Class of 2015... How ya doing?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Meh. I've been out there. Stuff isn't as important as it sounds or seems like it should be. Really, not much is.

I dunno man, getting to buy my first house with the world's most awesome husband is pretty important to me 🙂

(But I know what you really meant - point taken!)
 
maybe its because we're not slackers 😉 ya know, working so hard in school...ha.

my life equals two words right now - internal medicine. one week down, four to go...love the rotation (the people, the cases, the learning, the clients) but knowing that i have to get up by 5am at the latest to be at school by 5-5:30a everyday (and i do mean all 35 days of the block) is already seriously wearing me down. so not a morning person.
 
my life equals two words right now - internal medicine. one week down, four to go...love the rotation (the people, the cases, the learning, the clients) but knowing that i have to get up by 5am at the latest to be at school by 5-5:30a everyday (and i do mean all 35 days of the block) is already seriously wearing me down. so not a morning person.

YIKES! And I'm struggling getting up at 6 every morning to be at school for 7. I'm thoroughly enjoying the fact that I have no patients in the hospital right now so I only have to go in if there's an emergency tomorrow.
 
YIKES! And I'm struggling getting up at 6 every morning to be at school for 7. I'm thoroughly enjoying the fact that I have no patients in the hospital right now so I only have to go in if there's an emergency tomorrow.
pretty much the only reason we wouldnt go in is if we had no emergency transfers and no patients in the hospital, which would be so incredibly rare. the on call person gets to wake up at 4 and distribute the transfer cases so that everyone can come in to care for those patients
 
maybe its because we're not slackers 😉 ya know, working so hard in school...ha.

I considered that. For all of 2 seconds. And then laughed.

my life equals two words right now - internal medicine. one week down, four to go...love the rotation (the people, the cases, the learning, the clients) but knowing that i have to get up by 5am at the latest to be at school by 5-5:30a everyday (and i do mean all 35 days of the block) is already seriously wearing me down. so not a morning person.

Yeah. Internal med is a love/hate thing. My first 4 weeks I was kinda not thrilled. My next 2 weeks I loved - good cases, great clinicians. We'll see what my last 2 weeks holds - it's over xmas. 😛

pretty much the only reason we wouldnt go in is if we had no emergency transfers and no patients in the hospital, which would be so incredibly rare. the on call person gets to wake up at 4 and distribute the transfer cases so that everyone can come in to care for those patients

Interesting way to handle it. We have two 'sides' for our Internal Medicine rotation. Each side has 4-6 students, a chief of service, two residents, and possibly an intern. The sides alternate days: ER transfers + procedures on one day, appointments on the other day. So there's always one side taking transfers and doing procedures while the other side is seeing appointments. I like the system. But we all show up early on transfer days with no idea whether we have any or many transfers. During the week it's not a big deal - even if there aren't many transfers, you've got procedures to cover plus your in-hospital patients and the occasional oddly-scheduled appointment. But on the weekend it can suck if you drive in (for me, that's 30 minutes of driving) early for transfers and then there aren't any, or aren't enough that it requires everyone there, or whatever. I kinda like the idea of having one person get up early and dole out cases.

Is that a clinician doing the assigning, or an on-call student? There's certain students I'd be less than happy with if they were assigning cases.
 
pretty much the only reason we wouldnt go in is if we had no emergency transfers and no patients in the hospital, which would be so incredibly rare. the on call person gets to wake up at 4 and distribute the transfer cases so that everyone can come in to care for those patients

I do not miss those 4 am alarms for any transfers... and I only did it for 2 weeks.

In other news, trying to study for boards in 2 weeks didn't work out this weekend like I'd hoped. Went to a wedding in Wisconsin, came back to MO to hit a deer (I hit it going maybe 5-10 mph so the damage isn't preventing me from driving my car), and got a letter in the mail containing instructions for an online "course" I have to do to get divorced. I do not like our community practice rotation. One bit. I'm bitter all the time. This block sucks.
 
In other news, trying to study for boards in 2 weeks didn't work out this weekend like I'd hoped. Went to a wedding in Wisconsin, came back to MO to hit a deer (I hit it going maybe 5-10 mph so the damage isn't preventing me from driving my car), and got a letter in the mail containing instructions for an online "course" I have to do to get divorced. I do not like our community practice rotation. One bit. I'm bitter all the time. This block sucks.

Sorry it's been rough going for you lately 🙁 And really, you have to take an online course to get divorced!?

I think this block is going to be my least favorite. The professors keep referring to how young we all are which gets tiring fast. "Oh that was 2008, you probably don't remember that." "I've been doing this since....before you were born." "You guys look younger than my kids." I'm very tempted to say, "You look so old!" and see where that gets me.
 
I do not miss those 4 am alarms for any transfers... and I only did it for 2 weeks.

In other news, trying to study for boards in 2 weeks didn't work out this weekend like I'd hoped. Went to a wedding in Wisconsin, came back to MO to hit a deer (I hit it going maybe 5-10 mph so the damage isn't preventing me from driving my car), and got a letter in the mail containing instructions for an online "course" I have to do to get divorced. I do not like our community practice rotation. One bit. I'm bitter all the time. This block sucks.
i will not miss 12-16+ hour days every day of the week, and i will not miss spending endless hours at school on the weekends (20 hours this weekend). i will not miss waking up at 4am and struggling to get enough sleep to be a functional human being. i am currently a terrible friend. i am not a very good pet owner. my patients are very sick and the paperwork is endless. my workload is endless because my house officers' workload is endless. i feel like the seniors do nothing to help their very overwhelmed house officers, and patient care might be suffering. so. tired. ugh.
 
Sorry it's been rough going for you lately 🙁 And really, you have to take an online course to get divorced!?

I think this block is going to be my least favorite. The professors keep referring to how young we all are which gets tiring fast. "Oh that was 2008, you probably don't remember that." "I've been doing this since....before you were born." "You guys look younger than my kids." I'm very tempted to say, "You look so old!" and see where that gets me.

Thanks. Today was better although I think I'm getting sick again. I never quite got over my first respiratory thing and now I have new symptoms. But I did get to do my second dental today. Several of the dog's roots were resorbing. I extracted one such incisor without breaking the root. Dentals are growing on me, for sure.

I worked with one vet who called me "the embryo". It was really nice... You should totally try calling them old and let us know how it works 😛
 
so many levels of jealously right now, but congrats!

So many levels of "glad I'm not going through that process."

I mean, I think it will be great for all the peeps going off to internships and residencies and that stuff. But for me? Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.
 
I officially decided to apply for an internship. Pretty exciting...

Exciting! 😀 Are you going to go for SA med to do cardio or did you decide on something else?

@LetItSnow it's not too bad, definitely less than VMCAS required time-wise. Plus I'm more confident in my application than I was for vet school (I've set myself up a little better) and no matter where I end up, it'll be with my one true love which is sappy but true. Per usual, the worst part is depending on other people (letter writers) to get their stuff done on time...I still have one I'm waiting on and it's starting to make me anxious. And then the cost and logistics of interviews, at least for us lab animal people.
 
I am freaking the eff out. How did boards sneak up on me so quickly? I've been studying, but I go to school and have a job so I feel like I'm behind. Here's hoping it all works out. Just over 2 weeks to go
 
So, today was end-of-rotation-potluck. Except the small animal medicine and small animal surgery rotations completely blanked and couldn't be bothered, so we ordered pizza. And then I took food from the radiology potluck, who had plenty of leftovers. Including oreo-stuffed-chocolate chip cookies. Yes, an oreo covered in chocolate chip cookie. It was amazing.

Somehow, I ended up with no patients today even though I did day emergency duty. And I have no ICU or on-call shifts this weekend, so I am effectively done with medicine and I have a four day weekend!
 
just under 2 weeks into medicine (3 to go), and my brain is officially swiss cheese. sigh. i need sleep. and i need to clean my house. and get my internship apps done. and figure out my externship which has paperwork due by the end of the week essentially. and play with my neglected dog. and study for boards to that i can get a license when i graduate.
much to my chagrin, i left ALL of my patient's papers at school tonight when I came home. managed to get every other little thing together and put away and home, but not the pertinent papers. writing a full SOAP tonight is gonna be real interesting without my notes...good thing tomorrow is saturday and i think i can get more fudge time on my 8am due date. :slap:
 
Exciting! 😀 Are you going to go for SA med to do cardio or did you decide on something else?

Aaaactually, I have decided to apply for a large animal internship. I think I would be up for a SA rotating internship, but right now, I have to be selfish (now that I have no strings...) and large animal is what I want.
 
We're slacking again guys 😉

I'm having a blast on farm service. Every day further cements my plan for a micro-mini farm in the future.

I'm full-time studying for boards all week. I'm doing a very poor job of managing my panic. I'm going to feel like the dumbest person on the planet if/when I don't pass.
 
Looks like I'm going to end up taking boards and going to court within 3 days of each other. I'm missing 2 out of 10 shelter days, which is sad... I also got signed up for 2 cat neuters this week. I'm glad to be getting the experience with a safety net, but I really really need to work on my suturing.
 
Two more days of stuff, and then I'm off until NAVLE on the 3rd. Booked my flight and accomodations for my stint in Louisiana in April. Grad photos next week.

I'm on career and practice managment right now - basically three days of economics and stuff. Not bad, some useful stuff, but a bit dry. Oh well, only three days! And I've had it reaffirmed that I have the patience of a toddler. Residency apps closed on Sunday and some schools were supposed to start sending out notificiations of phone interviews today. Nothing yet, despite my frantic email checking.
 
Finished VetPrep tonight. Still don't really feel prepared for NAVLE, but I did it. A week from now, it'll all be over (hopefully!).

I also got my first residency rejection letter today. It was from the school I wanted least out of the ones I applied to, but it was still a little bit disappointing. I wish residencies did file reviews, haha. Now just hoping for good news from one of the other 5 schools I applied at.
 
Finished VetPrep tonight. Still don't really feel prepared for NAVLE, but I did it. A week from now, it'll all be over (hopefully!).

I also got my first residency rejection letter today. It was from the school I wanted least out of the ones I applied to, but it was still a little bit disappointing. I wish residencies did file reviews, haha. Now just hoping for good news from one of the other 5 schools I applied at.

Screw them, the other five will fight each other for you! Redhead and I are still in residency limbo; no news yet. Sigh.
 
Wow, I can't believe you guys hear back so quickly!

Starting to feel nervous and regretting not taking more weeks off before my NAVLE..I'm only at 46% of VetPrep and it seems like all my peers are in the 60-80% range.
 
Finished VetPrep tonight. Still don't really feel prepared for NAVLE, but I did it. A week from now, it'll all be over (hopefully!).

I also got my first residency rejection letter today. It was from the school I wanted least out of the ones I applied to, but it was still a little bit disappointing. I wish residencies did file reviews, haha. Now just hoping for good news from one of the other 5 schools I applied at.
100%?! wow! i am at 57%...hopefully i'll make it to 60-75% by the time i actually take it...
 
My others bar says 85%. I have been trying to do 50 questions a night since July, at least. We didn't have any appointments on my rotation Thursday, so I managed to knock out 10% in an afternoon.

Now if I can just manage to read the questions on the real thing and realize they are asking for which of these is not true or false or whatever I'll be doing good. Because I miss entirely too many questions because I didn't read it closely enough.
 
My others bar says 85%. I have been trying to do 50 questions a night since July, at least. We didn't have any appointments on my rotation Thursday, so I managed to knock out 10% in an afternoon.

Now if I can just manage to read the questions on the real thing and realize they are asking for which of these is not true or false or whatever I'll be doing good. Because I miss entirely too many questions because I didn't read it closely enough.

I miss wayyyyyy too many question of the "Pick the one of these that <isn't> ...." form. Really good at forgetting that they want the 'wrong' answer and instead saying 'Hey! I know that answer is true! Must be it!'
 
I miss wayyyyyy too many question of the "Pick the one of these that <isn't> ...." form. Really good at forgetting that they want the 'wrong' answer and instead saying 'Hey! I know that answer is true! Must be it!'

I do this way too much. I will be painfully reading the questions on the NAVLE to make sure I don't do this.
 
Weird! My other bar says 25%. I wonder what the difference is? I start four straight days of studying today. Interspersed with laundry and horse, of course!

I just finished my last externship. Officially back to the hospital on Wednesday for the long haul to graduation. So. Far. Away. (And yet so close!)
 
I'm full-time studying for boards all week. I'm doing a very poor job of managing my panic. I'm going to feel like the dumbest person on the planet if/when I don't pass.
I am so with you on this. I could have written this post, lol
 
I'm at 50% on vetprep. Last weekend, (or was it 2 weekends ago?) I knocked out like 14% because all of my friends were busy or sick. I have been sleeping less well the last 2 nights, and had bad dreams on both nights, but when I'm awake, I'm not obsessing over it. I even dicked around and bought Christmas gifts online the night before last. Monday will be fine for those of us taking it then, and then studying for this monster will be over 🙂
 
I'm at 85% on VetPrep, with my "others" being at 89%. I bought it back in July when it was on sale though. Best of luck to everyone taking it this week!

One of my classmates and very good friends got a call about a Skype interview with Cornell. Now I'm paranoid because they haven't called me...
 
I'm at 85% on VetPrep, with my "others" being at 89%. I bought it back in July when it was on sale though. Best of luck to everyone taking it this week!

One of my classmates and very good friends got a call about a Skype interview with Cornell. Now I'm paranoid because they haven't called me...

So weird. I bought it ... earlier than that, and mine is at 25%. Well, 26% today.

I wonder if they 'cohort' people by schools?? Regions? It seems pretty weird that you would purchase in July and be at 89% 'others' when I purchased earlier and am at 26% 'others'. That's just such a huge difference that I don't get it.
 
one of my letter writers backed out because they realized that i would put them over their personal cap. very diasappointed because this person's opinion meant a lot to me, and its not because they dont think they can write a good letter, its because they agree to too many others. sigh - i'm they were honest, but still a big disappointment
 
Mine says 77% for the others. I'm a bit behind most of you, but I'm making good progress this weekend. I just finished the cattle section, so I only have the exotics and some mixed left.

I have until a week from Monday. Woo.
 
one of my letter writers backed out because they realized that i would put them over their personal cap. very diasappointed because this person's opinion meant a lot to me, and its not because they dont think they can write a good letter, its because they agree to too many others. sigh - i'm they were honest, but still a big disappointment

Oh jeez that's a frustrating situation 🙁 Hope you're able to find a suitable replacement soon!
 
spent 15 hours at school today taking care of new patients and doing paperwork, BUT my newest patient is currently receiving a dialysis treatment. how cool is that?! 😀

less cool is the pile of paperwork that needs to be done and the fact that every single one of the coming days will look just like today, but eh.
 
Tomorrow's the day.

In other news, one of the windows on my car was busted while I was hanging out with an old friend this weekend. At least my mom was already going to take it somewhere to get a quote for the damage from hitting that deer... but it sure put a damper on my weekend.
 
Top