Class of 2015... How ya doing?

Veterinary Science Graduate Programs from U. of I.
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^^^hope everything turns out ok TT:xf:

My summer has been action packed with cubscout graduation for one child and running in the sprinkler fun with the other yournger two. Can't say I am getting much more sleep than when I was this last semester, but I am sure having a LOT more fun! Finals seem like they happened eons ago.

Scared of second year a little because we already have more than a few of the 2014ers moving into our class because of a certain weed out course. OOOOooo, *thinking happy thoughts-thinking happy thoughts-thinking happy thoughts*:scared:
 
So, it was a hairball in her jejunum. The surgery was pretty simple and she is in ICU now. So that's good.

I'm done studying for tomorrow, for better or worse. It's gonna be a hell of a test and I hope I make it through. I'll let y'all know.
 
twelvetigers said:
So, it was a hairball in her jejunum. The surgery was pretty simple and she is in ICU now. So that's good.

I'm done studying for tomorrow, for better or worse. It's gonna be a hell of a test and I hope I make it through. I'll let y'all know.
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Glad to hear your kitty is doing ok after surgery.

Best of luck on that test, you can do it!! :luck:
 
twelvetigers said:
So, it was a hairball in her jejunum. The surgery was pretty simple and she is in ICU now. So that's good.

I'm done studying for tomorrow, for better or worse. It's gonna be a hell of a test and I hope I make it through. I'll let y'all know.
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Poor kitty. :xf: for a speedy recovery! Good luck on your test!
 
Yay! Good luck, TT!! :luck:
 
Last Day of lectures!!
3 lecture, one lab, and one exam are all that stand between me and being a second year vet student.

Got overwhelmed with how lucky I am to be there last night and I think a copy and paste of a message I sent my DVM mentor would explain my craziness.

"Over two years ago, I texted you to complain about how the feed store left my grain out in the rain and you texted back the possible dangers of "leukoencephalomalacia" from bad grain. I was so overwhelmed by that word and worried that I'd never survive vet school if I got in.
I just typed "ELEM" in my notes several times with an understanding of what it was, who it effects, and what I should do about it. Wow! Thanks for being an awesome mentor!"

So yes, feeling a little silly but I'm a bit emotional. Can't believe I'm almost done with the year!
 
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

They're actually going to let me progress to second year. Foolish mortals!

(Sorry. That's all code for: I'm Finally Done!)
 
I am pretty sure that I am not going to pass this toxicology exam tomorrow. Scared out of my mind. What's even scarier? The people in our class who are normally the cool cucumbers and being encouraging are ALSO freaking out. If only the 2016'ers could see all of our FB statuses. Damn thing is worth 72% of our grade. Totally understandable since it is only a two week block and its kinda hard to fit in a lot of assessments....but WAH. If I eff up - I eff up the whole block!

:scared:

Whining and ranting over. Back to my mechanisms of bromethalin toxicity.
 
nyanko said:
I sometimes forget that you guys aren't used to one exam being 2/3 or more of your grade, heh.

You'll make it. Good luck!
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Yeah... we only had one class like that this year that I can think of, so definitely not used to it. Are most of yours that way?

Next year we have at least two classes where our entire grade is based off of one final exam. I'm not looking forward to it, because neither of them are blow-off easy classes.
 
LetItSnow said:
Yeah... we only had one class like that this year that I can think of, so definitely not used to it. Are most of yours that way?

Next year we have at least two classes where our entire grade is based off of one final exam. I'm not looking forward to it, because neither of them are blow-off easy classes.
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Yeah, we had a couple of courses both years so far where the entire grade (or in one case at least 90% of it) was based on the final exam. Pulmonary anatomy/physiology was one (sucked), cardio anatomy was one (not too bad), cardio physiology was another (though for us he decided to buck his trend of having a really long, difficult short answer/essay exam and instead had 14 true/false questions for the final - still undecided on which is better since he didn't TELL us he was doing that and having your entire cardio phys grade based on 14 t/f questions is a bit fff)...there were probably others but my brain has thankfully erased most of the memories from the last 2 years lol. coping mechanisms??

The new curriculum (that started with 2015) has more other stuff that's graded than exams for the most part (for better or worse - arguable again but the grass is always greener etc).
 
Oh how I miss the US grading system sometimes.

All of our exams are cumulative for the year and at least 80% of our grade. Dun dun dun

And fail is below 50, but getting above 70 is nearly impossible. Figure that one out. 🙄
 
^^I didn't mean to start a "who has it worse omg" vet student complainfest, was just commenting on stuff. That sounds crappy too sns. I think no matter how the material we all have to cram into 4 years is presented or assessed, it's still really challenging and can seem almost impossible at times.
 
nyanko said:
^^I didn't mean to start a "who has it worse omg" vet student complainfest, was just commenting on stuff. That sounds crappy too sns. I think no matter how the material we all have to cram into 4 years is presented or assessed, it's still really challenging and can seem almost impossible at times.
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We all learn the same stuff...just in different ways 🙂 Wasn't trying to add to the complain fest, just think it is interesting how different all the AVMA schools are.

It's not too bad once you get used to it. Shock when you get your first 60 and they are like no it's fine that's a B....:laugh:
 
shortnsweet said:
We all learn the same stuff...just in different ways 🙂 Wasn't trying to add to the complain fest, just think it is interesting how different all the AVMA schools are.

It's not too bad once you get used to it. Shock when you get your first 60 and they are like no it's fine that's a B....:laugh:
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tell me about it - still struggling with the whole grading system over here!

and waiting to find out if I passed for the semester is painful...
stress-onion-head-emoticon.gif
 
shortnsweet said:
We all learn the same stuff...just in different ways 🙂 Wasn't trying to add to the complain fest, just think it is interesting how different all the AVMA schools are.

It's not too bad once you get used to it. Shock when you get your first 60 and they are like no it's fine that's a B....:laugh:
Click to expand...

I took an orgo class like that. *shrug* I never really care if I get a 5, 50, or 95 - all just depends on how the test was designed.

We're in the middle of a huge curriculum review/revision, and one of the things they tossed on the table recently was the idea of doing away with mid-term exams: there would be one week for exams at the end and that's it.

It was just an idea (and I'm completely in favor of throwing ideas on the table), but I'll say this: I was *REALLY* darn glad that if by some wild chance it ever got implemented it wouldn't be in time to effect me. That sort of stress sounds horrible.

I took an equine limb class this semester as an elective. I learned more and retained more from it than any class I've taken, which struck me as really interesting because a) it's not in my area of interest, b) there were no 'real' exams (some skills assessments where your grade literally didn't matter), c) there was very little out-of-class work, d) there were only about 7 class sessions.

I compare that to something like virology, which had hour after hour of lecture, hour after hour of studying, multiple huge exams, one huge presentation, countless group assignments, etc. And ... um ... I think I remember that there's a coronavirus family or something.

Since the whole goal of vet school is to actually learn the material to become proficient docs... that equine limb class really made me wonder if we're going about it all wrong. I think we're seriously underestimating the impact that high-stress assessment methods have on learning and retention. Not just the stress-psych-memory formation part, but also on the way it encourages students to go about learning (cramming, regurgitating, repeat).
 
devyn said:
tell me about it - still struggling with the whole grading system over here!

and waiting to find out if I passed for the semester is painful...
stress-onion-head-emoticon.gif
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D is for Doctor 😉

And LIS....that is interesting about the curriculum change. We used to have 2 "midterms". One in Dec, one in March, each 7.5%. Basically to get you used to the question style and see how you are keeping up. They decided to do away with the March exams, but left the December ones. So May is our big "oh lord please help me survive" month. I have found that I am retaining a lot more though, because I have to study everything all year over and over and keep up independently, and be able to retain all the information. Cramming and regurg just isn't an option. Not saying it's the best method, but it's certainly not the worst. Stress-tastic? Oh yes.
 
LetItSnow said:
I think we're seriously underestimating the impact that high-stress assessment methods have on learning and retention. Not just the stress-psych-memory formation part, but also on the way it encourages students to go about learning (cramming, regurgitating, repeat).
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👍

Our clinical pathology course here went over a quarter and a half (ended up being 14 weeks, I think). Per week, we had one 1 hour lecture and two 2 hour discussion/lab sessions (99% case-based, sometimes journal articles to discuss). There were reading assignments with questions we had to answer about them online (open book, self-paced), case assignments where we had to turn in written reports, and a handful of in-class closed-book quizzes, and then at the end one comprehensive closed-book final exam worth 45% of the grade.

Despite the fact that the final exam was comprehensive and beastly in the material it covered, I found that having all of that other stuff in the course that was all in all pretty low-stress meant that I retained the material really, really well and I barely even had to study for the final (only had to pin down a couple of concepts/ideas that were more difficult for me personally to grasp the weekend before) and did really well on it. I suspect that I would have retained the material just as well without that final exam, too.

edit: actually now that I think about it, our Parasitology course during first year was extremely similar, except that we had more lectures and there were weekly closed-book quizzes in addition to the one closed-book huge final exam.
 
nyanko said:
👍

Our clinical pathology course here went over a quarter and a half (ended up being 14 weeks, I think). Per week, we had one 1 hour lecture and two 2 hour discussion/lab sessions (99% case-based, sometimes journal articles to discuss). There were reading assignments with questions we had to answer about them online (open book, self-paced), case assignments where we had to turn in written reports, and a handful of in-class closed-book quizzes, and then at the end one comprehensive closed-book final exam worth 45% of the grade.

Despite the fact that the final exam was comprehensive and beastly in the material it covered, I found that having all of that other stuff in the course that was all in all pretty low-stress meant that I retained the material really, really well and I barely even had to study for the final (only had to pin down a couple of concepts/ideas that were more difficult for me personally to grasp the weekend before) and did really well on it. I suspect that I would have retained the material just as well without that final exam, too.

edit: actually now that I think about it, our Parasitology course during first year was extremely similar, except that we had more lectures and there were weekly closed-book quizzes in addition to the one closed-book huge final exam.
Click to expand...


That actually sounds like a really good method.

The only true continuous assessment we have had which I like a lot was in pharm, but again it was only worth 15%. But add that to the December exam and 30% is finished before the big May exam. Each week we were given a clinical case, that had a series of questions/calculations we had to do. It was submitted online, and the cases usually went with the drug type we were working on. Seeing as our pharm course is based on not learning the drug names, but rather, the classes, and what they do, having those case based scenarios really helped. I learned more valuable information from those than studying for that miserable exam of doom.
 
ugh. It was horrible. Really really horrible!!!

Sat down and everything I knew jumped into a big pot and started swimming around together.

First I went though answered everything I knew..... 20 out of 120 points answered.

Then I went through and answered everything I sort of knew and could make up plausible answers......45 out of 120 points answered

We aren't even going to talk about the other 75 points. 😎

It sounds like a lot of the class did really poorly so I'm hoping for mercy. The material isn't difficult and the test questions were fair - just 2 weeks is NOT enough time to learn all of nutrition and toxicology. I need more time to get it straightened out in my brain! I would have preferred being in school for one week longer just so I could try and organize it all in my brain.

Everybody keep their fingers crossed!! (Probably won't know my grade for quite some time - it was TWENTY pages of short answer questions!)

On the other hand: For the very first time in my life, I stayed for an entire exam period! 😳
 
I loovveedd Cozumel! They will offer you homemade tequila at every store! It was awesome! :laugh:
 
Mizzou's been on break for a week now and it has been freaking glorious!! I figured out that I have 16 books left to read... That's about 4200 pages (yeah, counted them, because it's summer and I don't have studying to do) and 42 days to do it. Well, 4100 pages and 41 days now. 😛

Last block was great and all, but I'm really happy I can lounge with my puppy and my kitty, reading, finally playing Assassin's Creed Revelations and watching tv. Geez summer is so busy :meanie:
 
StartingoverVet said:
I am gearing up to TAKE OVER THIS THREAD.
Well, actually probably not. I think my post count is gonna drop waaaay down this fall.
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Haha it will have to. I barely make it onto SDN anymore, 2nd year beat all the free time out of me ... have fun!! 😛

ps. you'll do great
 
School is still a week and a half away and I'm already falling back into the routine of not being able to fall asleep and if I do fall asleep, having nightmares that wake me up and keep me from going back to sleep.

My anxiety has gotten ridiculous and it's so funny to me that I can work all day and apply my knowledge of vet med without stressing myself out. Why is it that sitting in a classroom and exams of my knowledge cause me such panic? Idk
 
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