Hope the new year has started off well for all you faithful readers. Mine's been... busy to say the least (so my apologies for not telling you all that I passed 6th semester with flying colors). And, besides, I need a vacation to recover from the last week of vacation. I worked as an orientation leader for the incoming class, so I had to help the new class get settled in down here. It was a LOT of running around. Mornings started at 6:30am and I didn't get to bed most days until 11:30pm or 12:00am! Visited the airport at least 8 or 9 times over the course of the first 4 days due to the various flights my group came in over. They had grouped the on-campus students by the days they arrived and the off-campus students by the area, so we off-campus OLs had a lot more running around than the rest. We took them to dinners, on tours of the island, on shopping trips, to their lectures... it was never just a quiet day for any of us. I'm sure they're just as tired as I am!
Classes started Monday and it's already somewhat intimidating. There's a lot of "you do this, and you fail," or "you forget this, and you fail," sort of talk. It's scary, even though it's very rare to hear of anyone failing a class in seventh semester. We also got to put in our preferences for our rotations for this year, and my top 5 are dentistry, surgery, acupuncture, diagnostic imaging (x-rays and ultrasound), and advanced clinics (so more patients and cases). We'll get those assignments for sure on Friday this week.
We also had our meeting regarding clinical placements today and will get to submit our 3 choices later this week. We'll have an answer by next Friday. Having repeated two terms, I'm limited to four choices--Louisiana State University, University of Illinois, Purdue University, and Oklahoma State University. I'm hoping for one of the first three I l listed--I'm used to hurricanes and snow, and don't really want to have to get used to tornadoes as well. :P Besides, Illinois has a great exotics and wildlife program that I would be interested in. But, we'll see where the next chapter of my life takes me in a little over a week!
Happy holidays, everyone and see you over the course of 7th semester!
