Content/pace in vet school

[Greengal]

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Hello all. Not sure if I am allowed to ask this question but here goes. I imagine the academic load is unimaginable, especially the first year. Can someone give me a general idea of the volume of work required for mastery in a given amount of time? For example, I understand from reading some of the posts here that testing can occur every two weeks. How much material are you expected to learn in that time, say in an anatomy class? Thanks! Good luck to all August 2019 students! I am attending in January 2020.

 

[SkiOtter]

Varies based on the school. Best bet is to ask in your school-specific thread. Regardless, it will be like a firehose of information hitting you.

 

[deleted676737]

@SkiOtter is right on point with the firehose metaphor. Whenever I described the load to people, I would often say that it’s comparable to the feeling of being in finals week in undergrad... but all semester/quarter, and instead of having one really difficult class that you focus most of your energies on, ALL of your classes like that. It can be very overwhelming, especially at first, but you will eventually acclimate to it.

Some schools do ease you in a little bit more than others, but it will still be an adjustment no matter where you’re at and you will, most likely, find that your previous study methods may not be as effective as they were in undergrad just due to the sheer volume of information and the pace at which it is being thrown at you.

It’s kind of difficult to quantify just how much you learn in a given period of time; you have to experience it for yourself to really “get” it. I will say that I definitely had exams covering 20+ lectures worth of material.

 

[PippyPony]

Hello all. Not sure if I am allowed to ask this question but here goes. I imagine the academic load is unimaginable, especially the first year. Can someone give me a general idea of the volume of work required for mastery in a given amount of time? For example, I understand from reading some of the posts here that testing can occur every two weeks. How much material are you expected to learn in that time, say in an anatomy class? Thanks! Good luck to all August 2019 students! I am attending in January 2020.

SkiOtter is right, it will vary by school.

It also is going to vary a lot by the courses themselves. At our school, first year anatomy (when I took it, it has since been revamped) was literally hundreds of pages of material per exam that we were required to know -- the textbook for small animal anatomy was 1300 pages. But -- our anatomy course also covered a lot of things that might be covered in other subjects at a different school. Another course in fall of first year only had ~8 lecture hours.

In second year, we have had a test literally every week, without fail, for the entire school year. The one I'm studying for right now is bigger than most of ours have been for 2nd year, but is 23 hours of new lecture material and 43 hours total (it's cumulative). Those hours are jam-packed.

It's a lot.

That being said...you kind of figure out what you need to do to learn the material and get by. The effort required to get by is a very personal thing, though -- I know some people who spend literally all their time studying (and probably do much better than I do on some things), but I cannot do that because I'd lose my mind.

 

[DVMDream]

It is like this....

 

[SkiOtter]

but I cannot do that because I'd lose my mind.

 

[battie]

Illinois only has 2 tests per quarter. For our final, we covered 100 lectures if you include the cumulative material. Those 100 lectures were over the course of 8 weeks.

 

[Greengal]

As you all have said, it is personal to one's school. I appreciate you all weighing in 🙂

 

[johnsmith123]

As others have said, it's a lot but totally manageable. It's a shocker at first but once you get into a groove, it really doesn't feel all that different from taking a lot of credits in undergrad. At least at my school, it isn't quite as intense as people make it out to be. We have a few notoriously difficult quarters (and those are just as difficult as you'd imagine) but the rest is manageable if you study consistently instead of cramming.

 

[jaboo]

It is like this....

Honestly, this is pretty damn accurate.

To give you an idea of how much information they throw at you—I pretty much envision my brain as a filing cabinet nowadays. You have to store SO MUCH in your brain that sometimes simple words take you like 30 seconds to find. One exam this past semester, it literally took me a full minute to remember the word “pulmonary”. In my head I was just thinking “lung word that starts with p, lung word that starts with p...”

Another thing that will happen to you is that time works differently in vet school. A week in vet school feels like a month. It’s incredibly bizarre and super disorienting when you get a test back and you’re like “wow, this took like 3 weeks to grade... oh wait no we took this 5 days ago.”

 

[MixedAnimals77]

Another thing that will happen to you is that time works differently in vet school. A week in vet school feels like a month. It’s incredibly bizarre and super disorienting when you get a test back and you’re like “wow, this took like 3 weeks to grade... oh wait no we took this 5 days ago.”

1000% this. I'm convinced it's a time warp. Like it seems long and dragged out but then at milestones like the end of the semester comes and you're like wow I'm done.

 

[Cobyology]

1000% this. I'm convinced it's a time warp. Like it seems long and dragged out but then at milestones like the end of the semester comes and you're like wow I'm done.

Well that's not promising. Just finished my MPH and I feel as though this flew by! These were the fastest two years of my life, I was kinda hoping vet school would go by quickly like that.

 

[Caiter92]

Well that's not promising. Just finished my MPH and I feel as though this flew by! These were the fastest two years of my life, I was kinda hoping vet school would go by quickly like that.

It feels really slow when it’s happening but then suddenly you’re a 4th year wondering how the **** you got here

I felt like first year dragged on the most. Second and third year didn’t feel that way to me. Except the last few weeks of third year where it felt like we’d never get to clinics.

 

[PennObie20]

First year we celebrated every milestone possible-like yay, we're 1/32 done! Now we've started fourth year a couple weeks ago and I just now realized we're 75% done

 

[FutureFelineVet]

Another thing that will happen to you is that time works differently in vet school. A week in vet school feels like a month. It’s incredibly bizarre and super disorienting when you get a test back and you’re like “wow, this took like 3 weeks to grade... oh wait no we took this 5 days ago.”

So much yes to this. I just finished my second week and it feels so much longer than that haha

 

[RedLauren]

Let me put it like this: my first exam in vet school, I made a high B and I called my mom and cried because I was so disappointed with myself. Fast forward 9 months - A few days ago when I found out I made a C in my most difficult class I called my mom and cried because I was so happy.

Vet school is about keeping your head above water - strategically picking and choosing what you spend your time studying for. This was easier the first semester when the bulk of our credit hours were for 2 classes (anatomy and physiology). This semester I just finished is notorious at my school for being one the hardest. And it was much harder but my GPA was still a good half a point higher this semester not because I studied harder but because I was more strategic and studied smarter.

There definitely are people in my class that have straight As. And I’m confident that this is something I also could achieve if I wanted to sacrifice everything else I have that makes me happy for extra study time. But I don’t. I keep my head above water, and one of the things I need to do to breathe is to go hiking sometimes, have the time to cook a meal I enjoy, or occasionally watch a movie. It’s about balance, and once you find that balance you’ll do just fine.

 

[Minnerbelle]

Regardless of how often you are tested (which determines the amt of info per exam) the amount of material typically amounts to about 25-30 lecture hours per week being tested. Some of those are super memorization heavy, others may be more conceptual based. How difficult/manageable it is will depend on your personal capacity for memorization and study habits as well as your background knowledge. Don’t worry about it at this point. It’s impossible for you to get an idea of what that means until you’re there. Even within the same school, each individual’s experience is so different.

 

[ANSohschm]

Definitely agree with the above poster who said not to stress about it because you never know how you will individually react to the level of info.

In undergrad, many of us made straight A’s because we memorized every sentence of notes and just knew that X caused Y, because we remember re-writing our notes about it. In vet school, there is just too much info to re write all your notes, or memorize every little thing. Accept that you won’t remember every little detail and they will hit you with the important things multiple times.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

I think the part that has been most frustrating for me, but that I have had to grown to accept, is that there is no way to actually learn all of the material being tested. I have always loved learning and for a while was really downtrodden that I felt a lot of the material just wouldn't stick. You have to "choose your battles" so to speak. I could go into an undergrad test feeling very confident in nearly 100% of the material. In vet school, there is just no way to do this for all exams and quizzes.
As a comparison, undergrad anatomy tests (on a human cadaver) would maybe have 100-200 structures that could be tagged. We would have to know muscles and actions. Our last anatomy test, there was 24 pages of structures we had to be able to identify, in 4 different animals. One lab can have 100-200 structures, and tests will be over multiple labs, and have multiple choice parts. You have to know actions, insertions, innervation, clinically relevant info, etc etc.
An important aspect of studying, for me, is figuring out things they will likely test on, and which things are lower priority (and being ok missing the points if they do test on it).
Vet school is hard, there is no way around that. But obviously, it can be done 🙂

 

[Minnerbelle]

I think the part that has been most frustrating for me, but that I have had to grown to accept, is that there is no way to actually learn all of the material being tested. [...] One lab can have 100-200 structures, and tests will be over multiple labs, and have multiple choice parts. You have to know actions, insertions, innervation, clinically relevant info, etc etc.

Don’t stress about it. As soon as your final is over, 95% of the **** you memorized in anatomy can go *poof* and you’ll make a fine clinician. You don’t even need to know it to do well for the rest of vet school or boards. Names of most muscles and small bones are like totally not important. Origins/insertions, like lol. Blood vessels... there are some important ones you need to know surgically and for congenital/developmental anomalies, but in general just aim not to cut huge vessels and you’re good. In fact, even if you do, many can be ligated and cut and the animal will live on like nothing ever happened. Innervation is important to the extent of functional neurology, but even then a good amount of it is academic. You do what you gotta do to get through school, but most of what you get tested on don’t have to stick around. The more you specialize, the broader strokes of **** you can dump from your brain. If you go for a specialty that requires good anatomic knowledge, you’ll relearn it.

You probably haven’t come across enough clinically relevant info during first year to realize it, but by third year, the important stuff will be super redundant even within the sea of unimportant **** you know you won’t care about after you pass boards.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

Don’t stress about it. As soon as your final is over, 95% of the **** you memorized in anatomy can go *poof* and you’ll make a fine clinician. You don’t even need to know it to do well for the rest of vet school or boards. Names of most muscles and small bones are like totally not important. Origins/insertions, like lol. Blood vessels... there are some important ones you need to know surgically and for congenital/developmental anomalies, but in general just aim not to cut huge vessels and you’re good. In fact, even if you do, many can be ligated and cut and the animal will live on like nothing ever happened. Innervation is important to the extent of functional neurology, but even then a good amount of it is academic. You do what you gotta do to get through school, but most of what you get tested on don’t have to stick around. The more you specialize, the broader strokes of **** you can dump from your brain. If you go for a specialty that requires good anatomic knowledge, you’ll relearn it.

You probably haven’t come across enough clinically relevant info during first year to realize it, but by third year, the important stuff will be super redundant even within the sea of unimportant **** you know you won’t care about after you pass boards.

I guess that's what frustrating to me a bit lol. I know they I have to "know" it for exams, but that I really won't need to know it further on (particularly the large animal stuff). I stress about the exams, but acknowledge I forget most of it after the tests are over and just have to know that's ok also. It can be a bit hard to stay motivated when you know the topic being covered won't be necessary to you in future career plans.

 

[Lupin21]

I guess that's what frustrating to me a bit lol. I know they I have to "know" it for exams, but that I really won't need to know it further on (particularly the large animal stuff). I stress about the exams, but acknowledge I forget most of it after the tests are over and just have to know that's ok also. It can be a bit hard to stay motivated when you know the topic being covered won't be necessary to you in future career plans.

Then use the NAVLE as your motivation until you reach that point to help yourself out. haha

 

[Minnerbelle]

I guess that's what frustrating to me a bit lol. I know they I have to "know" it for exams, but that I really won't need to know it further on (particularly the large animal stuff). I stress about the exams, but acknowledge I forget most of it after the tests are over and just have to know that's ok also. It can be a bit hard to stay motivated when you know the topic being covered won't be necessary to you in future career plans.

Eh, think of it as an intense mind sharpening exercise. It’s amazing how much your capacity to memorize **** helps you out later. Like, people are super surprised how I can pull out a particular patient’s lab value abnormalities and physical exam findings from months ago, and all the weird details about the client. And after seeing 10-20 patients and not having written down much on a busy day, how I can accurately remember PE findings and client communications from each appt and write it down in the chart strictly from memory when necessary.

 

[CalliopeDVM]

required for mastery

I'll just throw this out there, though it isn't what you were really asking about...........don't expect "mastery" of anything. It's both unrealistic and unreachable, and will be for your entire career. There's too much to know, and information is changing too rapidly.

 

[Greengal]

Thanks to you all for your perspectives 🙂