So, I passed 5th semester with flying colors and managed to pull my GPA up overall yet a little bit more--which now leaves me with 4 choices when it comes to choosing a clinical year:
- Oklahoma State University
- Louisiana State University
- Purdue University
- University of Illinois
Out of these, OSU is at the lowest of my list at the moment, but my GPA is high enough that I'm not excluded from any of these. :) More will come of this as time passes, I'm sure.
I went back to Boston for the break between semesters this time and spent some time traveling out to Ohio to visit some old friends, going to King Richard's Faire, going shopping at a REAL grocery store (Stop and Shop almost felt like a Target or Walmart to me!), and just getting my fill of the 'real life' back in America.
Two weeks passed far too quickly for everything that I had wanted to get done... but semester 6 started with a... rather eventful start. Labs. Oh, boy, do they bog you down with labs. In the three weeks (and a few days), I've already had my ROSSie practice (a fake spay that we do on a sweatshirt model) twice, a lab to practice drain placements for surgical wounds, a bandaging lab, and asepsis practice. And that's in addition to the 3-4 lectures per day.
As for classes, the majority of them aren't too bad--Small Animal Medicine II, Large Animal Medicine I, Practice Management & Jurisprudence, and Small Animal Surgery. With the exception of Large Animal Medicine I, the classes are interesting and I finally feel as though the last 2 1/2 years are making sense and fitting into place. Horses... well, they break ALL the rules... quite literally.
This semester, they introduce a new method of testing--the dreaded block exams. Honestly, I didn't think it was too bad. You're given an hour and a half to take 3 exams of about 20 questions each. Yes, I ran close to time, but I didn't think it was any more difficult to study for them or anything like that. At least it's 3 classes worth of tests... and not 4 anymore. We only have 3 final exams this term too, so that's a plus!
Well, I think it's time to stop procrastinating for the evening. See you next time.
