To all the current vet school students that may be reading, I was wondering if there is anything now that you wish you had done before you got into vet school...classes you wished you had taken, preparations of some sort, etc... Thanks.
Do not prepare!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Go out and have fun. Spend time with family. Your favorite hobby, DO IT NOW. Those are what I wish I did (I worked full time insted). For more insite as to why read this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=373776 It very much applies to vet school also...
HAHAHAHA That was great! I think, for me anyway, it applies to pre-vet as well. (i.e. looking forward to weekends as catch up, not personal relaxation, time; trying to justify spending time with friends; etc.)
yeah I think there was a similar thread somewhere in the vet forums too. Definitely don't study, be as non-academic as you can, while you can! Read fun-books, thats my suggestion!!!
OK, I'll answer the question. Just finished first year. Literally have not touched my quilting (hobby I love) since a month before school started. That said: I am glad that I prepared myself as well as I did. I took more science classes than were required: Cell Bio, Neurobio, and lots of in-depth Physio courses. I cruised through 3 out of the 5 hard classes this year because I was so well prepared. I had fun during undergrad- science is fun. If you don't think so, re-think your choice! Seriously. I had a tough time with the classes that I did not pre-prepare for: Anatomy and Microbio. The way we were taught Micro at Davis vs the way it is taught here at MSU are not even comparable. Basically, Veterinary Micro is about memorizing the phone book. The bugs name, its morphology, ecology, disease process(es), affected species +/- clinical symptoms, drugs of choice + treatment regimen, zoonotic potential, prevention. We learned 15-40 organisms a week. SO, my suggestion is to take an art history class to get used to memorizing ridiculous amounts of inane information. Plus, art history is fun, and gets you out (of your house and your comfort zone). Anatomy is basically the same thing, but with words you can't pronounce and no application (yet- I am waiting for surgery!). So, I wish I had taken a class in elementary Latin- at least I would have been exposed to the words ahead of time. My classmates had it tough. These classes plus Histology and Physiology and Pathology and Immunology. This is not a cakewalk. But, when you are sitting in a "free lunch" provided by a club that interests you, and the doctor giving the talk says something you UNDERSTAND, and you think, for the first time, "I'm going to be a doctor"... that is more priceless than your free time ever was! JMHO TTFN, Jenn
My prep for vet school was so rushed. I felt like I got in plenty of "fun time" at my first undergrad. I was editor of an arts and entertainment mag and spent plenty of time with friends. I even took art history. But when I decided to do vet med I had so little time. I wish I had taken immunology, histology and a lot of the other ologies. Oh well. I'll learn it all in vet school. And I wouldn't change a thing
My first boss always told me his biggest regret before going into vet school was not taking a Religions of the World class. He said that he was always so focused on his hard-core sciences that he never took the fun/interesting-not-really-related-classes. Thanks for bumping the thread Holly, I had been meaning to put my 2 cents into this one!
All the Cornell vet students tell the undergrads to "TAKE HISTOLOGY!!!!!!" so i did and we'll see how that turns out this upcoming year
Well, as someone who has an undergrad degree in music production and engineering I think I've had my limit of "fun/interesting-not-really-related-classes". Although, these days there are a lot of completely unrelated classes to either music or science that seem like they would be great to take. If only time and $ permitted such things!!!!
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