I can’t believe it’s already April. It feels like I blinked and all of a sudden, the school year is over! I wanted to write so much more, but man, learning this hard really takes it out of you.
I remember being horribly nervous back in August. My anxiety kept pounding me like a punching bag.
- How hard are these classes going to be?
- What happens if I fail an exam?
- What happens if I fail a class?
- What happens if I fail a semester?
What happens if I fail?
It has taken many years to talk myself down from that question. I still struggle with it on my bad days. Failure is not the end. It’s actually a way to readjust your path. To take in what caused you to fail and to learn from it. To dust yourself off and try again. Failure was so much scarier as a kid. Now, failure is my almost-friend.
In vet school, you learn pretty early on to accept failure. Whether it’s an assignment, a poster presentation, a lab exam, or even a simple question you were asked during class, failure is inevitable. So I try not to let it get to me.
The first year here at Michigan State VCM is all about normal: what happens under normal conditions and in healthy animals, the anatomy, the physiology of each bodily system that contributes to health. You learn what makes up the gross (as in overall) structures and get down to a cellular level, including how different cells communicate with each other and how they contribute to overall function of a tissue or organ.
You have to learn the normal before you can understand that abnormal, which makes sense to me! I never thought so much normal could be taught in a single year.
Along with a few ethics, doctoring, and some background classes, these are the main systems I learned about this year:
- Musculoskeletal system
- Neurology
- Cardiology
- Cutaneous system
- Respiratory system
- Immunology and hematology
- Digestive system
- Endocrine system
- Reproductive system
- Urinary system (I’ll start this class next week!)
If I had to pick one class I thoroughly enjoyed this year, it would have to be the reproductive system. I’ve always found the topic interesting, and the intricacies of how life is made is absolutely incredible to me. Each and every step taken, from the formation of the reproductive tract, to the formation of gametes, to the fusing of the sperm and egg, ALL of it has to go just right or the whole thing fails!
And at the end, you get a baby, or a litter of puppies, or a wet calf, or a jumping foal. Absolutely astounding.
The old cliche of “the miracle of life” doesn’t feel much like a cliche anymore. It truly is a miracle!
I’m not sure if I’ve said it before, but my goal is to work as a large animal veterinarian, mainly with cattle, with a focus on reproduction. I’ve been waiting for the reproduction class all year (it was my second to last class of the entire year!) and I was not disappointed! I loved it just as much as I thought I would, and maybe even more.
The labs for this class were so so interesting, too! I wish I could go into detail of each one. We had the opportunity to learn the reproductive anatomy of males and females, as well as the anatomy of different species’ placentas, and even the stages of fetal development.
Looking back, I will not hide the fact vet school is hard. If I didn’t have my steppingstones of degrees, I would have been knocked on my butt even harder than I was. If you choose to go to college for an undergraduate degree, you’ll know high school is nothing compared to it. If you choose to get a professional degree, you’ll know undergrad was nothing compared to it. Vet school (and any professional program) are not for the faint of heart!
It is hard.
But that’s why I wanted to document it, to keep reminding myself of my accomplishments when I feel like I’m failing, and to educate others who may be considering the profession or simply find it interesting. I know a lot of people have no idea what experiences I go through daily as a vet student. But if you’re interested, I’d like to keep you informed. That way you won’t be as blind-sided as I was when I got here. Not that it was a bad thing! Just that it was a lot to handle on top of the workload.
My best advice is two-fold:
- Stay open-minded: you won’t know what you like and don’t like by avoiding everything! Get your hands dirty and explore. This is the time to do it!
- Find a hobby and keep it: you will get burnt out, especially during school. You need something totally unrelated to animals and medicine to keep yourself sane. Personally, I enjoy creative writing and playing video games. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, just not animal related.
Believe in yourself! As my parents always said, “you can do ANYTHING you set your mind to!”
Thanks for reading.
Peggy
