Well this week I got back two not so great exams- an 83% on a physics exam and an 83% on an organic exam. The class average was much lower both times, hovering around a 75 for the physics and a 64 for organic. I'm not so happy with either one, but there is nothing I can do about it, and I'm just hoping that my other grades will balance them out. On Tuesday I was invited to go to a private dinner with a visiting author by my poetry professor. I really didn't know what to expect, but it was a fantastic multi-course meal at a prestigious restaurant in town, and there were multiple faculty members, mainly involved in my professor's main job- a review magazine. I was one of two students there, and there were only 15 people invited. I had a wonderful time chatting with everyone, and was invited again this coming week for another meal with a visiting author at a different restaurant. After the dinner, I went to a reading by the poet, and had my book signed. He also came to class the next day and talked with us, so that as well was very neat.
My lab partner "forgot" to tell me that she was going out of town for the end of the week, which meant that we couldn't do our lab project. This coming week we will then have to do two lab projects at once, on top of having another cell exam on Friday to study for. I'm a little nervous about doing all of it, but I'm sure that it will work out.
Yesterday was a pretty big day for me; it was my first full 8 hour day at the farm! I fed the animals in the morning, went to the feed store, refilled the feed barrels in all the barns, and then got called to give a hand with a prolapsed uterus. The owner gave me some gloves and helped catch and hold the ewe, and I washed her up, stuffed her uterus back inside and put a harness on her to keep it in. They are planning on getting rid of her soon... if you know what I mean... so they didn't want to have the vet out to staple her uterus in place (the normal procedure for a permanent fix). This is the second time she has done this, and on a meat farm this is an unfortunate event they can't afford to worry about. She did get an antibiotic shot to prevent infection, and she will be kept until her babes are old enough and the antibiotics are past the required time. I finished up with the evening feeding, checked on her again, and then heading to my grandmothers for a shower before shadowing.
Last night I shadowed at the ER, and had a really interesting time. The vet that I shadowed with ended up being pretty involved at VMRCVM. He is a very active alumni and part of their mentoring program. He has done small animal practice, emergency practice, and currently does lab animal medicine at Virginia Tech. And he is one of the 4 interviewers for vet school applicants. Talk about intimidating! He kept asking me questions about things he was doing and why he was doing them, and I'm pretty sure I failed about half of the questions. He was a really nice guy though, and had fantastic client interaction skills, probably the best I have ever seen. I was also in surgery with him for three hours, doing both an exploratory and a cryptorchid. The exploratory was negative, so he took samples of the intestines for biopsy. The cryptorchid surgery also did not go as planned- the second testi was in a bizarre place, and was only a centimeter long! Talk about difficult to find. He never gave up though. I did notice that his hands shook during the entire surgery, something that I found fascinating, though his cuts were as clean and straight as can be. He told me all about different structures and arteries as we went, and I really enjoyed the surgery. I'm certainly hoping that I ended up leaving a good impression with him! If I get that far, it would be helpful to have a familiar face on the other end of the table, and if I get even further, it would be really neat to have him as a mentor.
Cheers,
Melissa
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