On being a know-it-all in vet school

A vet student whose blog I enjoy posted on this topic the other day, and I had a brilliant illustration of the phenomenon this afternoon that I wanted to mention. Every now and then we have an interactive lunch talk, usually given by an intern or resident, sponsored by one of the student clubs. We had one today, and there was a first-year who has obviously worked extensively as a tech, and is obviously very intelligent and has a great memory. She's unfortunately a little lacking in social intelligence, since she treated the talk as an opportunity to put on a one-woman show -- we were discussing a case, and anytime the speaker asked a question, this girl would jump in with the answer. Sometimes she wouldn't even let the speaker finish the question before she jumped in with the answer. This precluded anyone else from participating, since everyone else was polite enough to wait until the speaker finished her question! During the hour, we spent almost as much time listening to this first-year as we did to the resident who was presenting.

Now. I'm as familiar as anyone with the desire to prove your intelligence, competence, medical knowledge, critical thinking ability, whatever. And I'll even admit that if there's a topic that I happen to know relatively more about than usual, I'll fire off a couple of answers to early questions -- it's fun, I like knowing things, it makes me feel intelligent to answer questions. But I do that ONCE. Or MAYBE twice. And then the third question that I know the answer to? I wait, glance around the room, see if anyone else looks like they're about to say something, let the question hang there until it's pretty obvious that no one else is going to say anything, and then I'll offer an answer. In other words, I take turns and play well with others!

I don't even really understand the point of overtly hogging the floor when your peers are obviously interested in participating as well -- this was a resident presenting, who will almost certainly not even work at this school anymore by the time this girl gets to clinics, so impressing the socks off of her isn't going to benefit you in any functional way. The only thing you could possibly accomplish (besides possibly impressing a resident you'll probably never see again) is to annoy your peers and convince them that you're obnoxious and unpleasant to have around. No one will want to work with you, people will dread being on clinical rotations with you, there is no win here.

So don't be a know-it-all in vet school! No one will be impressed with your intelligence; many people will think you're obnoxious.

Last exam for 3 weeks!

Today we had our third Pathology exam, the last exam in this round, and between now and finals we have nothing but classes and a five-day Thanksgiving break! Sweet. :)

The exam was tough to study for; a lot of material. GI, urinary, eye, ear, muscle and nervous system pathology were all covered, and the notes were dense. I spent all day on Saturday studying; although I had a hard time motivating myself and also spent quite awhile surfing the web. Sunday I got up at 7:30 to get back to the books, and was reasonably industrious, although I kept getting distracted by all the non-school tasks I needed to do and have been putting off. Sunday afternoon I had done enough work to take a couple hours off for dance class, which was tremendously fun, and I finished around 11 PM. I had some trouble falling asleep after the coffee and 20 oz Coke I drank to keep myself awake until 11, and then I got up again at 5:45 to review everything one last time before the test.

I was really tired, and forgot several key details on the exam, but overall it went okay. For the first time since I started vet school, I really had no interest in post-morteming the exam! I didn't care what other people had said for #3, I didn't feel like going back through my notes to look up answers and see if I'd gotten things right, I felt like it was done and nothing I did now was going to change my grade, so why bother?

After the exam I had lunch with several of my friends, which was a good way to wind down, and then I took a much-needed nap! Now it feels like Friday, which unfortunately is not true, but at least I have no exams looming this week!

I'm going to study intelligently for finals. I took today completely off, and I have fun plans on Wednesday and Thursday, so tomorrow and Friday I'm going to start studying seriously. I want to get through everything at least one full day before the exam so I can do a leisurely review, the way I did for the first Path exam -- this staying up until the wee hours and then finishing my first pass at 7 AM on test day is not cutting it, and I really felt good about the first exam so I'm going back to that strategy. Wish me luck, discipline, and motivation!

Grades

We got our Microbiology and Pathology exams back yesterday. I got a low B on Micro and a high B on Path. I was really hoping for an A in Path! I was pleasantly surprised by Micro, though -- I really thought it was worse than that.

And, this activates my silver lining -- I cannot possibly get an A in Micro (I'd need a 101% on the final!) but I can easily get a B (I need a 76% on the final). So I don't need to study too hard for the final . . . theoretically. Although, come to think of it, if I studied really hard for the first 2 exams and only got a C and a low B, then even studying hard for the final might only get me a C or a low B. In which case I still need to study hard! Argh. Darnit. Now my silver lining is all tarnished. :(

Guess I'll go study for Pathology, the one class where I have a good chance of doing well!

Countdown to Parasitology

For those of you who have not started vet school yet and are curious about what a typical* pre-exam weekend might be like:

Saturday:
8:20 AM -- wake up, get ready for work, leave for hospital

9:00 AM -- check for patients, evidently my service has nothing in the hospital, hang out for awhile to see if any consult requests come in, go to the convenience store for coffee and hot chocolate while I'm waiting (my study indulgence!)

10:00 AM -- decide it's a lost cause and go home

10:30 AM -- MM is still asleep, dogs wake him up when I get home, we feed them and take them for a longer walk than I intended, because it's really nice outside and I feel bad that they're cooped up all week.

11:30 AM -- intend to start studying, but decide to just watch 15 minutes of TV while we eat breakfast/lunch

1:00 PM -- actually start studying after watching almost an hour of TV

3:00 PM -- MM leaves to run errands (bless the man -- he did the grocery shopping, laundry [mostly his but I got to throw a few of my shirts in with his stuff], vacuuming, AND brought home dinner!)

6:00 PM -- break for dinner, watch 15 minutes (for real, this time!) of tv while we eat

6:30 PM -- back to studying

8:00 PM -- feed the dogs, quick walk (poor dogs -- they're so neglected when I have exams. Some of my friends walk their dogs for an hour, every single morning. My dogs are lucky if I walk them for HALF an hour, and that's on a good day. I rationalize this by saying that I take them running a couple of times a week, but really they only get to run a mile, so it's not that big a deal. I should walk them more.)

8:30 PM -- study, study, study

11:00 PM -- go to sleep so I can get up early tomorrow and study!


Sunday
7:00 AM -- get up, get dressed, go for quick run to wake up

8:00 AM -- come home, shower, do dishes, throw ingredients for pot roast into crockpot and turn it on to magically make a delicious dinner with no further effort! :)

9:00 AM -- sit down to study (husband walked the dogs so I could work)

12:00 PM -- take dogs out quickly, grab some food to eat at my desk

3:00 PM -- decide I'm not nearly close enough to finishing, and call my dance school to reschedule class (I am SO BUMMED!!! I look forward to this class ALL WEEK!!!)

3:45 PM -- MM leaves for class without me. Maybe he can show me what I miss.

4:15 PM -- falling asleep at my desk, decide to lay down on the couch for 15 minutes.

4:45 PM -- wake up and get back to work!

7:00 PM -- MM comes home, regales me with tales of the exciting new steps they learned in class, tries to demonstrate, I don't really get it. :) Take dogs out to pee, ladle some pot roast (delicious!) out of the crockpot and eat at my desk while studying

10:00 PM -- starting to think about maybe getting a little tired; have a Red Bull preemptively (these things work a lot better for me when I use them before I really need them -- if I wait until I'm sleepy, they don't do much; but if I drink them earlier, they significantly delay the onset of sleepiness)

1:00 AM -- FINALLY finish my FIRST PASS (ugh, ugh, ugh) through my notes. Very tired. Sleepy. Should crawl into bed this instant to squeeze every last minute of sleep that I possibly can out of this night.

1:45 AM -- go to bed after spending 45 minutes checking my email, browsing around on Facebook, checking for updates on the blogs I read, looking at random MSN pages (i.e. wasting 45 minutes of precious sleep).

2:15 AM -- fall asleep after spending half an hour worrying about all the life cycles whose details I'm not clear on, unable to turn my brain away from the Parasitology channel!

Monday
6:45 AM -- get up to do a quick second pass review of my notes. Discover that wonderful husband has made COFFEE so that it would be WAITING FOR ME when I got up! I love this man. :)

9:15 AM -- sitting on the couch with all 4 dogs piled around me (including one sitting in my lap), realize I'm not going to finish my second pass before the exam

10:40 AM -- leave for school

11:00 AM -- exam. Doesn't go well. First page has a bunch of questions about parasites whose names I don't even RECOGNIZE, let alone know anything about. Rest is better, but I change a couple of right answers to wrong ones, and fall for a couple of tricks. Probably a low to mid B.

Evaluation

• Clearly I should have started studying in earnest earlier

• I should have gone to the darn dance class. Missing it didn't give me that much extra study time, and it totally bummed me out. I would have been much less upset about my exam performance (okay, slightly less upset) if I'd gone; instead I feel like I skipped it for nothing.

• The worst part was definitely Sunday. If you look at that schedule, you'll notice that from 9 AM to 1 AM, I did nothing but study (with a couple of dog pee-breaks and one 30 minute nap). THAT is a sucky day.

*(I started off the semester very well, keeping up with the studying in all my classes, making steady progress, doing a decent amount of work each night, and so the first couple of exams were pretty low-stress since I didn't have to do any cramming. Since then, things have started piling up, and for this last round of 4 exams I did what a friend refers to as "fire-fighting" -- run around frantically trying to put out a fire (looming exam you're not ready for) while ignoring everything else, then as soon as that fire is out, realize that another fire has erupted behind you (next exam in 3 days that you're totally not ready for) so switch to frantically trying to put that one out . . . not the best way to study. It's not good for my actual learning and long-term retention of the material, not good for my stress level, not good for my grades, not good for my fitness level since I haven't worked out in days, and is crappy for my social life!)

Parasitology

Ahh, Parasitology. So much fun to study. So brimming with fascinating tidbits of important information. So many concepts that I'll rely on heavily when evaluating and treating my future patients. Such a well-organized course with neatly interlocking lectures.

Or.......not.

I've only covered 3 lectures (out of the 16 I need to learn this weekend) and it's already 5 PM on Saturday! I had to do my hospital shift this morning, when it turned out we had no patients, no consults, and the clinician I was assigned to didn't even SHOW UP FOR WORK without so much as a "don't bother coming in tomorrow" voicemail! So I hung out for an hour just in case, and then went home to study. Except when I got home, the dogs were all being so cute, and the weather was so refreshingly nice, that we decided to take them for a real walk instead of just around the block . . . and then when we got back, we were hungry so I decided to cook breakfast . . . and then watch just 15 minutes of TV while we ate (I don't know why I even persist in that bit of self-delusion. We're watching TV shows on DVD since the ones we like are no longer running, and all of them are between 42 and 46 minutes long. If I sit down to watch one, the odds are extremely high that I will NOT turn it off after 15 minutes, but will instead watch the whole thing. Yet I persist in this idea that "Sure, just 15 minutes, while we eat, won't hurt!". It annoys me.) so of course that turned into 45 minutes. By then it was about 1 PM. And I was just starting to study.

I'm on tenterhooks waiting to find out how I did on our Intro to Surgery final this past Wednesday. There was a written part and a practical, and the practical went well except for one dumb mistake (I called a Lembert suture pattern -- obviously a Lembert pattern, which I had practiced dozens of times -- a Halsted, which looks nothing like it) and one misunderstanding. I'm not sure about the written. It didn't seem that hard, but sometimes that just means it was tricky, and I was dense and didn't spot the tricks. So, we'll see.

Since it seems that I am destined to have at best a B in Microbiology this semester, I would really love to get As in my other classes!

Microbiology..........ouch

Wow, that sucked. I knew I needed a really strong performance to have a chance of getting an A in Micro, but I thought a B would at least be easy. I think I just got ANOTHER C, on this exam. That would be 2 Cs out of 2 exams. That would mean getting a *B* in the class is going to be a long shot. I need a really strong A on the final just to get a B. And, given the fact that I've gotten all Cs so far, how likely is that?

Pathology and Microbiology

So. Let's talk about exams for a second (and then I'll talk about something more interesting).

So far we've had 2 Pathology exams, 1 Parasitology exam, 1 Microbiology exam, and 1 Intro to Surgery exam. The first Pathology, Parasitology, and Surgery exams went fine. On Microbiology (multiple choice!) I got a **76**!!!! It was a really short exam, which I dislike -- the longer an exam is the better it represents the material evenly, and the less a stupid mistake is going to cost you. This one had only 33 questions, so I made 2 dumb mistakes and thought one question was a trick (it wasn't) so there went 10% of the total test. Add in a couple of things I genuinely didn't know, and you get a 76. Ouch. The class average was an 87, and I was in the bottom 25%!!!

That hasn't happened to me since college! I didn't think it would ever happen again!

Looking on the bright side, my 76 lays out 2 paths for me. One path is that I bust my @ss studying for the next exam, and if I get a 94 or better then I'm still in the game, meaning that if I bust my @ss for the final, I might still be able to get an A. The other path is that I bust my @ss studying for the next exam, and don't get a 94 or better, in which case no matter what I get on the final (well, unless I fail it) then I'll have a B, in which case I can basically blow off the final and just study enough to get an 83 or so. Which will leave me more time to study for other classes, and doesn't sound like the end of the world.

So, we had our Pathology exam #2 on Monday, and it was definitely worse than the first one. Plus, I have a pet peeve about lecturers emphasizing things, and then not asking about them. If they tell us multiple times that something is important, even going as far as to say, "Hey, guys -- this is really important. Do you know what I mean? Here, I'll say it again -- this is really important. Wink, wink." (she actually said "wink, wink", I'm not embellishing), doesn't that sound like something that might be on the exam? I mean, if it's really important then it probably should be on the exam, and if she went through the trouble of basically telling us ("wink, wink"!) that it would be on the exam, then I kind of expect to see it there. So when it's not there, I'm disappointed! That happened with quite a few things on this exam. And those questions were replaced by things that seem pretty trivial, not conceptual, and if I only had six exam questions to test someone's knowledge of the entirety of liver pathology (introductory, of course), would not be what I asked about.

Le sigh.

On a more interesting, less rant-y note, one of my dogs got approved to be a therapy dog last week! This is extremely cool, because she now gets to go to a local shelter and visit the residents, and she loves people. She would rather make a new friend than eat, which is huge for a dog. When I walk her, she wants to meet everyone we pass, and if someone doesn't want to meet her, she looks so sad. :( And if they do want to meet her, she's so happy! She wags her tail, and prances around, and does this cute little wiggle-butt dance, and smiiiiiiles -- it makes her so happy! And now, we have a place she can go where everyone will want to meet her! She'll be able to make a dozen new friends in one night! I can't wait! :)

For your viewing pleasure, I invite you to watch this video. I have watched it 4 times already, and it makes me laugh every time, and the beagle puppy is supernaturally cute.

The semester continues

This week was pretty relaxed -- we had a Parasitology exam on Monday, and then no exams for TWO WEEKS! So most people took it easy (I certainly did). I got home by 5 or 6 every evening, and spent the evening reading (for pleasure, not for school!), playing with my dogs, getting a couple of workouts in, watching a few episodes of Gilmore Girls on DVD (I love that show -- it's so happy!). It was a nice week. Now I'm a bit behind in studying for Pathology, which is a week from now, but I can crank up the pace today and hopefully maintain it all week.

Parasitology was pretty rough. We also had Microbiology the previous Friday, which I thought would be pretty easy -- the material was pretty basic, and the tests are multiple choice (extremely rare, here!). Unfortunately, instead of being about big-picture concepts, the exam was about tiny details (some of which I didn't even NOTICE on the slides when I was studying, they were in such a tiny font!) and almost every question had a "none of the above" option, which totally destroys the easiness of multiple choice! The nice thing about multiple choice is that you only need to be able to identify one answer as better than the other answers -- you don't have to be sure if it's actually right, just that it's better. If there's a "none of the above", then you have to know whether that "best answer" is actually true or not. So, it's a much better way to test people's knowledge, but it sucks as the test-taker!

Parasitology had a written one day, and a practical the next. The written was tough; the practical was AWFUL. I came out hoping that I'd gotten a C (HOPING for a C, yes). They graded the exams very quickly (probably the fastest we've ever gotten an exam back yet in vet school!) and the course organizer told us that we had done the worst out of any class for the last TEN YEARS on the practical! Wow. I ended up getting my C on the practical, and I was not too upset with it. It was a few points below the average, even! But I did much, much better on the written than I'd expected, and it's worth a much larger percent of our final grade.

So, things look basically okay so far. I'm not positioned as well as I'd like to be; but if I do better on the next Parasitology and Micro exams and the same on the others, I should be okay.

On another note, winter has arrived! It's cold, rainy, and gray and has been most of the week. Why doesn't fall last longer?!? It would be so nice if the beautiful, cool, crisp, sunny fall weather with beautiful red and orange and yellow leaves on the trees, and crunchy leaves on the ground to walk through, would last for weeks and weeks, and then winter would be a brief 3-week interlude. Instead of the reverse. I guess it's good studying weather, though -- I'm hardly tempted to take off and go hiking in this weather. :)

Pathology exam evaluation

The first exam of second year is done! I'm relieved about that, and about the fact that I didn't think it was really that bad -- it was LONG, with a lot of writing (they don't believe in multiple choice questions around here, so almost all of our exams are short answer -- short being about a paragraph -- or essay questions). I think it was 15 pages long and my hand was sore when I was done! I know that I forgot to mention little details here and there that they'll ding me for, but I fundamentally knew all the answers so I'm not too worried about my grade. Of course, I think the average for the exam will be very high, so even if I did well it's not really going to make a difference to my class rank, which apparently where it's at for internships! But obviously doing well is better than the alternative, regardless of how everyone else did.

Now I'm a teensy bit behind studying for my next 3 exams, which is what I predicted the other day: I spent most of Sunday screwing around, not really having fun since I was TRYING to study so I sat at my desk most of the day, but surfing the web and playing games online and checking my email 18 billion times, so I didn't get much work done at all. Monday I studied hard and efficiently, and finished around 11 PM, which did not leave me any time to start studying for my next exam.

Last night, after the Pathology exam, I came home (exam was in the morning, then we had labs all afternoon) and walked the dogs with my husband, cooked a delicious pasta dish that I've made once before, we ate dinner together while finishing a movie we started over the weekend, and then I went to bed at 10! Which was probably the best idea I've had all week. I planned to get up at 6 and study for 2 hours before class this morning, but I was so tired that I slept until I had to get ready for school. So now I need to START (rather than "continue") studying for my Intro to Surgery exam.

I finished my first pass!

Hallelujah! I finished my first pass through my Pathology notes last night -- and the exam isn't for another day and a half!!! This is studying the way it's meant to be. :)

Now I have a day and a half to go back over everything once or twice, make sure I know it inside and out, and go over old tests as practice. If I focus, I should even have time to start studying for my next test so that I don't have to cram for that one!

Wow. This feels really good. Unfortunately, once I finished my first pass I sort of started slacking off, so last night I watched a movie with my husband, and this morning I slept until 9 and then went to work for a couple of hours, went grocery shopping, made myself a delicious caprese salad for lunch, and screwed around on the interwebs for awhile. Now it's almost 2:00 and I have yet to crack a book (sigh). I know that if I keep goofing off, I'll still finish with Pathology in time for the test, but I won't make any headway on any of my other classes, and I have 4 more exams in the 10 days following Path. And I've put in a lot more effort on Path than on those other classes all semester, because it's worth almost twice as many credits as any of them. Which means I'm behind. Which is really bad in Parasitology, because there is so much stuff to memorize! Holy cow -- and it really is memorization. I like learning concepts, because if you understand them, then you're set -- you might have to memorize a few details here and there, but if you've got the concepts down then you have the bulk of your information. With Parasitology there are really no concepts (as far as I can tell), just an endless array of disjointed details, all of which need to be kept straight.

Guess I'd better study!