Oral Examination = Success!

So, my oral examination was today at 10:30am. I showed up at 9am because I did not know what time to be there exactly and I could not access the timetable online for some reason. I knew that the bulletin board at the university had the times. I did absolutely no studying yesterday and this morning. I felt that I knew most of everything that we would be tested on. So, the way that the oral examination was set up was that there would be 5 professors in the dissection room. 5 students were scheduled at a time and were required to speak with the professor for 10 minutes about a certain aspect of the body. I waited in the library until it was my time. There were several other people in there frantically studying and they kept wondering what the exam was going to be like and speculating how the questions would be asked. As they were doing this, they were getting more and more stressed out. I attempted to study some last minute pictures of internal anatomy but couldn't bring myself to really study them for the umpteenth time! So I sat and read some news articles on my iPhone to kill time.

10.30am rolled around and I made my way towards the dissection lab. The professor I was assigned to was Dr. Neil Hudson and I was VERY happy that it was him. I met him in San Francisco at the reception for the university a while back. I walked over to him and he had a full canine skeleton in front of him with various forelimb/hindlimb bones. It looked like it was going to be pretty straight forward. So, he began by describing that this will be the format of many of the examinations and that the exams are not designed to make you nervous, etc. I wasn't a bit nervous and was actually excited (yeah, I know, weird) to take the oral examination. It's fun finding out how much you actually know. I was asked many questions about the various regions of the canine skeleton, directional terms, difference between feline/canine skeleton, etc. Oh, and of course, I was asked my favorite question. Describe the stifle joint and also, describe what happens when a dog tears the cranial cruciate ligament. Very easy! I'm pretty sure I did very well on that examination. The only mistake I made was that I said the bottom of the hindpaw was the palmar aspect, but I quickly corrected myself and changed it to plantar. Dr. Hudson just laughed and said it is common to get them mixed up and that he knew what I meant. Now, to wait for the grades to roll in. I am going to relax BIG TIME this weekend. New classes start Monday, I haven't actually looked at the new schedule yet. Well, off I go to relax some more. I have a feeling I won't get too many chance to relax anymore. Hope everyone is doing well!