People have been terrified around here lately. Until recently, I was too. You see, today was the first "real" exam for vet school - anatomy! Sure, we've had an online quiz here, a scantron test there. But anatomy - well, anatomy is the biggest, scariest part of the curriculum for first year vet students. Thousands of insignificant looking scraps of flesh completely mangled by novice dissection, all with similar sounding Latin names that we have to MEMORIZE because, apparently, it's IMPORTANT. What's that thing? The lateral dorsal metatarsal nerve. What's that thing? A scrap of basically useless connective tissue. Looks EXACTLY the same. People have been publishing small novels of notes based on the objectives for the first unit of class. Weary 20-somethings have been stumbling around the cubes with bags under their eyes, proudly proclaiming that they had been in the lab until 3am every night this week. I suppose it's not terribly surprising. Get 138 over-achieving type-A personalities together and tell them that they will, gasp, be RANKED against one another, and what do you expect? I'm not going to lie. I’ve got that same competitive drive as everyone else here, but I also have something else. Priorities. Kids. A husband. An entire OTHER graduate degree program. So, what happened? I decided to just chill. There is just no way I am going to be in these cubes studying until all hours of the night. I’ve developed some pretty efficient studying techniques, and as long as I stay on task throughout the week, I can only hope that it will be enough to get me through. If I don’t know the material by test time, no amount of cramming until the hours of the morning before the exam will save me. The test is over now and, on the off chance that some kid from my class who missed the exam is reading this, I will not divulge anything about it.
But I’m smiling. :)
In other news, I’m famous! Take a look at the nice little article the college did on me.
http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/ns/pubs/einsight/2011/september/throckmorton_amy.aspx
Next on the agenda – exam in Finance this weekend, exam in Physiology next week. Taking the kidlets bowling tomorrow. Life is pretty sweet right now.
My husband says the same thing about young animators giving all their time to the job, Staying all hours of the night at work while he's off to get home in time to tuck Maggie into bed. Employers get used to that kind of dedication...and that's why all studios have a 50 hour/ week contract before overtime even kicks in.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on doing well on your test. How intense! What a relief to have it behind you now!