  At this point I have about 10 months left.  The fact that its less than a year has me feeling like fireworks and cartwheels and every day that goes by is even LESS than “less than a year” - but then I remember that every moment that goes by is a moment closer to having to find a job that will pay me enough to get rid of my loans sometimes before I die and also enough to live on and hopefully be happy with the work I’m doing.  These days bring me closer and closer to being THE ONE that is in charge of doing to figuring out of what is wrong with pets and the one that is physically doing the surgery or the prescribing or the injecting etc. etc.  So even though thinking about being done with school and done with this island and that time frame getting closer is very exciting there is so much pressure, more than ever before.  All of the classes I am taking this semester are very clinical, literally all things (with the exception of maybe one class) that are skills that I could very easily have to use EVERY DAY as a vet.  That really adds this whole layer of stress because now I don’t just need to learn this stuff for the exam, something I have always been good at doing anyway, I have to learn it and retain it because I will be using it for the rest of my life and whether or not I do master this stuff could impact my life and the lives of all the animals I treat in the future.  This stress is something I am really putting on myself and so far its definitely not “constructive” stress at all.

So as far as classes actually go - I am taking Small Animal Medicine 1, Anesthesiology, Toxicology, and Diagnostic Imaging.  So far we are just over halfway thru the semester and the only one I feel like I’m actually any good at is Diagnostic Imaging, which is cool, its mainly about reading x-rays and ultrasounds and using these methods to help narrow down and diagnose disease.  I am actually really enjoying it!  Small animal medicine is also interesting, we are actually getting to learn about common diseases and what we would do to diagnose and treat them.  Anesthesiology so far is the most hands on because there are a lot of labs connected to them, I even get to anesthetize a dog on Monday.  Toxicology is definitely my least favorite because the professors are some that I have had before and just teach in a style that I have a hard time learning from.  Also, I’m usually really good at inferring what the professor thinks is important and therefore will test on but with this professor he will literally ask questions about big broad important topics just as often as he will ask about something that was literally one sentence in the 30 pages of notes so theres no predicting anything, you just have to know everything, which is of course impossible.  

Luckily I’m passing everything so far, many of my classmates are not so lucky even those that usually seem to ace everything!  

Well here we are - as of noon today I am officially DONE with classes for 4th semester.  I had my first lab final on Monday and I have my second one tomorrow at 8 am - so from approximately 9 am tomorrow I will be doing nothing but studying all weekend in preparation for my written finals next week.  This round of finals has felt a bit weird already because usually I spend the whole week before finals studying, and I have done that, but since I had two lab finals this week I spent a lot of my time studying for THOSE rather than studying for my written finals next week, which means I really need to use this weekend to the max.  I am on the cusp of letter grades in basically every class which means all of these finals matter A LOT.  In one class I have an A that I would like to keep, in two classes I have a B+ but right at the borderline of being Bs which means it will be easy to keep my Bs but I need to work my ASS off to keep a B+ or even push it to an A, and then in one class I have a C+ which should be easy to push to a B if I work hard enough!  That last grade really disappointed me because I did so poorly on my last midterm that it brought my grade from a B to a low C+ and yet every single question I got wrong I was between two answers and just seemed to pick the wrong one AND all those questions I got wrong were from one certain professor in the course so I know going into these finals that I really need to focus on her material and I have basically spent all day today re-listening to her lectures rather than simply taking the quicker and easier way of studying and reading her power points, which are not as thorough as her spoken words.  I do feel good that I will pass all my classes.  Of course I will continue to study more and push myself to keep or bring up my grades, but in order to pass even that class that I currently have a C in I only need a about a 60% on the finals, which would be lower than any grade I have ever received in vet school.  Of course I am aiming for more like a high B on that specific final, but just knowing I have that much wiggle room that I can get a 60% and still pass takes a lot of the stress out of taking a final that’s worth like 45% of your final grade!

I’m also pretty happy that this round of finals all my exams except one will be given in the exam center which means they will be computerized tests.  I have a MAJOR fear that I will miss-bubble my answers on scan-tron written exams and fail for that reason.  I always check 100 times before turning my papers in but still in the back of my mind I think “what if you only had 5 minutes left when you noticed and you had to erase re-bubble 65 questions in that time period” - that is LITERALLY what my nightmares are made of, that and the thought of straight up forgetting to set alarms for an exam and sleeping through it OR setting alarms that don’t go off, thinking I hit snooze when really I turned the alarm off, etc.  Usually I am so afraid of sleeping through exams that I sleep poorly and basically pop right up when my alarm goes off because I’m so anxious anyway, but luckily this semester all my exams are either at 10:30 am or 2 pm, so hopefully I will get some better quality of sleep this time during finals since my body naturally wakes me up much earlier than that with or without an alarm.

The best news of all is that in ONE WEEK from this very moment I will be in the US!  I will just be getting off my plane in Miami and going through customs.  I can’t believe it has literally been a whole year since I have been in the US and I CANNOT WAIT to see my family and my friends.

This is it guys!  Only 17 days until I FINALLY get to go visit home in the US after not being on US soil for an entire YEAR!

I have really been enjoying the fact that I’ve now been on island for over a year because I can look back on what I was going through a year ago at this time and see how far I have come.  A year ago I was spending almost all my time in the anatomy lab preparing for the very daunting lab final while missing my dog SO much.  NOW I have my dog with me and I am so grateful, having her here makes me so much less home sick, but after a year without seeing home and most of my friends I am SO ready!  I have 6 finals this semester, more than ever before, the first one is a week from today, the second is a week from Friday and then the rest are daily starting two weeks from today.  Most of my classes I have set myself up very well for and I only need like a 40% on the final to pass the class, but of course I want to maintain my Bs, B+s, and As so I intend to study my ASS off.  This is my one last procrastination moment before I really dig in to preparing for my Pathology 2 lab final which is the exam that is next Monday.

The positive thing about this semester is that I was able to meet the INSANE goal that I set myself for money to return on my loans - I will be returning just about 2/3 of the living expense money that I will be getting from my loans.  This is partly because I used my pet sitting money from break and the money I earned from being an OL very wisely rather than just seeing it as “bonus” and blowing it frivolously.  I have also been very strict with my budgeting and with only using cash to pay for everything.  I did splurge on a few things, even more than “normally” it felt like, such get getting my hair dyed for the first time EVER, getting my nails done, and going out to eat - but I felt like I could do so due to my tight monitoring of my budget in other areas and obviously it worked out.  I know I won’t be able to send back quite so much next semester because since I will be home from break I will have no income from petsitting or OLing and also because we will be going down to two occupants in our house meaning my rent will be increased.  I am hoping to combat those “losses” by budgeting tightly in other ways, packing lunches more,  and stocking up on pet and personal supplies while I am home that would be costlier to buy down here.  I also have been thinking about investing in some vinyl stickers that I can cut out on my machine to make custom silhouette stickers to sell to students.  I am planning to test that out and cut a weimaraner silhouette this week since I have  a small silver piece of vinyl left over that came with my sticker cutter.  I just want to make sure that the sticker would survive pretty well before I sell them to people.

Well everyone, we are officially into the second half!  The second half of the semester AND, more excitingly, the second half of my time on this island.  That’s right, as of this semester’s mid-semester break, which was last weekend, I am halfway done with my time on the island!  Its crazy to think that on any given day now I have fewer days left on this island than I have completed here.  At this time last year I remember thinking how short 3 semesters seemed even though they take up a full year - and now looking back it has gone by even faster than I knew it would.  Every semester has been more challenging but also more wonderful because I know that I’m always getting one step closer to my career and also because although more challenging, all the information is becoming more and more clinical and less abstract.  Just last week I got the email notification that soon registration for next semester will open up.... this is insanely exciting because the classes next semester are ALL very clinically relevant and have to do with actually practicing ACTUAL medicine and also because the end of next semester marks my halfway point of vet school as a whole!  That is just CRAZY to me.  I am trying very hard to enjoy time as it passes but I do always have my eye on the two ends in sight - clinical placements/clinical year and graduation.  I LOVE this island and my life here but I am also excited to get to “real life” of having an income and working and being able to get into a normal routine.

Now, as far as exams go, I’m less than 1/3 of the way through the semester - I still have my second round of midterms left, which start this coming week, and four written finals plus two lab finals.  The good news is that this round of midterms is comfortably spaces where as the first round was 4 exams within 2 weeks, so hopefully I will feel less stressed and this will also help time to pass more quickly since I will need to study each day from now til the end of the semester, where as the past few weeks I have felt like I’ve just been twiddling my thumbs because I had SO much empty time ahead of me waiting for the next round of midterms.

Now for a life update - last weekend was midsemester break!  Almost my entire class went to St. Marten with scuba club, even my friends who don’t scuba just went for a 3-4 day weekend.  Luckily two of my very good friends stayed behind (one in my class and one in the class below me) plus my roommate so I had plenty of company.  I also watched my friend’s dog who did go to St. Marten so I was able to make a few dollars staying at her place with Minnie and my foster dogs who really enjoyed a bigger yard to run around in and a new dog to play with.  I basically spent the whole weekend relaxing and not studying at all!  It was just what I needed.  The first night we went to the movies, Saturday I did nothing basically all day until going to dinner with my friend.  Sunday morning a few of us took our dogs to my favorite dog beach out on the peninsula - this was also my first time taking a long drive since I’ve had a mechanic look at my car for its overheating issue so it was kind of a test - and she passed!  I mean, she did end up starting to run hot on the way back but it was literally not until I turned onto my road, so we made it the whole way there and 95% of the way back with zero issue.  I go out onto the peninsula so infrequently that I am more than happy with this improvement!  Then my one friend and I ordered pizza in for dinner.  On Monday my roomie and I went to port for me to run some errands at the bank and then we walked around and did some shopping.  I got some CUTE CUTE baby stuff for my friend who recently found out she is having a GIRL as well as some PERFECT birthday gifts for my sister since I didn’t send her anything this year like I did my brother.  I also bought myself a cute sweatshirt thing and a clip bead for my pandora bracelet to memorialize the weekend as the halfway point of my island time!  I was so happy - when my mom originally got me the bracelet for christmas I got one clip bead to hold my beads in place and wanted a second but there were done that I loved and I want all the beads on my bracelet to mean something to me, so I didn’t want to get just any old one.  As soon as I saw this bead from the new spring collection I knew it was perfect right away - exactly my style and goes very well with my other beads and especially my other clip.  Then we also get gelato from this new gelato place in port which was AMAZING.  I then basically did nothing for the rest of the afternoon, a bit of studying, and caught up on some TV shows.  Now after a boring week of classes and a productive weekend of studying, here we are - time for me to head back to campus to do some MORE studying.

So far this semester I have been pleased with myself and how on top of studying I was staying, how well I was doing with going to class and actually paying attention, etc.  I have been feeling MUCH better this semester than I did last semester when I was having a hard time focusing and feeling engaged because of outside drama and stress that was impacting me.  Despite all this... today I am feeling totally wiped out and beat!  I just (an hour ago) got done my last exam of our first round of midterm exams.  We had 4 exams in less than two weeks, with the last 3 exams within the last week.  I am mentally and emotionally and physically exhausted.  It also doesn’t help that today’s exam was by far the hardest class of the semester AND it happened to fall during a week that we have a guest speaker in one class so our schedule for that class is doubled meaning we have MORE classes than normal and those extra classes are at 8 am (read:  even less sleep than normal).  This exam today was not just... an exam... it was a challenge.  Most of our exams are very information based.  The teacher asks a question and you choose a right answer.  Today’s exam was about 50% “problems” rather than questions, where we received a copy of blood work results and then were asked 2-5 questions about it.  So, rather than just choosing the right answer immediately you have to decipher the blood work, look at every single value and decide what it means or if its even relevant at all, and then compare it with the other values and decide what they mean in conjunction, if anything at all.  Every time I would feel good about a blood work question I would get to the next question about that same blood work and either the question itself or the way it was worked would make me rethink whether I even answered the first one right.  And then once you decide what the blood work means I would start thinking - man I hope I’m right because if you’re headed in the wrong direction or misinterpreted one tiny part of the blood work that’s like 3 questions wrong right there which is practically a whole letter grade of difference in the final grade for the exam. Needless to say, after that stressful exam I feel like I’ve been hit by an 18 wheeler!  

Really, this semester has been good so far.  I am just feeling down and out cause I am still fresh from that exam AND because I am majorly lacking in sleep since I got up around 5:45 to study this morning before the exam and also had to get up extra early yesterday for a lab.

Otherwise the semester is going fine - I got an A, B+ (missed the A by ONE POINT), and a B on my other exams this round so I am happy about that.   Today I have a mandatory class, 3 other classes, and an exam review....  I may just very well go home after the exam review which is at the end of lunch.  All that is on my mind right now is taking a nap and drinking some wine.  And cleaning my room majorly cause we all know when exam time rolls around my room gets suuuuuuper messy!

 Well guys 4th semester is officially on a roll.  The schedule this semester is already so much worse than last semester when I started class at 1 most days and was done by noon on Fridays - this semester its 9/10 am - 3/4 pm every day so it feels like basically working a full time job.  Other than the actual schedule I am loving this semester so far, the information is much more clinical in most classes and Epidemiology, the one class I thought would be endlessly boring, I am actually finding quite interesting.  Nutrition is a breeze so far since I took 3 nutrition classes in undergrad.  We have only done general nutrition info so far and then in depth equine nutrition which is all review to me as one of my undergrad nutrition courses was specifically for equine only.  Pathology 2 and Clinical Pathology are both really interesting but also a LOT of info being thrown at us already.  Our first exam is 1 week from today and then we have 4 exams all within about 10 days.  I have done some studying and worked on some study guides already but I am going to start kicking it into high gear as of today.  One thing I am REALLY proud of myself for so far this semester is that I have gone to EVERY single class and not missed one so far.  Last semester was a totally different case because neither the teachers nor the information was engaging and it was easier and more useful for me to just spend the time reviewing power points on my own rather than going to class just to sit on Facebook the whole time.

I also just took on a new “foster” dog - she is not a traditional foster but more like a charity pet sitting dog.  She is owned, her owner adopted her right before April’s break but while she was home on break she was hospitalized and is still there and will be for a while it seems, so I will be watching her dog.  This dog was VERY timid with other dogs when she first got to my house but by the end of the first night she and Minnie were already best buds and they have been playing nonstop ever since.  She is very sweet and well behaved so I am really enjoying having such a sweet buddy for my girl.