The inner workings of a vet student

Turns out the exam results were available earlier today. However, only about 5 people managed to see them before they were so cruelly taken down again. Some stupid clerical error meant that they hadn't been signed off by the head of the exam board who conveniently wasn't in today to sort it out. The wait continues.....
On a positive note it's off to Nottingham for AVS Congress tomorrow, so I'm really looking forward to that. I used to go to uni there before there vet school was built so I'm extremely interested to know what they've done with the place. Also hoping that since we're going out partying in Nottingham tomorrow night that I might be able to catch up with some old friends who still live in the area
Will write again after the weekend to keep myself up to date!

Oh almost forgot..... I've got to rush back from Nottingham early sunday morning as a big group of us are going to see the Scotland v France six nations match in the afternoon! How exciting!!

Aaaaargh! Still no exam results. I need putting out of my misery!
Apparently there has been a problem with one of the questions and the papers need to be remarked. Word of mouth has it that the question was ambiguous and badly written leading to widely varying marks. Not entirely sure how they rectify this problem but in the past they have used marks from the other questions to gauge your average performance. If this is the case this slip up may actually work in my favour! I think i did much better in the other questions. This wasn't due to me not knowing the answer for the bad question but just that I ran out of time and it ended up being a scrawl in bullet format rather than an essay.
Hopefully the results will be in by the the end of the week

Well as the title suggests I'm still yet to hear how the exam I did before Christmas went.
It's mainly just been an average week of lectures and practicals, with nothing to exciting to write about. Got together with a few friends on Friday night to watch a movie. We ended up watching the Virgin Suicides which is pretty dark and not at all what I was expecting. Saying that it was interesting and definitely got us all discussing it when it finished. We also saw Dracula 2000 that was on TV after we finished the first movie. I won't be recommending it! Although, it did give us a lot of laughs because it was so utterly ridiculous.
Then last night we went out for dessert at about 9pm and then went to the Library bar in Teviot. I think we'll end up going back there cos it's so cheap. Hoping that this week will be a lot more eventful. Got more practicals including cow rectalling and a farm animal one.
With any luck I'll have more to talk about next time

Well it's now been over a month since I last blogged, the main reasons why being revision, exams and lack of internet access over the christmas period.
So firstly I managed to revise the vast majority of my notes for the exam and all seemed to go well in my opinion, although I'm still waiting for the official verdict! I'm pretty confident that I passed the MCQ section and one of the essays, but what concerns me is the second essay. It was extremely rushed and I ran out of time. It's quite annoying when that happens because I did actually know the material and given sufficient time I know that I could have written a good answer. I just hope that I did well enough in the other sections to compensate.
After the exam I went and gave blood for the first time and I must say that I felt extremely good about myself afterwards (and I now won't have to feel guilty about accepting blood if I need it!). It's amazing to think that after doing something so simple that you could actually save someone's life. If you are thinking of giving blood I strongly urge you to do so!!!
I then went home for one week and spent a lot of time just lazing around (but I think I deserved it) and I really don't know when I'm next going to have a break. We had Christmas dinner early as I wasn't going to be at home on the 25th. Most of my gifts this year were money as that is what I'm currently most in need of! Six years at university definitely leaves you a little strapped for cash! The only unfortunate thing about being at home for such a short period is that I didn't get to see my friends nearly as much as I would have liked
I headed back to Edinburgh on the 23rd and arrived at my flat to find some very exciting post. I had confirmation from Cornell University that I had been accepted into the externship programme for the large animal orthopaedic surgery rotation. The next letter I opened was even more fantastic. It was from the BEVA Trust saying that my application for a travel award had been discussed (even though I sent it in 3 weeks late!) and that they were prepared to give me £1000 (the maximum amount) towards my travel costs to Cornell . It appears that the only thing I have to do now is pass my exams as if I have to resit the dates would clash and I wouldn't be able to go.
I spent one night in the flat and then started my small animal ICU (intensive care) week the next morning. I had to live with 3 other people in a flat in the small animal hospital for one week over christmas and was effectively on call 24 hours a day! Not the most ideal way to spend christmas. However it wasn't all bad, we were extremely lucky that we only had one ICU case over the week and although we did have periods of constant monitoring we fared much better than the group before us in that we didn't have any over night and we had no night time call outs. The latest we finished was 2am and the earliest we had to get up was 6.30am. Unfortunately our ICU case died on boxing day morning, which was extremely disappointing after all the work we had put into him. I guess, sadly that's just the way things go in this business. Other than tending to cases in ICU we also had to do TPRs and routine medications of the in patients in the dog and cat wards as well as dealing with a giant pouched rat and a swan! I quite enjoyed the week and all the vets and nurses were really nice to us (mainly because they felt sorry for us being stuck there at christmas) and they were very happy to teach us and help us out. I also would like to think that I found myself some new friends in the people in my group which made it all worthwhile.
I finished yesterday morning and went back to the flat. I did have the intentions of going out last night since it was Hogmany but my tiredness finally got the better of me and I had the beginnings of a chesty cough, also the rain didn't look too appealing! I did stay up till the countdown which I could hear in my flat from the 100,000 people at the party on Princes Street! I got an exceptional view of the fireworks from my kitchen window and I didn't even need to get wet! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!
I've got a lot of paperwork I have to sort out this week before uni starts again on monday. The next update will most likely be when I eventually find out my exam results