Failing Out

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I'm a chronic fence sitter, and find myself agreeing with many things on both sides of the argument here.

My feelings on it:
-Knowing the attrition rate is probably worthless. How is this information going to affect you as a student? Unless you are the kind of person that is ultra motivated by not being a statistic, there's really no way of telling who is going to be the one to fail out.
-Teaching is a lot harder than people think. And most professors are not given any guidance or training on how to teach before they are thrown into it. It comes as no surprise to me that some are naturally gifted and get labeled as awesome teachers, and others struggle with it and get labeled as awful.
-And yeah, test questions are murder to write. One of our phys professors has each student come up with 2-3 questions based on material from the chapters. It was super hard to balance making the question understandable, only having one correct answer, and also not making the correct answer completely obvious (because yes, this is a test, you should have to think about it).
-While I feel very sorry for the people who either take on extra debt repeating, or have useless debt from failing out all together, I agree that signing up and paying tuition should not guarantee graduation. That kind of attitude is why there's a whole generation labeled "the entitlement generation". This isn't a participation badge, it's a professional degree.
-It doesn't surprise me at all that the attrition rate is just as high (or higher) in later years. Each year focuses on different skills. First year seems to be mostly about how much information you can memorize and put in long term storage. Second and third years are less rote memorization and more putting it all together and starting to think clinically. Additionally, if you managed to barely skate by in 1st year, you are more likely to fail out in the later years. And clinical year is primarily about clinical reasoning, so if that's your weakness you may have made it through the first 3 years, just to fail out in clinics.


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My dad's a teacher and believe me, it's a stressful job. Yeah, there are bad teachers and weird exams, but trying to assess students is tough. As others have said, writing "good" exam questions is hard, and a bad test for one person can be a great test for someone else. Sometimes you just have to learn to "speak" that particular professor's testing language.

I get politely/professionally challenging a professor when you think you deserve credit for a question or something, but you have to handle it well. They may or may not cut you some slack, but if your attitude makes it seem like you can't handle failure/rejection, it won't help. You'll fail at stuff in vet med. Gotta know how to deal with it!
 
They're*

I do realize I've added absolutely nothing to this thread, but pp, you walked right into that one. Don't forget post #2 where you fixed attrition, which makes this comment that much sweeter :hardy:
:rofl: This is what I get for posting with 2 hours of sleep
 
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Sometimes I feel like people forget their in a professional school and contribute to the general image and reputation of the school, especially in the local community. Some of the bar crawl/Friday night stories I hear the next week make me cringe. I'm all for having fun, but please don't be vomiting on yourself when you're on a bar crawl of clearly veterinary students. Our Vet Prom is a notorious event in the community, as we've been banned from several locations because people trash the place or get so drunk that they get sick everywhere. This past event was the first event in several years where the venue didn't tell us we weren't welcome back. Just really disappointing to the portion of students who manage to keep it together while still having fun.


We have two big annual parties (one to welcome the first years, one for Halloween) and over the years we have also been banned from a number of establishments :whistle:
 
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We have had no curves. We do occasionally get a question thrown out or turned into a 'bonus question' if you have a legit reason as to why it wasn't a good question (poorly written or multiple answers with proof), but sometimes it also happens if a student bitches enough, which I don't like. Just on our last quiz, someone threw a fit about a simple multiplication/addition question because we weren't given scratch paper (we have a calculator in our exam software). The question ended up being a point for everyone.

The class above us is also a whiny group. Supposedly it led to the early retirement of a teacher. I think my class is a mix of gunner and whiny. The sucky part is that sometimes it only takes a few people to give your class a bad label.
Hey now, not all of us are whiny. As far as the teacher retirement thing, that was one student making a very poor decision. A large portion of us were frustrated with the material being taught and were griping privately. The student then copied all those messages and sent them to the professor as proof of our frustration. We were not happy with her at all and we felt embarrassed for the professor. As far as my year's attrition rate, yea I think we lost 7 or so. 2 are in your class, 1 transferred to Cornell to be with her fiance, 1 left within the first semester because she couldn't handle it, and the other 3 either left because they failed or just didn't want to continue. I don't know I didn't ask.
 
Hey now, not all of us are whiny. As far as the teacher retirement thing, that was one student making a very poor decision. A large portion of us were frustrated with the material being taught and were griping privately. The student then copied all those messages and sent them to the professor as proof of our frustration. We were not happy with her at all and we felt embarrassed for the professor. As far as my year's attrition rate, yea I think we lost 7 or so. 2 are in your class, 1 transferred to Cornell to be with her fiance, 1 left within the first semester because she couldn't handle it, and the other 3 either left because they failed or just didn't want to continue. I don't know I didn't ask.
No, I know, that's just your reputation unfortunately :(
 
No, I know, that's just your reputation unfortunately :(
Boo, I don't feel like we complain too much to actual faculty. The only questions we really whined about were ones that were just ridiculous. We had one last year that was literally a madlib with 12 blanks and no real context. Everyone hated it and complained quite a bit about it. Being stuck in the path lab is another story lol. We will probably complain forever about being stuck in lab for all of our lectures.
 
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We have two big annual parties (one to welcome the first years, one for Halloween) and over the years we have also been banned from a number of establishments :whistle:

We like our alcohol here too. Not sure that we've been banned since the particularly rowdy occasions are usually at our frat house or on campus.
 
I get politely/professionally challenging a professor when you think you deserve credit for a question or something, but you have to handle it well. They may or may not cut you some slack, but if your attitude makes it seem like you can't handle failure/rejection, it won't help. You'll fail at stuff in vet med. Gotta know how to deal with it!
But sometimes that doesn't always work.

There was a question on a radiology exam that I got wrong, and it turned out I "read" the question in a different manner than it was intended. I sent a polite e-mail to the lecturer whose question it was explaining how I read the question and how it was obvious from my answer that I selected the best choice based on that. She agreed with me and forwarded it to the course organizer, who denied my request saying it was obvious to him the "right" way to read the question. I was like "wtf, we are arguing over how to read a question, not about knowledge". I then proceeded to send the question to 3 different english professors and asked them given how the question was worded what was the correct interpretation (without telling them in any way which way I read it). 2 of them believed my reading was correct, and the third said either way would be equally correct. Upon providing THAT info to the course organizer, he said he knows English better than I do (he is a non-native speaker), and there would be no further discussion.

Meanwhile that question was the difference in my getting a B or an A in the course. Did it really matter what grade I got? No. But his arrogance really pissed me off, because I promise you, I am a better reader of English than he is, and so are 3 college professors.

Not sure why I needed to tell that long story, but I guess it still annoys me. Learning is hard enough in vet school, but arguing over English grammar should not be part of the process.
 
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But sometimes that doesn't always work.

There was a question on a radiology exam that I got wrong, and it turned out I "read" the question in a different manner than it was intended. I sent a polite e-mail to the lecturer whose question it was explaining how I read the question and how it was obvious from my answer that I selected the best choice based on that. She agreed with me and forwarded it to the course organizer, who denied my request saying it was obvious to him the "right" way to read the question. I was like "wtf, we are arguing over how to read a question, not about knowledge". I then proceeded to send the question to 3 different english professors and asked them given how the question was worded what was the correct interpretation (without telling them in any way which way I read it). 2 of them believed my reading was correct, and the third said either way would be equally correct. Upon providing THAT info to the course organizer, he said he knows English better than I do (he is a non-native speaker), and there would be no further discussion.

Meanwhile that question was the difference in my getting a B or an A in the course. Did it really matter what grade I got? No. But his arrogance really pissed me off, because I promise you, I am a better reader of English than he is, and so are 3 college professors.

Not sure why I needed to tell that long story, but I guess it still annoys me. Learning is hard enough in vet school, but arguing over English grammar should not be part of the process.

Ugh. I get that it happens occasionally but it bothers me a lot when things are full of typos and errors. Notes, annoying but I can deal with. But exams, really? Can you not take the time to check that, or ask a graduate student, or resident, or even another faculty member? I get your annoyance because an exam should be about the material, not about deciphering what the heck they're looking for. Writing good questions is indeed hard, just own up when something is less than stellar please.

Along that line, I love, "don't worry about this info, I won't put it on the exam."
...
*Opens first page of exam, sees the exact same image we were told not to know.* :yeahright:
 
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Along that line, I love, "don't worry about this info, I won't put it on the exam."
...
*Opens first page of exam, sees the exact same image we were told not to know.* :yeahright:
That is one of the 2 biggest lies in vet school. Never believe it.

THe other one was always, "this is a short lecture, so we will get out early today".
 
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Over in the same thread the OP started in "Veterinary", before it was closed, the OP brought up the other usual gripe that students make:

Cormac4 said:
When you start having to have conversations at school functions because of the suicide rate in your area you start thinking about the human consequences of beating people down for three years. Ironically we are constantly lectured on the importance of empathy but there is a complete lack of it when it comes to students.

I thought that comment was far more interesting than the usual student griping about exams, because it's a little more valid. But there are still two sides to it.

I served on our student progress committee, which is a group most schools have by one name or the other. At our school it was composed of faculty, the dean of students, and a student. It was the group that decided what to do when students ran into trouble. Primarily we dealt with academic problems, though my understanding is that if a student ran afoul of the honor code and that committee determined there was indeed a violation, our committee would have been the group to deal with resolution.

Anyway. Point is, I had a little bit of an inside view into how students in trouble were handled.

And it is stunning how much the university would do to help a student. They'll bend rules, interpret things charitably, spend all sorts of time trying to figure out "how can we get this student to be successful." They definitely do NOT have a lack of empathy. I obviously can't talk about any specifics, but I was amazed at the lengths they'd go to in order to help a student.

Obviously, I went to a different school. But I would be surprised if at least some degree of similarity doesn't exist between most schools. Like anything, there are probably outliers, but I don't have any reason to think my school was the outlier.

But then there's the flip side where you get to fourth year and it sure seems like there are some people - primarily interns and residents - who seem like their only goal in life is to mock, ridicule, and beat down fourth-year students. There definitely ARE some of those people who show zero empathy and who - frankly - ought to be dismissed from their residencies without a second thought. I saw behavior from some residents that I just plain couldn't believe the hospital tolerated. And you do wonder if that becomes a self-perpetuating thing.

I very much doubt the suicide rate in vet med is strongly related to the first three years of vet school like the OP suggested. The stressors in this field are far worse and far more substantial once you are out in practice. But that doesn't mean the OP is entirely wrong. I thought their comment in the other thread was interesting. *shrug*
 
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That is one of the 2 biggest lies in vet school. Never believe it.

THe other one was always, "this is a short lecture, so we will get out early today".
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Over in the same thread the OP started in "Veterinary", before it was closed, the OP brought up the other usual gripe that students make:



I thought that comment was far more interesting than the usual student griping about exams, because it's a little more valid. But there are still two sides to it.

I served on our student progress committee, which is a group most schools have by one name or the other. At our school it was composed of faculty, the dean of students, and a student. It was the group that decided what to do when students ran into trouble. Primarily we dealt with academic problems, though my understanding is that if a student ran afoul of the honor code and that committee determined there was indeed a violation, our committee would have been the group to deal with resolution.

Anyway. Point is, I had a little bit of an inside view into how students in trouble were handled.

And it is stunning how much the university would do to help a student. They'll bend rules, interpret things charitably, spend all sorts of time trying to figure out "how can we get this student to be successful." They definitely do NOT have a lack of empathy. I obviously can't talk about any specifics, but I was amazed at the lengths they'd go to in order to help a student.

Obviously, I went to a different school. But I would be surprised if at least some degree of similarity doesn't exist between most schools. Like anything, there are probably outliers, but I don't have any reason to think my school was the outlier.

But then there's the flip side where you get to fourth year and it sure seems like there are some people - primarily interns and residents - who seem like their only goal in life is to mock, ridicule, and beat down fourth-year students. There definitely ARE some of those people who show zero empathy and who - frankly - ought to be dismissed from their residencies without a second thought. I saw behavior from some residents that I just plain couldn't believe the hospital tolerated. And you do wonder if that becomes a self-perpetuating thing.

I very much doubt the suicide rate in vet med is strongly related to the first three years of vet school like the OP suggested. The stressors in this field are far worse and far more substantial once you are out in practice. But that doesn't mean the OP is entirely wrong. I thought their comment in the other thread was interesting. *shrug*

Honestly it seems like the medical field in general has problems with a culture allowing bullying and abuse.
 
I've never thought to argue about wording of one question on an exam. I was very ok with, I passed, arguing for one more point just doesn't matter. I'd also never recall a question in order to bring it into question. Once exams were over I promptly forgot all the questions. I didn't have room left in my brain to remember the questions. It was more important for me to go home drink, eat and nap. I'm sure there were probably some "unfair" or poorly written questions but as long as I passed and overall felt the exam covered the material we were taught, I didn't much care. Heck, even the exam I failed and had to retake, I didn't think, "those questions made me fail", I thought, "crap, I wasn't prepared for that, I need to study better and make this retake count."
 
Honestly it seems like the medical field in general has problems with a culture allowing bullying and abuse.
It absolutely does. And we should be working on that as a whole. Instead of saying "the professors lack empathy" or "have an attitude", how about we change the narrative to "how can we better support each other instead of attacking each other?" Professors/clinicians are usually vets (some are not, but they tend to be more uncommon), too.

The truth is, even in the field there are vets that bully other vets. It doesn't matter if you have more experience, etc. Some people are just jerks. We need to change that more than anything else. We also need to stop seeing taking vacation or sick time as "not being compassionate" or not being involved enough. Everyone needs time off. And we are fooling ourselves if we think that it makes someone a better vet to ignore their needs
 
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Over in the same thread the OP started in "Veterinary", before it was closed, the OP brought up the other usual gripe that students make:



I thought that comment was far more interesting than the usual student griping about exams, because it's a little more valid. But there are still two sides to it.

I served on our student progress committee, which is a group most schools have by one name or the other. At our school it was composed of faculty, the dean of students, and a student. It was the group that decided what to do when students ran into trouble. Primarily we dealt with academic problems, though my understanding is that if a student ran afoul of the honor code and that committee determined there was indeed a violation, our committee would have been the group to deal with resolution.

Anyway. Point is, I had a little bit of an inside view into how students in trouble were handled.

And it is stunning how much the university would do to help a student. They'll bend rules, interpret things charitably, spend all sorts of time trying to figure out "how can we get this student to be successful." They definitely do NOT have a lack of empathy. I obviously can't talk about any specifics, but I was amazed at the lengths they'd go to in order to help a student.

Obviously, I went to a different school. But I would be surprised if at least some degree of similarity doesn't exist between most schools. Like anything, there are probably outliers, but I don't have any reason to think my school was the outlier.

But then there's the flip side where you get to fourth year and it sure seems like there are some people - primarily interns and residents - who seem like their only goal in life is to mock, ridicule, and beat down fourth-year students. There definitely ARE some of those people who show zero empathy and who - frankly - ought to be dismissed from their residencies without a second thought. I saw behavior from some residents that I just plain couldn't believe the hospital tolerated. And you do wonder if that becomes a self-perpetuating thing.

I very much doubt the suicide rate in vet med is strongly related to the first three years of vet school like the OP suggested. The stressors in this field are far worse and far more substantial once you are out in practice. But that doesn't mean the OP is entirely wrong. I thought their comment in the other thread was interesting. *shrug*


I just want to add my two cents here. I struggled mightily my first semester with anatomy, and was placed on academic probation. This hardly came as a shock to me. I knew my grades were tanking in the class, and I was doing everything humanly possible to work with my anatomy faculty and academic adviser to turn things around. Unfortunately, I was unable to recoup my performance by the time fall semester grades came around.

I met with the Associate Dean/Director of Academic Affairs prior to my appearing before Committee on Academic Performance. He explained the procedure to me, and gave me some tips on what the committee would be looking for with respect to my remediation back into the program. I wrote up an explanation statement as to my perspective on what went wrong, and the active steps I was taking to turn things around.

NCSU went out of its way for me. I was permitted to continue to semester 2, and increased my performance dramatically. My faculty in anatomy worked with me tirelessly to raise my grades specifically in that class, and I haven't experienced an academic struggle (of that magnitude) since.

When new students are touring NCSU, one of the attributes I tout is the great lengths executive admin and faculty are willing to go to in order to help a struggling student. I owe my veterinary career to those folks, and wouldn't still be on this career track had it not been for their patient understanding, academic support, and willingness to give me a second chance.

Nobody is perfect. Everyone needs a second chance at some point in their lives. As long as a student demonstrates introspection and a sincere commitment to improvement, I would argue that most veterinary schools would be more than willing to work with this person to complete the program. That was certainly my experience.

As an added bonus, all of those folks on the academic performance committee were pleased as punch and super proud of me when they saw my academic turn-around. It was a nice warm-fuzzy :)
 
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I absolutely believe there are issues that need to be addressed in terms of teacher competency in vet med. I think the prevailing attitude is "this person is really good at practicing in this subject, therefore they'll be good at teaching it." And yet time after time we find out how wrong that is. In my experience, the professors that really value their job as a teacher (instead of seeing it as a necessary evil of working in academia) are the anomalies, not the norm. That's not to say they don't care about students, they just aren't equipped to be teachers. I have taken some really poorly taught and poorly administered exams in my time in vet school. I didn't fail any classes due to them, thankfully, but it's still a problem.
 
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I mean, yeah, there's bad teachers. Obviously. But there are ways to question their logic and maybe their teaching style without going so far as to blame it on attitude. As others have said, english may be a second language, people read sentences differently, what have you. Sometimes things happen and faculty don't always want to compromise, and I get that it's frustrating. Of course there are people who are legitimately mean, too.

The school I'm at has been wonderfully supportive of struggling students, and has made really impressive strides in helping students cope with mental health issues this year. Obviously there are reasons for the push towards getting people even more resources than we already have here, but the fact that the college is actively striving to make things better in visible ways is awesome.

We gotta support each other. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses, and instead of complaining about faculty online, maybe someone who "gets" the way that professor tests/teaches can help others who aren't as good in that class. You may or may not be able to do anything about a faculty member being there, or how they test/grade, but you can always ask for help from the faculty member and your classmates!
 
I think it's worth mentioning that of all of the wonderful services and support schools can offer, it will only help you if you a) seek it out or b) are willing to receive it. If you're having trouble (in/out of school or both) and choose not to seek help that is available to you, then there's nothing the school can do for you.
I absolutely believe there are issues that need to be addressed in terms of teacher competency in vet med. I think the prevailing attitude is "this person is really good at practicing in this subject, therefore they'll be good at teaching it." And yet time after time we find out how wrong that is. In my experience, the professors that really value their job as a teacher (instead of seeing it as a necessary evil of working in academia) are the anomalies, not the norm. That's not to say they don't care about students, they just aren't equipped to be teachers. I have taken some really poorly taught and poorly administered exams in my time in vet school. I didn't fail any classes due to them, thankfully, but it's still a problem.
I agree with this, but I think that a school should also be willing to change things if a serious problem has been found. There have been several concerns brought to the appropriate people (some by other faculty, actually), but the same stuff happens every year. If we're having a problem, the class before us had the same one, as did the class before them.
 
I think it's worth mentioning that of all of the wonderful services and support schools can offer, it will only help you if you a) seek it out or b) are willing to receive it. If you're having trouble (in/out of school or both) and choose not to seek help that is available to you, then there's nothing the school can do for you.
For sure. This would be a must for me if I were sitting on the committee.
 
I absolutely believe there are issues that need to be addressed in terms of teacher competency in vet med. I think the prevailing attitude is "this person is really good at practicing in this subject, therefore they'll be good at teaching it." And yet time after time we find out how wrong that is. In my experience, the professors that really value their job as a teacher (instead of seeing it as a necessary evil of working in academia) are the anomalies, not the norm. That's not to say they don't care about students, they just aren't equipped to be teachers. I have taken some really poorly taught and poorly administered exams in my time in vet school. I didn't fail any classes due to them, thankfully, but it's still a problem.

I've encountered the same. Having knowledge, and being able to transmit said knowledge to others are two totally different things.

My sister is working on her MAEd, and we have had a lot of conversations about the disparities between evidence-based teaching theories and what actually happems in higher education classrooms. I also think it must be extremely difficult to juggle the demands of research or clinical practice with teaching. They all require much different skill sets. And students are high maintenance and time consuming. :)
 
I dislike it when one professor seems to regard his/her class as *the* class to pass during your first year of vet school. It kinda felt that way for us. I won't belabor the point any more than that, because I'm sure it's fairly specific. I just didn't feel like people were necessarily 'on my side' when I was taking the "do you stay or do you get kicked out" exam.
 
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