Lectures over forever, one exam down and 5 more to go...

Lectures have finally ended with the last two lectures covering clinical cases of exotic animals. We had our Veterinary Public Health exam on Friday and it consisted of a pathological spot component in which we had to look at images on a projector screen and answer the questions that went with each picture. I have never been so pressed for time on an exam before! All of the questions were fair and I remembered all of them from lectures (say for two or three questions that stumped me). We had 6 minutes to answer questions that went with 10 photos. Each photo, on average, had around 7 questions that required a lot of writing for the most part. Once we finished the first part of the exam, I went to the main library and studied for 2.5 hours before part 2 of the exam. At 2.30pm we had the written component of the exam that consisted of 10 short answer questions and we had 1.5 hours to complete the exam. I was writing non-stop for this examination as well and came to finish the exam 10 minutes before the timer ended. All questions on the written part were quite fair as well. I will find out in about a month what I received for a mark.

Over the next 3.5 weeks I will be preparing for the written examination on equine and exotics medicine and prepare for the spot examination on the clinical examination of the cow and sheep. It has been in the 70's here in Edinburgh over the last two days, which is the warmest I've been in this time of year! It was so nice out yesterday that I went for a very long walk to the park. Apparently this is mating season for frogs...I came across 6-7 frog pairs in the park with a couple of male frogs fighting for the female. Was funny to watch. I did manage to take some photos so I will post those as soon as possible. Hope all is well with everyone and I am looking forward to seeing you all at the end of May!

Only two more days and I am done with lectures FOREVER!

Yes, you did read that right. We now only have two more days of lectures remaining for the remainder of the BVM&S program. That's not to say I won't have lectures here and there from guest speakers. As far as the core course material goes, I am completely done with the lectures as of next Tuesday. It's taken how long for me to reach this point in my life? Seems like I have been in school forever and I am very excited that I will be finished with didactic learning and moving on to practical education. This will be a great change and I will finally get to perform surgeries and obtain some hands on experience. We have our Veterinary Public Health exam next Friday that will consist of a spot exam, which is going to be 10 pictures of diseased meat/carcasses along with multiple questions for each picture. We have 6 minutes to answer each of the 10 pictures/questions and later on that day we have to head into town and take the written portion of the exam that will consist of 10 short answer questions that we will have 1 1/2 hours to complete. I have been studying for the past 4 weeks for this exam to try and get a head start so I wouldn't have to rush at the last minute and I feel quite confident with what I know. It is nice to have such a big head start on studying because I can relax a little and not panic about the material that I haven't studied yet. Wish me luck!