Semester One Classes

Hello Friends!

Apparently I ‘m not required to have an adventure to write a new post since no one else I know has any idea what it’s like to be in vet school down in the Caribbean. I’m sure by now you’ve got a pretty good idea of what there is to do besides study. Studying itself is uneventful which is why I tend not to elaborate.
Ross is a highly profitable private school, which was originally owned by the Ross family. Sometime in the past 20 years, DeVry bought the vet (St Kitts) and med (Dominica) schools as well as the Ross name. Blah, blah lots of political and administrative hand waving… The Ross family still owns a medical school here on the island, but it’s not called ross anymore. Anyway, lots of money so the campus is well equipped. At first glance, this does not appear to be the case. There is a fair amount if construction as a brand new classroom building/gym is finished (open Jan 2010). The campus is mostly outdoors (classrooms separated by open walkways) with low story buildings all sporting shutters for hurricane prep. Most of my time as a first semester is spent in the following places: Anatomy lab, Multipurpose lab, Upper Auditorium. In later semesters I will have SOAPs in the barn and surgery in the pavilions and clinics. There are flat plasma screens in all the classrooms for powerpoint lectures, MDL has got microscopes and screens, and Anat lab has tables etc. Everything is in excellent condition; a far cry from UK.

Microanatomy and Embryology
For all intensive purposes, this course is histology. Dr. Zibrin is an old man from the Czech Republic and I understand him exceptionally well despite his butchering of English grammar. He is adorable, and puts random quotes and photos in his powerpoints that don’t really have any direct relation to the material. Oddly enough, they actually help me remember because they are so random. For instance, when he talks about reticular fibers being a scaffold, we get three slides of Russian architecture to explain scaffolding. Comical and he makes me smile. Most people skip this class because it’s boring. But, Dr. Zibrin is sweet. He gets so proud when we do well on his exams. Plus I’m such a visual learner that it helps me to go over slides. And over slides, and over slides more. Zibrin cannot remember my name but he knows who I am and when he sees me walking on campus and says Hello Molly (or Laura) who both have long brown hair. I perform well in this course because it’s visual (slide recog on exams) and because I have a vivid repro memory after just having taking that course last spring. We get 3 days of lecture and 2 days of lab each week.

Physiology I
Physio, not my favorite class. I did really well last year with Dr Schillo in Animal Phys. But the professor makes a huge difference. Dr S used the whiteboard and went through the book figures and concepts in a logical, methodical fashion. Dr Heyliger at Ross is super caring but sometimes frustrating. He gives us hundreds of pages of handwritten, chaotic notes that he blows through in a whirl. He intends to make his exam questions straightforward, but his poor grammar, tendency to copy and paste from a test bank, and the language barrier result in a mess. Throw on top of that that his accent makes it difficult to understand in lectures and I am thoroughly frustrated. But he's a nice guy and he means well, so what can you do.

Anatomy I
This is a comparative course; we start on the dog and then go over equine prosections. 6 people total per dog, split into 3 person subgroups. Typical day in anatomy goes like this: Show up at 8am (you know how much of a morning person I am) dissect the dog (or horse) for 1.5 hours in a group of 3, then give an end-of-dissection review to the other 3 members of the group. Next day, you get the EOD review from your groupies. In the 1.5 hour block that you aren’t in lab, you rotate among these places: Clinical Skills, Large Animal Palpation, Small Animal Palpation, LA Radiology, SA radiology. By the time you approach the exam, you have hit every section and dissected about 5-6 times. You read the dissection guide and anatomy textbooks, palpate the structures on the live animal, and identify them on radiographs. Lab is open until 10pm so we can go in to review almost any time we want. There are 2 freezers: canine cadavers in one and big tubs of floating equine heads and limbs in the other. I should be excelling in this course because I know the material cold. I am tutoring a group of people who struggle with the horse. But this professors take off points from exams (which are free response) with a vengeance. I will get through it, but sometimes they make me hate anatomy class, even though I love anatomy!

Nutrition aka Biochem
Animal nutrition was a sad joke at UK, and Biochem was a bitch. Combine for Nutrition: Vet School Edition. The most random crap you will never need to know (like goat husbandry) as well as biochemistry of absorption from mouth to rectum. You never knew digestion was so complicated. To make things more fun and exciting, we have rotating professors in this class. One of them laughed at me and told me I was disorganized and that I talk too much. Um, hello I am quiet and shy and the most OCD organized person I know. Somewhat unnerving.

The library!
I spent lots of time here. Clearly. I checked out the entire (all 6 books) equine hoof section from the library. Don't even laugh. My friends think I'm way too excited about podiatry, but I can't help it. They have Dr. Pollitt’s Color Atlas of the Horse’s Foot, but none of Dr. Redden’s materials. I’m thrilled about Pollitt’s book; I’ve been looking for it. Perhaps its out of print, but I looked it up online and it was $425!? One day I’ll probably end up with a copy, but for now I’m excited to have found it in the lib. They also have reef fish identification books, but those are on reserve :(

bye for now

-lkc