Midterms

Well, I've officially received all the grades back from the first round of midterms (almost in time for the next round...) and I have passed all my tests! Each round of midterms passed is becoming a celebration! The information is challenging, but is starting to become more and more clinically relevant (i.e. interesting!). And even better, it's all starting to interconnect to each other (making it even more interesting!)

Classes are going well and I am busy as ever. Nearly every day is spent studying and [trying to] stay caught up on the material. Basically it's sleep, eat, school, study, repeat!

My skeleton for skeletal prep is on its way to completion. It took me a couple days to disarticulate the full skeleton, then the bones spent a few weeks in the maceration tank and are now in the final tank. After they are taken out, I'll do another cleaning, and let them sit in the sun for a while, then coat them with a preservative and all that will be left is re-articulating them! I'm excited to have this skeleton for when I am working in the clinic. It will be a great diagnostic tool.

After disarticulating my skeleton

One of my favorite classes this semester is general pathology. We have an excellent professor (Dr. Baldwin) who is very passionate about teaching and is an absolute riot to listen to! Each week, we attend lab at the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at the north end of campus. Dr B shows us tissue samples (normal and abnormal) and is orienting us to the world of pathology. This week, we get to start practicing doing a necropsy!

Me and my classmate Amanda "haz mat suited up" for pathology lab!

As always, we try to have a little bit of fun even with all the stress and studying we do. One of my classmates got married last weekend and I had the pleasure of watching her little lab puppy Phiona while she was down in Salt Lake for her celebration. Phi became Burton's girlfriend by the end of the weekend. They were playing tag and tug of war and romping around the house all weekend long. I did leave the dogs for to head down for a few hours to Farmington for the reception and met up with the bride and groom and a few of our classmates. Vet students can clean up real nice when we get the chance...

Burton and his girlfriend Phiona

Amanda, me and Hayley at our friend Heather's wedding 2.16.2013

One of the projects I've taken on for our class is organizing a design competition for "vet school swag." Our class doesn't have very much as far as gear (t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc.) to represent ourselves yet. One of our primary goals is to establish our school's presence in the community. The design competition ended just this last week, so we are on our way to getting some USU SVM paraphernalia!

I also just found out today that I was selected as a mentor for the leadership experience I attended as a first year last summer (COLE). This time I will attend as a leader and mentor for the next class coming in to attend the USU + WSU program. I am really excited for the class of 2017. I have already met several of the members who were offered positions and I am so looking forward to getting to know them more and working with them next year!

Things are continuing to go very well here in Utah. I'm looking forward to Spring Break in two weeks. I have plans to go to Colorado for a few days. After Spring Break, we will more than halfway done with the semester and before I know it, it'll be summer! (I've actually been itching for summer for the last few weeks...)

Hope all is well!

As always, send a text, email or call! I love to hear from everyone!

xoxo

C