Orientation/First Days of Vet School

[Serendipity4]

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First of all, congratulations again to all of us who have just started our first year of vet school, and welcome back to those who already have that first year behind them!

After going through 3 days of orientation (including a 2 day trip to a YMCA camp for "get to know you" games), and after reading other people's blogs about their own orientation experiences, I was wondering what each school does for orientation. Did you do "get to know you" games as well? Did it include an overnight trip? Also, was the theme of the orientation experience "you can do this! Support each other, try to relax when you can, etc. etc." or more towards the "If you want to succeed in vet school, you're gonna have to put in x many hours of studying a night, etc. etc." (i.e. a bit more on the stern, scare tactic side)? Just wondering, since I seem to be hearing varying experiences depending on the school. 🙂

 

[sofficat]

where have you been? AU has been in full swing for 4 weeks now! Ya know what? I STILL LOVE VET SCHOOL!!! our orientaion was pretty fun. 3 days, one afternoon of games. a lot of history of the school (100 years of this vet school!) The whole thing was (and still is) very family oriented. I love it. EVERYONE is so supportive and caring, especially the professors! The main focus was to relax, these are the best days of our lives, make friends, enjoy yourself, join clubs, oh yeah, and study. 😉 really, i love it (have i said that yet?) and that is coming from me AFTER our first 3 hour anatomy exam!
good luck!! woohoo! i love vet school!
(btw, i just got to catch and restrain a wild red tailed hawk!)

 

[wivet2011]

Wisconsin's orientation was 4 days long. We had a few get to know each other games the first day and a picnic the third, but the rest was more of an orientation to Madison and hearing from members of each department, some class orientation, financial aid stuff, etc. At least they made sure we had lots of sugar...hmmm cookies...

 

[alonepear]

We are in week four here at Mississippi State too! I still love vet school as well, although our first exam (Immunology) is TODAY, so we'll see how I feel after that 😱

We had a great orientation course called "COPE" (challenging outdoor personal experience) at a local boyscout camp. We did those crazy challenges I've only seen on 'Road Rules', like getting everyone over a 12-foot wall without any help, etc, and it helped us get to know each other on a different playing field than academics.

 

[Angelo84]

I feel like a slacker! We are in week two of classes and have our first exam (P-chem) on Wednesday. Our orientation was a weekend thing--lots of emphasis on self reflection and leadership but we did a dog wash on sunday. Classes have been fun though and we got to play with live animals today (pigs, cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, and cats). I now need to return to the intrinsic muscles in the dog...

 

[pressmom]

Pretty similar here at UTK. One day of getting to know each other in small and large groups at an outdoor leadership-building course. (I walked across a beam 30-40 feet in the air! That was pretty cool.)

Then a white coat ceremony and two days of talks about what to expect in school and more small groups with some second-years. Some barbecues at night. Pretty fun stuff. Also the dean of students told us we should be studying 4 hours a night on average. So far it's been more like 2.5 or 3. I still can't keep it together that long. Sigh. I guess we'll have to wait until it gets into full test swing! About another 2 weeks here before that starts.

Now back to immuno....

 

[pressmom]

I feel like a slacker! We are in week two of classes and have our first exam (P-chem) on Wednesday. Our orientation was a weekend thing--lots of emphasis on self reflection and leadership but we did a dog wash on sunday. Classes have been fun though and we got to play with live animals today (pigs, cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, and cats). I now need to return to the intrinsic muscles in the dog...

We're on intrinsics too! Just finished them up in lab today. Small world!

 

[Emio]

We had a great orientation course called "COPE" (challenging outdoor personal experience) at a local boyscout camp. We did those crazy challenges I've only seen on 'Road Rules', like getting everyone over a 12-foot wall without any help, etc, and it helped us get to know each other on a different playing field than academics.

lol, thats what i wanted to do!

we had 2 days of intermittant group-forming, reflection, saving a classmate from theoretical poisonous mushrooms and snake bites, incredibly boring IT talks and whatnot. the third day we went out to new bolton to play games with our groups and write lyrical skits (author of the Fresh Vets of Kennet Square play! lol)... it was a lot of fun, and i absolutely love the people in the group. everyone else is just as excited to be where we are, so all of the "don't compete with each other, compete against the standards" talks were rather useless.

we just finished our first week of classes, and i think most everyone is pretty whipped, but there are still smiles... its gonna be a good four years 😀

 

[sofficat]

i've never been excited to take an exam and leave it thinking it was fun... until today. 😳)
we had our first physiology exam today. i was so ready for that exam that i was excited to take it just to see how well i would do. then, during and after the exam the only way i could explain it was... fun! yea it was hard and i definitely got quite a few problems wrong, but i've never taken an exam with so many clinical problems. woohoo for vet school!

 

[AuburnPreVet]

You serious, hun? ...excited...fun...dear god.
Just kidding. It was neat to have somewhat relevant/clinical questions... but, it was tough!

 

[wivet2011]

i've never been excited to take an exam and leave it thinking it was fun... until today. 😳)
we had our first physiology exam today. i was so ready for that exam that i was excited to take it just to see how well i would do. then, during and after the exam the only way i could explain it was... fun! yea it was hard and i definitely got quite a few problems wrong, but i've never taken an exam with so many clinical problems. woohoo for vet school!

You're crazy... then again, I think we all are

 

[sofficat]

You serious, hun? ...excited...fun...dear god.
Just kidding. It was neat to have somewhat relevant/clinical questions... but, it was tough!

see, you know you enjoyed it, too! i thought the questions were fair. it was tough, but i liked it. let's just see if i still thought it was fun tomorrow!

 

[AuburnPreVet]

Yes, tomorrow will determine if our little "exercise" was a positive/negative experience. I bet we "own'd" it sister!

 

[soxbox]

at CSU we had an entire week of orientation!!! the first 3 days were on campus and the next 3 days they shipped us off to the Rocky Mountains to a camp like a place... there were bunkbeds... dear god... lots of bonding things, we spent a lot of time on meyers-briggs stuff (We had to take the test over the summer)... overall i guess it was good... especially with such a large class (138!!!) it was nice to get to know other peopel besides those fall next to you alphabetically!

We are in week four of classes... tomorrow is our first radiology test... and we have weekly histology quizzes...our first really big exam is on Thursday... anatomy... thoracic limb... omg... those origins/insertions/innervations/and actions 🙂


good luck to everyone!!!

 

[dyachei]

We are in week four of classes... tomorrow is our first radiology test... and we have weekly histology quizzes...our first really big exam is on Thursday... anatomy... thoracic limb... omg... those origins/insertions/innervations/and actions 🙂


good luck to everyone!!!

We have a quiz on that today. It should be "fun".

To build on what Pressmom said, we had 4 days of orientation, the first being full of ropes courses and the like, the next being a white coat ceremony, and the last two being days where we listened to people talk about what to expect. We also were introduced to a lot of people those two days (and I remember hardly any of them).

 

[JIKJen124]

Ok, so vet school is now essentially 11.5 hours away for all of us OSU CVM'ers... This is exciting but also sort of eeks-ish if you get my drift. 😳 Any classmates that may be reading, see you in the AM...🙂

 

[sofficat]

you start school on a friday? that's weird. good luck! have FUN!

 

[LuckyJo]

K-State had a week long orientation. The first day we introduced ourselves and had a big student/faculty/staff/family picnic. The rest of the week we were put into groups and we did various activities (personality test, get-to-know you stuff, scholarship talks, etc) we also took a tour of Manhattan and the campus. This is our 4th week of classes and we have already had two tests (the bones test, and physiology). Is it just me or is physiology more interesting when the tell you why X is relevant to vet med?

 

[sofficat]

i know what you mean! i love physiology!! (refer to post above regarding exam) 😀

 

[spikey]

lol, thats what i wanted to do!

we had 2 days of intermittant group-forming, reflection, saving a classmate from theoretical poisonous mushrooms and snake bites, incredibly boring IT talks and whatnot. the third day we went out to new bolton to play games with our groups and write lyrical skits (author of the Fresh Vets of Kennet Square play! lol)... it was a lot of fun, and i absolutely love the people in the group. everyone else is just as excited to be where we are, so all of the "don't compete with each other, compete against the standards" talks were rather useless.

we just finished our first week of classes, and i think most everyone is pretty whipped, but there are still smiles... its gonna be a good four years 😀

can you help me cross the "river" on rug squares, Emily?

 

[pressmom]

So how was orientation at Ohio State? I almost went there, and I'm really curious! 🙂

 

[ri23]

OSU orientation was a lot of fun. On Friday we did get to team building activities and going over our DiSC personality assessment. Monday and Tuesday were filled with tours, talks, faculty panels, etc. They've had a lot of picnics and free food and today we had our first day of class. All of our professors seem fantastic and really enthusiastic. Sorry it has taken me so long to respond, I'm still not used to looking at this board.

 

[JIKJen124]

I'd echo what she said about OSU's orientation. With all their re-assuring that they tried to do in all the events, I think it actually worked to stress people out more. Now that we're going, it seems alot more survivable.

Are things still going well for everyone else?

 

[winterfire1203]

Full week!

Thankfully they got rid of the overnight 2 years ago because the first years hated it so much!
We still did "team-building" and "leadership-building" exercises, plus almost every lecturer we had wanted to tell us about how we were a "family" now and that we could leave competitiveness at the door (oh, but don't forget if your not top ten ranked in the class you can kiss that residency good-bye, but hugs and kisses everyone, hugs and kisses, lol).

And yes, I LOVE vet school and we just finished week 5 and I've survived 2 quizzes and an anatomy exam. It feels like summer camp, lots of fun activities, topics that relate to my interests: vet school. It's great!

 

[Catnip]

We had a full week session for our introduction here at Washington State. I'm still a bit skeptical of it since they've integrated it into our curriculum here as well and we have a 2 hour class once a week . It's lead by the Universities Psychiatrist and another veterinarian that is pretty gun ho on the whole thing. They're working hard to spread it accross the world and are on tour right now bragging about the results. They made us take a Myers Briggs profiling exam among other psychological evalations before we started the whole thing and at the end.

I didn't realizethey had the same stuff going on in most of the other veterinary schools as well. I'll have to tell my classmates, as a lot of them have been thinking WSU is just bit more "touchy-feely" then the rest 🙂

 

[wivet2011]

woohoo!!!! survived 1st anatomy/radiology exams 😛

 

[laurafinn]

I didn't realizethey had the same stuff going on in most of the other veterinary schools as well. I'll have to tell my classmates, as a lot of them have been thinking WSU is just bit more "touchy-feely" then the rest 🙂

I think its an AVMA thing. That's supposedly the reason they've added stress management classes and know-your-personality-type seminars at Massey.