One of our professors is an adorable, round little bald guy. He's super nice and cares for all his students. What does he teach? Grass.
As a subset of Nutrition, we have a once weekly lecture on agronomy. That's basically learning about grass and pasture. You'd be surprised at how passionate some people can get about grass. The lectures are pretty good, and they're interesting except for the fact that they are about grass.
This guy cares so much for his students. He's willing to spend as much time as anyone needs to teach them about grass, saying that we pay enough to get as much one-on-one time as it takes. We have an assignment to do that involves a lot of work in spreadsheets, and he constructed a fancy template, examples, and even set it up so if we enter data points into the template they will automatically form a graph. Before giving us any problems, he pretends he's a student and does them himself to make sure they're reasonable. Even during lectures, he's always commenting on the body language, and if people look too bored he'll adjust the lecture accordingly. He'll also make sure to give us as much extra readings and resources as any A+ student could ever want. Before our physiology midterm, he cancelled his class, since it was on the same day.
How much friendlier could you get! Once, he responded an email of mine, and then sent a second email saying, "PS, keep smiling!"
He does go a bit overboard. I guess he wasn't very good at math when he was growing up because he goes entirely out of his way to make sure we understand any calculations we may need to do. This would be fair, except for the fact that they are some of the most basic equations you can get. It's not really necessary to explain how to plug in numbers, or describe the equation for a line. However, he's very concerned that we might find it patronizing, and will give a polite explanation of why he feels the need to go into detail about something.
One thing that's pretty funny is he likes to toot his own horn every so often. He'll make some comment like, "Back when I was an undergrad, I wasn't a straight A's honors student because I regurgitated formulas. I learned the concepts behind them."
One time, a slide of his read that a farmer had purchased a "fairy farm" instead of a "dairy farm." I didn't notice at first, but I did hear muffled laughter around the room. Poor guy was just as confused as I was, until finally he changed slides and someone pointed out the mistake. He was pretty embarrassed, but that's a great typo if you ask me.
There's something just really cute about everything he says. I think it's a combination of his concern that everyone understands everything and is interested in what he's teaching, and the fact that he's teaching about grass. He often waffles around with anecdotes, grinning about a study or a discussion about a colleague he wants to tell us about. The other day, he went off on a side story, prefacing it with, "As an aside with a smile..." Adorable!
Now, if he were teaching anatomy or physiology, we'd be all set.
Tuesday 26 April 2011
Thursday 21 April 2011
Fuzzy Scalpels
I like scalpels, but they gave my anatomy group quite a bit of trouble when we were first starting out.
Sorry if this sounds creepy, but I love cutting with scalpels. It's so smooth! They're really sharp, so they make very nice, efficient cuts, and there's something satisfying about it, like a job well done.
So where does the trouble come in? Here is a picture that I got off google:
You have your metal handle, and the blade snaps on the top (the oblong thing you see in the middle of the blade is part of the handle). You can also see how where the bottom of the blade matches up with the handle, there's a diagonal line.
For starters, we keep putting the blades on backwards. Every time! The pointy part of the diagonal is always facing the wrong way. That's pretty embarrassing by itself, especially since it's been almost a year now. What makes that worse is that we had a very difficult time getting the blade back off at first.
You see, they had these little boxes that served as both a sharps container and an "easy" way to snap the blade off. You're supposed to stick the scalpel into a slot, twist it a bit, and the blade magically pops off. In theory. The first box we tried was so full, we couldn't even get the blade to go into the slot. The next two boxes we tried... well, the blade didn't magically pop off. Every single one of our lab group of five tried to jam it in and twist it around and finagle the blade off, but no one could get it to work. Eventually, we settled with just using forceps to pry the blade off, and hope it doesn't go flying or snap into pieces. I haven't seen the boxes around in a while, so I guess the faculty also decided they sucked and got rid of them.
Just as an ending note, why did I name the site Fuzzy Scalpel? Well the real reason is that I tried putting vet-related words together until I found two that I liked. But! (Warning, this may be a disturbing image for some) The image that came to mind was how when we cut through the skin of our dissection dogs, which are short haired dogs, the fur sticks all over the scalpel. This wouldn't happen in surgery because you shave and sterilise the operation site beforehand.
Wednesday 20 April 2011
Professors: Amino Acids
This year, we have a double-semester course about animal nutrition. At first, there was this cheerful old guy teaching us, but then we started a new topic and, with it, got a new lecturer.
His lectures were endless, life-sucking stretches of white slides with black text. He would agonizingly read out every bullet point, talking very slowly in an American accented drawl. He spent half an hour on a single slide one time. Going to his class really didn't offer much return on the time investment, because in your own time you could easily go over at least three of his lectures in the space of an hour. His slow speech did make me laugh out loud once, when he switched to a new slide and it sounded like a complete statement when he said, "This is another slide."
Unbelievably, he was teaching faster than he expected. Despite giving us enough information for half a lecture (especially if you compare to our other classes, such as fast forward textbook lady), he was well ahead of schedule. We got two classes off because of this.
One day, he had to be out of town, so he had a guest lecturer fill in. I guess he didn't trust that guy to have done a good job, because the next class, he spent a good portion of time going over what the guest lecturer had discussed.
I mentioned that he had an American drawl. However, his accent was a little funny. He pronounced amino acids as "am-eye-no" acids. Wait, what? I have never heard anyone pronounce them like that. "a-mee-no" or "ay-meeno" sure, but "am-eye-no"? He said it so often, it became his defining feature.
His lectures were endless, life-sucking stretches of white slides with black text. He would agonizingly read out every bullet point, talking very slowly in an American accented drawl. He spent half an hour on a single slide one time. Going to his class really didn't offer much return on the time investment, because in your own time you could easily go over at least three of his lectures in the space of an hour. His slow speech did make me laugh out loud once, when he switched to a new slide and it sounded like a complete statement when he said, "This is another slide."
Unbelievably, he was teaching faster than he expected. Despite giving us enough information for half a lecture (especially if you compare to our other classes, such as fast forward textbook lady), he was well ahead of schedule. We got two classes off because of this.
One day, he had to be out of town, so he had a guest lecturer fill in. I guess he didn't trust that guy to have done a good job, because the next class, he spent a good portion of time going over what the guest lecturer had discussed.
I mentioned that he had an American drawl. However, his accent was a little funny. He pronounced amino acids as "am-eye-no" acids. Wait, what? I have never heard anyone pronounce them like that. "a-mee-no" or "ay-meeno" sure, but "am-eye-no"? He said it so often, it became his defining feature.
Monday 18 April 2011
Sheep Are Expendable
Our physiology labs are often about studying a system by looking at the effects of drugs or electrical stimulation (like nerves). Some of these labs are pretty cool, but it sounds like they used to be way cooler, and also more terrifying.
Maybe ten years ago, they would bring live sheep into the lab, and divide students up into pairs or groups. The students were given a lab guide, a sheep, an anaesthesia kit, and sent on their merry way to begin the lab. The amazing part is that this meant anaesthetising the sheep, doing surgery to find whatever was necessary, cannulating (sticking a tube into) whatever artery or vein they needed, and then doing the procedure. On a live sheep. These would have been students like me and my classmates. Right now, we have as much anaesthesia experience as you do.
The result of this was sheep dying during the lab due to some miscalculation, or worse, waking up and freaking out. The one group each year that could do it right thought it was great, but you can imagine how stressed out everyone else was. Picture yourself tentatively doing surgery on a sheep, pausing to try and decipher the next step in the lab book, and having your sheep suddenly wake up and start kicking around. It actually took the school a long time to figure out that this whole let's-give-everyone-a-sheep thing wasn't a good idea.
These days, if any lab involves a live animal, we just watch a video of some vet faculty doing it. The videos are pretty old, but I really don't mind not destroying some poor sheep of my own. Some of the labs even use computer simulations.
Not everything is computerised these days, though. Sometimes we get to work with live tissues, which usually come from a rabbit (and sometimes we get to use other vet students as the test subjects). One lab that was pretty cool was when the professor had a rabbit heart, hooked up to an apparatus to keep it alive and beating, and we watched how the beating changed in response to different drugs. It was right there, beating.
Maybe ten years ago, they would bring live sheep into the lab, and divide students up into pairs or groups. The students were given a lab guide, a sheep, an anaesthesia kit, and sent on their merry way to begin the lab. The amazing part is that this meant anaesthetising the sheep, doing surgery to find whatever was necessary, cannulating (sticking a tube into) whatever artery or vein they needed, and then doing the procedure. On a live sheep. These would have been students like me and my classmates. Right now, we have as much anaesthesia experience as you do.
The result of this was sheep dying during the lab due to some miscalculation, or worse, waking up and freaking out. The one group each year that could do it right thought it was great, but you can imagine how stressed out everyone else was. Picture yourself tentatively doing surgery on a sheep, pausing to try and decipher the next step in the lab book, and having your sheep suddenly wake up and start kicking around. It actually took the school a long time to figure out that this whole let's-give-everyone-a-sheep thing wasn't a good idea.
These days, if any lab involves a live animal, we just watch a video of some vet faculty doing it. The videos are pretty old, but I really don't mind not destroying some poor sheep of my own. Some of the labs even use computer simulations.
Not everything is computerised these days, though. Sometimes we get to work with live tissues, which usually come from a rabbit (and sometimes we get to use other vet students as the test subjects). One lab that was pretty cool was when the professor had a rabbit heart, hooked up to an apparatus to keep it alive and beating, and we watched how the beating changed in response to different drugs. It was right there, beating.
Sunday 17 April 2011
Professors: Audio Textbook on Fast Forward
One of our anatomy lecturers is a friendly Indian woman who may have missed the point about what a lecture is supposed to be.
Unfortunately, even if she were the most amazing lecturer ever, she's quite difficult to understand. During one of her lectures last year, it actually took me and my friend a good portion of the lecture to realise that the "eesofaygus" is the esophagus. In another lecture, I discovered that the "vasheena" is the vagina.
Even more unfortunately, she is not the most amazing lecturer ever. I know this is vet school and we learn large quantities of information in any given lecture, but most of the time professors put emphasis on key points. This lady tried to fit the entire textbook chapter on the eye into one 50 minute lecture. There was no reiteration of points, no emphasis, she was just spewing facts and details like a fountain. In order to cram everything in, there was never any halt in the flow of words. Did she breathe during that entire lecture? I'm not sure.
That lecture was pretty much the textbook on audio-book. On fast forward.
Unfortunately, even if she were the most amazing lecturer ever, she's quite difficult to understand. During one of her lectures last year, it actually took me and my friend a good portion of the lecture to realise that the "eesofaygus" is the esophagus. In another lecture, I discovered that the "vasheena" is the vagina.
Even more unfortunately, she is not the most amazing lecturer ever. I know this is vet school and we learn large quantities of information in any given lecture, but most of the time professors put emphasis on key points. This lady tried to fit the entire textbook chapter on the eye into one 50 minute lecture. There was no reiteration of points, no emphasis, she was just spewing facts and details like a fountain. In order to cram everything in, there was never any halt in the flow of words. Did she breathe during that entire lecture? I'm not sure.
That lecture was pretty much the textbook on audio-book. On fast forward.
Earthquake
As part of the safety routine they had to go through for the first anatomy lab, they explained what to do in the event of an earthquake.
Evidently, the vet tower, which is built around two staircases and is eight stories high, is designed so that we should stand in the stairways. They are reinforced and supposedly super earthquake-proof, while the "wings" of the building sticking out on either side will crumble around them. Alright.
Just picture an entire vet school huddling on the stairs.
Evidently we've had a few earthquakes, but I never seem to feel them. One friend claims stuff was falling off his shelves; I wouldn't have known if everyone else hadn't been all, "Did you feel the earthquake?!" Also, by way of being an international student, whenever there's an earthquake in a completely different part of the country, there's a good chance that people back home don't realise it's not anywhere near me. Often a bunch of my friends and family will email me asking if I'm ok.
Evidently, the vet tower, which is built around two staircases and is eight stories high, is designed so that we should stand in the stairways. They are reinforced and supposedly super earthquake-proof, while the "wings" of the building sticking out on either side will crumble around them. Alright.
Just picture an entire vet school huddling on the stairs.
Evidently we've had a few earthquakes, but I never seem to feel them. One friend claims stuff was falling off his shelves; I wouldn't have known if everyone else hadn't been all, "Did you feel the earthquake?!" Also, by way of being an international student, whenever there's an earthquake in a completely different part of the country, there's a good chance that people back home don't realise it's not anywhere near me. Often a bunch of my friends and family will email me asking if I'm ok.
Stethoscopes
Apparently, picking your stethoscope is not a light decision.
I just ordered mine the other day. It's "ocean blue" and cost $115. The most expensive one, a cardiology stethoscope, was somewhere near $250! There were actually way more colors than you would expect stethoscopes to come in. Some of my friends got purple and orange. There were also options such as peach, burgundy, plum, hunter green, and Caribbean blue.
You might not have realised that there's a lot of factors that go into a good stethoscope. There are so many, in fact, that we were given a guest lecture on how to pick one.
Obviously there's the ear pieces and how comfortable they are, but you should also consider length, thickness of the tube, material of the tube, weight of the bell, type of bell, and structure of the bell. My goodness. If you're going to be outside a lot, you want one that dampens noise (like wind) really well. Going into small animals? Maybe you want a pediatrics stethoscope, since the organs you're listening to are so small.
There are also fancy digital stethoscopes, which are not very good and are outrageously priced, but you can record something you hear and send it to all your vet friends.
I just ordered mine the other day. It's "ocean blue" and cost $115. The most expensive one, a cardiology stethoscope, was somewhere near $250! There were actually way more colors than you would expect stethoscopes to come in. Some of my friends got purple and orange. There were also options such as peach, burgundy, plum, hunter green, and Caribbean blue.
You might not have realised that there's a lot of factors that go into a good stethoscope. There are so many, in fact, that we were given a guest lecture on how to pick one.
Obviously there's the ear pieces and how comfortable they are, but you should also consider length, thickness of the tube, material of the tube, weight of the bell, type of bell, and structure of the bell. My goodness. If you're going to be outside a lot, you want one that dampens noise (like wind) really well. Going into small animals? Maybe you want a pediatrics stethoscope, since the organs you're listening to are so small.
There are also fancy digital stethoscopes, which are not very good and are outrageously priced, but you can record something you hear and send it to all your vet friends.
Saturday 16 April 2011
No Committing Suicide
I mentioned in my story about VLE that veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates, and the faculty are extremely concerned that we don't stress ourselves out too much, snap, and jump out of the vet tower. I thought they got this point across very well at VLE, but they must have been worried that we'd forget.
When I first saw that we had been allocated time slots for an "interpersonal skills workshop" at the beginning of my first year, I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I hoped this might be some advice on getting along with your colleagues or your vet techs, or dealing with clients (possibly angry or crazy clients). That could be pretty useful right?
That's definitely not what it was about. I have no clue why it was called an interpersonal skills workshop. Intrapersonal, perhaps.
First of all, the lecture theatre it was in is hilarious. I have had several exams in there as well, and I have to say it's a terrible design. It's a big, steep lecture hall, with orange-y rows of chairs that consist of two smooth cushions at a right angle. That is, they look comfy at first, but don't actually fit the shape of a normal back. There's a small space where your legs go, and the desk part is attached to the row in front of you. In order to get the desk out, you pull it up, then out. Somehow, this mechanism combined with the very tight arrangement of the seats turns it into a trap. There's no way to sidle around the desk, so the only way to escape is sliding it back into its groove, but it's definitely going to hit a knee or a foot along the way. If your legs are long enough, you might have a hard time fitting in the seat at all. The frosting on the cake is the fact that there is absolutely no getting out of your row if there is anyone else sitting between you and the end. If you're in the middle and manage to escape the clutches of your desk, everyone else has to squeeze out as well in order for you to pass.
So here we are, in this massive, bizarre lecture theatre, which makes no sense considering there were only a few of us in there at a time, unsuccessfully trying to sit down, with a creepy professor wandering around the front. And I'm not kidding about him being creepy. He's short, tends to have a stalker-like grin on his face, and talks in this excessively creepy whispery voice. When we finally begin the "workshop," it becomes evident that the next hour of my life will be completely wasted.
Once again, he made us get into those circles where you go around and are artificially encouraged to open up and say deep and honest answers to personal questions. That didn't work out any better than it did at VLE. Then, in the same groups, we had to fill out a worksheet about stress. What are signs of stress? What are ways you deal with stress? If that wasn't bad enough, we then had to go around and share our answers, watch him write them up on the board, and then go through a powerpoint lecture saying most of the same things.
Stressed out? Guess what, you should eat healthy, and get enough sleep. Yeah, I had to go to vet school to learn that.
The absolute worst part was it wasn't actually an hour. After an hour was up, the professor says we should take a five minute break. Wait, what?
Turns out it was two hours.
When I first saw that we had been allocated time slots for an "interpersonal skills workshop" at the beginning of my first year, I gave it the benefit of the doubt. I hoped this might be some advice on getting along with your colleagues or your vet techs, or dealing with clients (possibly angry or crazy clients). That could be pretty useful right?
That's definitely not what it was about. I have no clue why it was called an interpersonal skills workshop. Intrapersonal, perhaps.
First of all, the lecture theatre it was in is hilarious. I have had several exams in there as well, and I have to say it's a terrible design. It's a big, steep lecture hall, with orange-y rows of chairs that consist of two smooth cushions at a right angle. That is, they look comfy at first, but don't actually fit the shape of a normal back. There's a small space where your legs go, and the desk part is attached to the row in front of you. In order to get the desk out, you pull it up, then out. Somehow, this mechanism combined with the very tight arrangement of the seats turns it into a trap. There's no way to sidle around the desk, so the only way to escape is sliding it back into its groove, but it's definitely going to hit a knee or a foot along the way. If your legs are long enough, you might have a hard time fitting in the seat at all. The frosting on the cake is the fact that there is absolutely no getting out of your row if there is anyone else sitting between you and the end. If you're in the middle and manage to escape the clutches of your desk, everyone else has to squeeze out as well in order for you to pass.
So here we are, in this massive, bizarre lecture theatre, which makes no sense considering there were only a few of us in there at a time, unsuccessfully trying to sit down, with a creepy professor wandering around the front. And I'm not kidding about him being creepy. He's short, tends to have a stalker-like grin on his face, and talks in this excessively creepy whispery voice. When we finally begin the "workshop," it becomes evident that the next hour of my life will be completely wasted.
Once again, he made us get into those circles where you go around and are artificially encouraged to open up and say deep and honest answers to personal questions. That didn't work out any better than it did at VLE. Then, in the same groups, we had to fill out a worksheet about stress. What are signs of stress? What are ways you deal with stress? If that wasn't bad enough, we then had to go around and share our answers, watch him write them up on the board, and then go through a powerpoint lecture saying most of the same things.
Stressed out? Guess what, you should eat healthy, and get enough sleep. Yeah, I had to go to vet school to learn that.
The absolute worst part was it wasn't actually an hour. After an hour was up, the professor says we should take a five minute break. Wait, what?
Turns out it was two hours.
Tail Wagging Dogs
To be sure that we took proper care of our dissection dogs, they started us off with a speech about showing respect. The anatomy professors pointed out how we should behave like professionals (for instance, not walk into the lab and go "Eeeeeeeeeeew smells disgusting!"). They explained how we only have one dog to last five people for the whole year, so if we didn't take care of it, we would be losing our learning material permanently. They described how much time and effort went into preparing the cadavres.
Because this is a pretty important point, it was reiterated often. Not too far into the semester, we were given a lecture about why these dogs deserved our respect. They were dogs that had to be euthanised due to society's failings. For example, a dog that had been bred for fighting and was rescued: it couldn't be re-homed because of the danger it might attack someone. The anatomy faculty stressed how they had personally been the ones to euthanise them, to see them as happy, tail wagging dogs, alive, and then how they had personally spent months of their time preserving them and making them suitable for our dissections (for example, filling the blood vessels with latex so we can identify arteries or veins).
This is a very touching concept and you can see why the dogs do deserve respect. Imagine having to put down a normal, cheerful dog, just because of a latent possibility of danger. Imagine pouring effort into preserving it, making its death worthwhile by advancing the learning of students. Then imagine some 19 year old waltzing into the lab, going up to your hard work, and complaining, "Eew it's disgusting!" Or imagine a group that didn't bother to store it properly, letting it to dry out or rot.
All that is very serious. However, the "happy, tail-wagging dog" spiel was recited to us over, and over, and over, and over. The first time, I thought it was pretty moving. Eventually it was like "Oh god, not again." Now, we often joke with each other, saying "You're being very unprofessional!" or "Show the dog some respect, it used to be a happy, tail-wagging dog!"
(This is of course in response to something said in jest, we do actually treat our dissection dog very well).
Because this is a pretty important point, it was reiterated often. Not too far into the semester, we were given a lecture about why these dogs deserved our respect. They were dogs that had to be euthanised due to society's failings. For example, a dog that had been bred for fighting and was rescued: it couldn't be re-homed because of the danger it might attack someone. The anatomy faculty stressed how they had personally been the ones to euthanise them, to see them as happy, tail wagging dogs, alive, and then how they had personally spent months of their time preserving them and making them suitable for our dissections (for example, filling the blood vessels with latex so we can identify arteries or veins).
This is a very touching concept and you can see why the dogs do deserve respect. Imagine having to put down a normal, cheerful dog, just because of a latent possibility of danger. Imagine pouring effort into preserving it, making its death worthwhile by advancing the learning of students. Then imagine some 19 year old waltzing into the lab, going up to your hard work, and complaining, "Eew it's disgusting!" Or imagine a group that didn't bother to store it properly, letting it to dry out or rot.
All that is very serious. However, the "happy, tail-wagging dog" spiel was recited to us over, and over, and over, and over. The first time, I thought it was pretty moving. Eventually it was like "Oh god, not again." Now, we often joke with each other, saying "You're being very unprofessional!" or "Show the dog some respect, it used to be a happy, tail-wagging dog!"
(This is of course in response to something said in jest, we do actually treat our dissection dog very well).
Professors: Very Severe Suffering
One of my most memorable professors from last year was the one that taught the welfare component of Animal Behaviour, Handling, and Welfare (for some handling stories go here or here).
He was this little white-haired guy and the odds were against him from the start, with lectures at 8am. He seemed like a normal professor at first, but over time the offensive parts of his personally started emerging. It became clear that he was a pretty opinionated guy, but the funny part was that most of his audience disagreed with him.
I suppose the best way to explain it would be to start with one of the concepts he presented (in a very black and white, biased manner), which was the gold standard approach to welfare. There is the "incremental approach," which is the reasonable method of taking small steps, improving a little bit at a time, working up to an end goal (in this case, better animal welfare). In contrast, there's the "gold standard" approach, which is where the people setting the rules have an absolute standard and anything below it is unacceptable. The way he presented it, he also implied that these gold standards are usually completely unreasonable.
Going off of that concept, he was very much against animal rights advocates, claiming that they have a "gold standard" view of animal welfare, that no animals should ever be used for anyone's gain ever, and any food industry or research involving animals should be ended. Anyone who's for animal rights feels exactly like that, of course. Then he would argue that animal welfare advocates, like himself, were the only sensible ones, and subscribe to the incremental approach.
He took this a step farther by making a slightly derogatory statement about "liberal tree-hugging, museli-eating vegetarians." I think the oversight in that particular lecture was that in a class full of vet students, there's a pretty good percent of people that identify with that at least a little bit. I mean, are you really likely to be in vet school if you're like "screw animal rights!" and go around kicking trees and hating vegetarians?
Apart from this guy's confidence in being right, he was also amazingly patronizing on a daily basis. He had obviously rehearsed jokes that he would crack and then laugh at, and seemed to think no one else laughed because they didn't get it. An excellent example was:
Another great example was the last lecture he gave, which was about ethics. It was extremely boring because it was all just common sense stuff that some smug person had decided to arbitrarily assign specific names and definitions. Then when you talk about it using those terms you sound all high and mighty, I guess, because you know all about ethics (and others don't). That's exactly the impression he gave, anyway. He told us four or five times during the lecture that we should hold on to these notes and take another look at them in fifth year.
He actually said that we would understand them then. He clearly didn't think we understood them at the time; I mean, after all, we were only first years so what would we know about ethics?
The last interesting points about him have to do with his actual teaching. Again, an example is the best way I can describe it. Here is a scale you can use to discuss animal welfare:
He was this little white-haired guy and the odds were against him from the start, with lectures at 8am. He seemed like a normal professor at first, but over time the offensive parts of his personally started emerging. It became clear that he was a pretty opinionated guy, but the funny part was that most of his audience disagreed with him.
I suppose the best way to explain it would be to start with one of the concepts he presented (in a very black and white, biased manner), which was the gold standard approach to welfare. There is the "incremental approach," which is the reasonable method of taking small steps, improving a little bit at a time, working up to an end goal (in this case, better animal welfare). In contrast, there's the "gold standard" approach, which is where the people setting the rules have an absolute standard and anything below it is unacceptable. The way he presented it, he also implied that these gold standards are usually completely unreasonable.
Going off of that concept, he was very much against animal rights advocates, claiming that they have a "gold standard" view of animal welfare, that no animals should ever be used for anyone's gain ever, and any food industry or research involving animals should be ended. Anyone who's for animal rights feels exactly like that, of course. Then he would argue that animal welfare advocates, like himself, were the only sensible ones, and subscribe to the incremental approach.
He took this a step farther by making a slightly derogatory statement about "liberal tree-hugging, museli-eating vegetarians." I think the oversight in that particular lecture was that in a class full of vet students, there's a pretty good percent of people that identify with that at least a little bit. I mean, are you really likely to be in vet school if you're like "screw animal rights!" and go around kicking trees and hating vegetarians?
Apart from this guy's confidence in being right, he was also amazingly patronizing on a daily basis. He had obviously rehearsed jokes that he would crack and then laugh at, and seemed to think no one else laughed because they didn't get it. An excellent example was:
"The masochist said to the sadist, 'Beat me!' And the sadist said, 'No.' ... You should look those words up in a dictionary when you go home."It's not that joke wasn't funny, it's that we didn't know what those words meant. Definitely.
Another great example was the last lecture he gave, which was about ethics. It was extremely boring because it was all just common sense stuff that some smug person had decided to arbitrarily assign specific names and definitions. Then when you talk about it using those terms you sound all high and mighty, I guess, because you know all about ethics (and others don't). That's exactly the impression he gave, anyway. He told us four or five times during the lecture that we should hold on to these notes and take another look at them in fifth year.
He actually said that we would understand them then. He clearly didn't think we understood them at the time; I mean, after all, we were only first years so what would we know about ethics?
The last interesting points about him have to do with his actual teaching. Again, an example is the best way I can describe it. Here is a scale you can use to discuss animal welfare:
- No suffering
- Mild suffering
- Moderate suffering
- Severe suffering
- Very severe suffering
I don't think much else needs to be said.
Despite all these things I've told you about, and many interesting things we learned in class, guess what his two 20-point questions were on the final exam?
1. List 10 pros and 10 cons of keeping layer hens in cages.
2. List 8 pros and 8 cons of keeping sows in stalls.
What made this even more dumbfounding was that this is the sort of thing that the table in the study guide said:
Disadvantages of layer hens in cages:
- Birds are not able to fly
- Birds are not able to run
- Birds are not able to stretch their wings
- Birds are not able to walk continuously
- Birds are not able to forage
- Birds have a limited ability to fly
The exam questions were pretty much lose-lose.
Friday 15 April 2011
Professors: Respiratory Physiology Cough Cough
Last year in physiology, we studied the lungs with an old geezer of a professor. Now, sometimes old professors are adorable, but that wasn't the case.
For some reason, this fellow is a respiratory physiologist and a massive smoker. I don't know how he does it, and it totally gutted his credibility. If you didn't actually catch him smoking outside of class, you could easily tell by his constant coughing. For a lecturer, that's bad enough in its own right, but try and imagine his whole persona:
We have a tall, skinny, dinosaur lurching back and forth across the lecture hall as he tells us about the lungs. He warbles on about a graph from some study in the 70s, which is obviously a scanned photocopy of a photocopy, punctuated by a good cough every here and there. He'd often have a hand clutching his chest, and I don't know if I can even describe how slowly he speaks. You can tell that he's thinking while he's talking instead of beforehand, because there are huge pauses between every few words.
One time, he was saying something along the lines of, "Here... we can see... that... there are..." and the suspense just kept building. What is it about! I want to know!
Taking all that together, we kept waiting for him to keel over one day. After all, he looked like a stiff breeze might knock him over. His lectures weren't very good, but there was this morbid curiosity that kept us interested: "Is he going to snuff it today?" At the end of his very last lecture, I'm not sure if it was a relief or a disappointment that he'd struggled through the entire lecture series without incident.
Another classic downfall of his lectures is that, despite being decent at the computer, his resources and references are ancient. Unlike many dinosaur professors, he can successfully manage a powerpoint presentation (although he wasn't sure how to turn it into a slide show--that seems to be a common problem), but he's definitely living in the past. All of his graphs and images were from studies done decades ago. I'm pretty sure he got a lot of his diagrams from an old human physiology textbook that's not in print anymore, or at least is very obscure and old.
He had some weird device to demonstrate a property of the lungs, which I'm pretty sure was something like a condom tied with string in a clear plastic tube. He encouraged people to try it (you had to blow into it), but I doubt you'll be surprised to hear no one did.
Mentor Mentee
The school has this great plan that all the new first years should be paired up with a third year mentor, who theoretically gives them notes, old tests, and tips. As far as I'm aware, this isn't voluntary.
Now, it's my understanding that third year is pretty much insane stuff-things-into-your-brain year, so you can imagine how pleased these guys must have been to have the school suddenly going, "Guess what! Time to help a first year!" The class reps were already apologising in advance for the "duds," so it was clear that the yearly ratio of super enthusiastic mentors to can't-be-bothered mentors is not at all where the people in charge hoped it would be.
Their plan for matching us up was through a dress-up party. A happy hour date and time was set, and we were given a list that told us what characters to be. The idea was that, having no idea who your mentor was or even what sex they were, you would identify each other by your costumes. Some examples were Mr. and Mrs. Packman, Beauty and the Beast, sperm and egg, rainbow and leprechaun, sun and moon, Batman and Robin, Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, angel and demon, Bonnie and Clyde, and ninja and pirate. Some of the ones for which I can't remember the pairing include an octopus, Oompa Loompa, and a shoe. So it was a pretty ridiculous party.
Picture an ordinary bar. Now picture 100 first years in silly costumes. Now picture 100 third years in silly costumes. Now put them all together.
My mentor didn't show up for ages. By the time I spotted her, it was close to the point where you couldn't move from one part of the bar to the other very easily: you were surrounded by a shell of people on all sides, and there was possibly one tiny channel through which anyone could move. It was a lot like a capillary: after detaching yourself from the glob of people, you entered the one way traffic and elbowed your way slowly through.
So anyway, one of the third years recognized my costume and brought me over to my mentor, who was too busy talking to her friends to notice me at first. Finally she figured out what was going on, and was pretty much like, "Oh, hi."
The one thing your mentor is guaranteed to do is buy you a drink. So mine is like, "I guess I better buy you a drink now," buys one, then tells me she forgot her phone. So I put her number into my phone, and she's gone.
I never heard from my mentor again. I texted her that week like she said to, but never heard back. So much for that plan.
Now, it's my understanding that third year is pretty much insane stuff-things-into-your-brain year, so you can imagine how pleased these guys must have been to have the school suddenly going, "Guess what! Time to help a first year!" The class reps were already apologising in advance for the "duds," so it was clear that the yearly ratio of super enthusiastic mentors to can't-be-bothered mentors is not at all where the people in charge hoped it would be.
Their plan for matching us up was through a dress-up party. A happy hour date and time was set, and we were given a list that told us what characters to be. The idea was that, having no idea who your mentor was or even what sex they were, you would identify each other by your costumes. Some examples were Mr. and Mrs. Packman, Beauty and the Beast, sperm and egg, rainbow and leprechaun, sun and moon, Batman and Robin, Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, angel and demon, Bonnie and Clyde, and ninja and pirate. Some of the ones for which I can't remember the pairing include an octopus, Oompa Loompa, and a shoe. So it was a pretty ridiculous party.
Picture an ordinary bar. Now picture 100 first years in silly costumes. Now picture 100 third years in silly costumes. Now put them all together.
My mentor didn't show up for ages. By the time I spotted her, it was close to the point where you couldn't move from one part of the bar to the other very easily: you were surrounded by a shell of people on all sides, and there was possibly one tiny channel through which anyone could move. It was a lot like a capillary: after detaching yourself from the glob of people, you entered the one way traffic and elbowed your way slowly through.
So anyway, one of the third years recognized my costume and brought me over to my mentor, who was too busy talking to her friends to notice me at first. Finally she figured out what was going on, and was pretty much like, "Oh, hi."
The one thing your mentor is guaranteed to do is buy you a drink. So mine is like, "I guess I better buy you a drink now," buys one, then tells me she forgot her phone. So I put her number into my phone, and she's gone.
I never heard from my mentor again. I texted her that week like she said to, but never heard back. So much for that plan.
Animal Handling: The Smallies
As part of Animal Behaviour, Handling, and Welfare last year, you might guess that we needed to handle some animals. I described our adventures with the large animals in the last post, leaving dogs and cats.
Of the two, I had cats first. This was at a cat research centre that is depicted as a blank square on the campus map. Apparently, if they actually label it, animal rights people that don't know what they're doing will show up and try to set all the cats free.
The place is a bit of a mystery to enter. It was way out of the way, interspersed with other mysterious buildings, and the entrance was locked. Peering in through the door, I could only make out a rather dark hallway. When they let us in, we had to all squeeze by each other and put plastic booties on over our shoes, then trickle down to a room with a bunch of cages on the walls and some tables in between. One by one, the people that worked there brought in cats.
The next three hours were filled with picking up cats. We'd pick them up and pin them down in a variety of awkward positions. This was mostly practice for trying to access veins, and as these cats are pretty used to the weekly vet student thing, they weren't too bothered. That is, until we had to pill them.
Using cat food as "pills," we had to hold a kibble in one hand, and with the other hand sort of awkwardly secure the cat to your side, and at the same time hold its head back. You then deftly open the cats mouth with the pinky of the hand holding your kibble, and shove it as far down their throat as you can. Cats teeth are sharp, and they certainly have no intention of cooperating with you trying to open their mouth.
I walked out of that place with a small number of scratches and a large number of cat hairs on my lab coat. This is painfully obvious because lab coats are white.
The final handling lab I had was dogs. There were only three dogs, and they were large, furry, floppy, happy dogs. One or two of them had been teaching dogs for something like ten years. They were so happy and relaxed, it was a little bit difficult to learn anything, because the dog knew what you were up to and would help you out. When you're trying to practice restraining a dog, having them lie limply in the exact position you want will not vastly improve your skill.
When it came time to practicing pilling these guys, you can imagine how the dogs felt about kibbles. One of my partners wasn't very good at it, or maybe the dog was just being clever, but he got four or five kibbles out of her. I had a pretty good time in that lab, right up until they gave us treats at the end to reward the dogs and have them do tricks if we wanted. I had one of those big, thick biscuits, so I tried to break it in half. In doing so, I sliced my finger open. On a dog treat.
Animal Handling: The Biggies
One of our courses last semester was Animal Behaviour, Handling, and Welfare. You might have noticed the "handling" part in there; we were divided into groups and sent to obscure places around campus to manhandle live animals instead of dead ones. There were five labs total, each taking up an afternoon: sheep, horses, cattle, cats, and dogs.
The first one I had was sheep. It was at least half an hour's walk away, but by extreme luck, I ran into a friend with a car when I went to the vet tower for directions. We show up, clamber into our overalls and boots, and march in.
A bunch of sheep had been lined up in narrow pens for us. After a brief lecture and demonstration, this is what we did:
The first one I had was sheep. It was at least half an hour's walk away, but by extreme luck, I ran into a friend with a car when I went to the vet tower for directions. We show up, clamber into our overalls and boots, and march in.
A bunch of sheep had been lined up in narrow pens for us. After a brief lecture and demonstration, this is what we did:
- We learned to flip sheep over. You basically smoosh their heads sideways into their sides, then roll them over onto their back. Then you kind of heft them up so they're sitting on their butts like a person would. If this is the very first time you're handling a sheep, it's about as easy as it sounds. For some reason, though, sheep are completely docile once you've got them in that position, and will sit there stupidly as long as you care to support them with your legs.
- We learned to tie them up. While they're in the above position, you finagle a loop of string so it goes around their neck and hind legs. Sheep don't really like this. It's harder getting it off than getting it on.
- We learned some boring sheep stuff that doesn't make for a good story.
- We learned how to take blood from the jugular vein. By that I mean, we vaguely identified it, stuck it with a needle until we found blood, and collected it in a tube. Since they're sheep, the professor was all like, "Do it as many times as you need to get comfortable with it."
I know that's not very exciting, considering we're in vet school and all, but as I have limited experience with sheep I thought it was cool.
The second one I had was horses, and nothing particularly exciting happened. There were only two horses for the whole group so it took a long time, and the poor horse kept getting walked back and forth between two pens, and got various legs lifted up a gazillion times.
Then I had cattle. There were a bunch of teaching cows in cow holding devices that look vaguely like gymnastic bars with a guillotine at the end, and we paired off. These are teaching animals, so they are faced with flocks of vet students on a weekly basis, but a relatively chill cow is still not very impressed when you start having your way with it. This is what we did:
- We learned how to tie up the cows' heads. This involves pulling on the rope with all your might so you can get the cow to turn its head, which it really doesn't want to do, and then you tie it in place.
- We learned how to tie knots, only not really. The guy tied like five different knots for us, then told us to go practice them. Uh, ok.
- We learned how to use nose hook things to control the cow. This pissed our cow off.
- We learned how to stick a tube down their stomach to dislodge things that might be stuck along the way. This means sticking a wooden bar with a hole in the middle into their mouth, and shoving a long hose through the hole. Kind of like a magic trick, disappearing hose!
- We learned how to administer things orally (known as drenching), but the little devices were filled with molasses. Cows really like molasses. Our cow tried to eat our bottle.
- We learned how to brace their back teeth so they can't bite you. This one was quite an adventure, and took me like ten tries. First, you grab their giant, rough, muscular tongue, pull it out, and hold onto it with one hand. In your other hand you have a metal thing that's supposed to fit between their molars, so you have to put it in their mouth sideways, find their teeth, then set it up like a wall between top and bottom molars. For one thing, the cow made it very difficult to hold onto her tongue. She also was expert at getting the metal thing out before I had it properly in place (I kind of sucked at it, so it was easy for her). The end result was me completely covered in cow slobber.
Thursday 14 April 2011
Here is a dog. Have fun.
Our very first anatomy lab was not how I imagined it would be.
Beforehand, we had to pick our group of five that we would be stuck with for the entire year, but we didn't know each other very well so that developed very unfortunately for some people.
On the day of, we all showed up in our lab coats and clutching our lab manuals, hoping one person in our group had managed to get a dissection kit. Our anatomy lab is on the second floor, and there's two entrances as there are two stairways. At this point in time, I didn't know my way around the vet tower very well, and I went up the wrong stairway, so I was actually at the back entrance to the lab. I was getting worried, because out of a hundred people there was no one else waiting there, and only a few showed up behind me. I peeked into the room, but there definitely weren't students in there; I saw a big empty room and some serious-looking faculty talking to each other.
When it was finally time for lab, I crept in, and was relieved to see a massive flood of students coming from the other side of the room.
Now, you may not have thought about this, but to learn anatomy, vet students cut up dead dogs. Your doctors cut up dead people. This is a normal thing, the cadavres take months of preparation and hard work, and they are dogs that would have been euthanised one way or another. There's nothing inhumane about the dissection dogs. You just have to realise that the first thing you see on your first lab is a room of tables with dead dogs lying on their backs, their little paws sticking rigidly up in the air.
Apparently, a few years ago, someone went in after hours to do some review, and brought their non-vet friend with them. This person had never stopped to think about what would actually be in the anatomy lab, and freaked out when she saw the dead dogs. Her reaction? She went straight to the press. I think she thought that the school was covering up this big secret of slaughtering dogs and cutting them up, and they needed to be exposed. At any rate, nothing bad happened, because everything is regulated and has rules and things, but ever since then, no non-vet people are allowed in under any circumstances, and we can't take any pictures.
So here I am, faced with a sea of dead dogs, and we need to pick one that we'll be using for the next year. It's a big, wide room with drains along the floor, metal tables, stools, lots of sinks around the edges, and open windows covering three walls. It's very bright, there are TV monitors all over the room, and it smells like formaldehyde and disinfectant. I actually expected the smell to be much worse, but after enough labs it does start getting to you. Older students had told us to go for the Greyhounds because they have really nice muscles, but I wasn't fast enough to grab one. Since I came in through the back, there were a few skinny ones nearby, so I just picked one that looked sort of ok. I probably didn't make the best choice. For the record, having a fat dissection dog totally sucks. You have to get rid of the fat before you can see anything, and believe me the fat is everywhere.
The next step was to locate the rest of my lab group, who had been scratching their heads over some dogs on the other side of the room, get out the dissection kit, open the lab manuals, and figure out what to do.
This is where we ran into a problem. The faculty must not have been very organised because we didn't get much of a lecture on what to do or how to do it. You see, once we figured out how to get the blade on the scalpel, it was pretty much, "Go!" The lab manual was the only thing telling us what to do, but since we hadn't actually learned anatomy yet, the instructions were pretty much incomprehensible. Here are the first two sentences:
Looking back, the first few anatomy labs are pretty funny. Our labs now are very involved. This year we've done some insane stuff that is very memorable. Last year, we started out with very, very simple dissections, but at the time it was extremely important and complex to us. We would go really slowly and hesitantly, not sure whether we should cut something or not. The first labs compared to present labs are like cooking ramen noodles compared to Christmas dinner.
Beforehand, we had to pick our group of five that we would be stuck with for the entire year, but we didn't know each other very well so that developed very unfortunately for some people.
On the day of, we all showed up in our lab coats and clutching our lab manuals, hoping one person in our group had managed to get a dissection kit. Our anatomy lab is on the second floor, and there's two entrances as there are two stairways. At this point in time, I didn't know my way around the vet tower very well, and I went up the wrong stairway, so I was actually at the back entrance to the lab. I was getting worried, because out of a hundred people there was no one else waiting there, and only a few showed up behind me. I peeked into the room, but there definitely weren't students in there; I saw a big empty room and some serious-looking faculty talking to each other.
When it was finally time for lab, I crept in, and was relieved to see a massive flood of students coming from the other side of the room.
Now, you may not have thought about this, but to learn anatomy, vet students cut up dead dogs. Your doctors cut up dead people. This is a normal thing, the cadavres take months of preparation and hard work, and they are dogs that would have been euthanised one way or another. There's nothing inhumane about the dissection dogs. You just have to realise that the first thing you see on your first lab is a room of tables with dead dogs lying on their backs, their little paws sticking rigidly up in the air.
Apparently, a few years ago, someone went in after hours to do some review, and brought their non-vet friend with them. This person had never stopped to think about what would actually be in the anatomy lab, and freaked out when she saw the dead dogs. Her reaction? She went straight to the press. I think she thought that the school was covering up this big secret of slaughtering dogs and cutting them up, and they needed to be exposed. At any rate, nothing bad happened, because everything is regulated and has rules and things, but ever since then, no non-vet people are allowed in under any circumstances, and we can't take any pictures.
So here I am, faced with a sea of dead dogs, and we need to pick one that we'll be using for the next year. It's a big, wide room with drains along the floor, metal tables, stools, lots of sinks around the edges, and open windows covering three walls. It's very bright, there are TV monitors all over the room, and it smells like formaldehyde and disinfectant. I actually expected the smell to be much worse, but after enough labs it does start getting to you. Older students had told us to go for the Greyhounds because they have really nice muscles, but I wasn't fast enough to grab one. Since I came in through the back, there were a few skinny ones nearby, so I just picked one that looked sort of ok. I probably didn't make the best choice. For the record, having a fat dissection dog totally sucks. You have to get rid of the fat before you can see anything, and believe me the fat is everywhere.
The next step was to locate the rest of my lab group, who had been scratching their heads over some dogs on the other side of the room, get out the dissection kit, open the lab manuals, and figure out what to do.
This is where we ran into a problem. The faculty must not have been very organised because we didn't get much of a lecture on what to do or how to do it. You see, once we figured out how to get the blade on the scalpel, it was pretty much, "Go!" The lab manual was the only thing telling us what to do, but since we hadn't actually learned anatomy yet, the instructions were pretty much incomprehensible. Here are the first two sentences:
"Make a median ventral incision from the middle of the neck to the xiphoid cartilage. From a point of this incision opposite the brachium, extend a transverse incision to the elbow on one side."Good luck.
Looking back, the first few anatomy labs are pretty funny. Our labs now are very involved. This year we've done some insane stuff that is very memorable. Last year, we started out with very, very simple dissections, but at the time it was extremely important and complex to us. We would go really slowly and hesitantly, not sure whether we should cut something or not. The first labs compared to present labs are like cooking ramen noodles compared to Christmas dinner.
Initiation
I had thought that hazing was illegal in most places, but I guess I was wrong about that one.
The first week of my first semester, word was that the upper years would "initiate" us on some unknown day. We were advised to wear farm clothes to class until it had happened (if you don't know, farm clothes are those that you wear when you're around large animals, like, uh, on farms, that you don't mind getting dirty and gross). This annoyed me. I wasn't very pleased with the idea of being forced through some stupid hazing.
I should probably say right now that as far as I am aware, everyone involved had fun for the most part, and no one got hurt. This goes on every year and is very public, so I imagine if someone had a big enough problem with it, the school would have done something about it.
My theory was that they were going to get us in our first anatomy lab. After all, it's a giant room that can fit everyone and has drains, and we'd have to be at anatomy lab, and there's no easy escape. In retrospect, that obviously would not have happened, because there's sharp things and delicate things and chemical fumes and it's just not a great place to be running around. As it turned out not being in lab, the next day we were sure it was happening but didn't know when.
About half way through our last lecture of the day, someone got up to go to the bathroom. This is perfectly normal and I didn't put any thought to it until she came back a minute later looking very startled and announced to the class: "Don't try to go to the bathroom right now. There's a hundred people out there with masks that tried to stop me." Chatter erupted in the class, and the lecturer pretended he didn't know anything about this initiation business. I don't know if they had lost their advantage of surprise, or they really did plan on coming in half way through the lecture, but a few minutes later, a bunch of masked upper years in overalls stormed in.
They commanded that we take off our shoes, and quickly surrounded the aisles to prevent escape. They tag tied everyone by the wrists so you ended up in a long chain with the people you had been sitting next to. They may have linked the rows together, but if they did it didn't last long because people were passing around means to cut themselves free before too long. The upper years weren't super creative; they used markers and lipstick to draw on peoples faces, and they had cat food they were forcing a few people to eat. Once everyone was tied together, we were ushered out of the building (without our shoes remember), and outside we were met with a gauntlet of upper years, all armed with eggs and flour and water balloons and milk and oatmeal and all manner of unidentifiable stuff.
After sprinting through that, which involved a lot of ducking, we headed toward the main concourse. It turns out I had sat between two groups of friends, so in front of me there was a pair running side by side, and behind me there was a trio helping each other out, and in the middle was me, getting twisted around because I was tied between them and they didn't feel like making one big line.
When we got to the concourse, it turns out that word had gotten around, and water balloons had been given to anyone that wanted one. So there was a new gauntlet to face, this time from a bunch of random students, who probably wandered over and were like, "What's this about?" and realised how funny it would be to throw water balloons at a bunch of first year vets. Once we made it through that, they had us run across campus to the field outside the sports centre. On the way there, some of our braver classmates got them back pretty well. If anyone managed to catch an unbroken water balloon, it was thrown back (plenty of other things were thrown back too), and a few upper years got tackled and/or chased. By the time we got to the sports field, the upper years were as messy as we were.
There was a hedge lining the field, and we were being funneled into a little opening in it. You could hear screams from the other side, so the slowed traffic added to the suspense. Finally, it was my turn to slip through the hole, and on the other side there is a big hill with a plastic slide set up. I'm not sure what the slide was lubricated with but I heard people saying it was soap. At the bottom of the slide there was a huge pile of horse poop. Behind the huge pile of horse poop was a huge pile of vet students, who, just to make sure you had at least some contact with poop, were throwing it at people coming down the slide. I took one to the forehead.
If you've never seen horse poop before, don't worry, it's pretty innocuous. There are much worse things they could have chosen to throw at us.
After going down the slide, people were dispersing, so it looked like it was over, though one of the upper years had a megaphone and was shouting something incomprehensible. Turns out they had taken our shoes, locked them away, and put the key in the pond outside the vet tower. This did at least result in several upper years being tackled into the pond. It's not as bad as it could have been, because the key was in a water balloon, and it was just a matter of wading out and checking every balloon until we found it. It was in the last balloon.
The first week of my first semester, word was that the upper years would "initiate" us on some unknown day. We were advised to wear farm clothes to class until it had happened (if you don't know, farm clothes are those that you wear when you're around large animals, like, uh, on farms, that you don't mind getting dirty and gross). This annoyed me. I wasn't very pleased with the idea of being forced through some stupid hazing.
I should probably say right now that as far as I am aware, everyone involved had fun for the most part, and no one got hurt. This goes on every year and is very public, so I imagine if someone had a big enough problem with it, the school would have done something about it.
My theory was that they were going to get us in our first anatomy lab. After all, it's a giant room that can fit everyone and has drains, and we'd have to be at anatomy lab, and there's no easy escape. In retrospect, that obviously would not have happened, because there's sharp things and delicate things and chemical fumes and it's just not a great place to be running around. As it turned out not being in lab, the next day we were sure it was happening but didn't know when.
About half way through our last lecture of the day, someone got up to go to the bathroom. This is perfectly normal and I didn't put any thought to it until she came back a minute later looking very startled and announced to the class: "Don't try to go to the bathroom right now. There's a hundred people out there with masks that tried to stop me." Chatter erupted in the class, and the lecturer pretended he didn't know anything about this initiation business. I don't know if they had lost their advantage of surprise, or they really did plan on coming in half way through the lecture, but a few minutes later, a bunch of masked upper years in overalls stormed in.
They commanded that we take off our shoes, and quickly surrounded the aisles to prevent escape. They tag tied everyone by the wrists so you ended up in a long chain with the people you had been sitting next to. They may have linked the rows together, but if they did it didn't last long because people were passing around means to cut themselves free before too long. The upper years weren't super creative; they used markers and lipstick to draw on peoples faces, and they had cat food they were forcing a few people to eat. Once everyone was tied together, we were ushered out of the building (without our shoes remember), and outside we were met with a gauntlet of upper years, all armed with eggs and flour and water balloons and milk and oatmeal and all manner of unidentifiable stuff.
After sprinting through that, which involved a lot of ducking, we headed toward the main concourse. It turns out I had sat between two groups of friends, so in front of me there was a pair running side by side, and behind me there was a trio helping each other out, and in the middle was me, getting twisted around because I was tied between them and they didn't feel like making one big line.
When we got to the concourse, it turns out that word had gotten around, and water balloons had been given to anyone that wanted one. So there was a new gauntlet to face, this time from a bunch of random students, who probably wandered over and were like, "What's this about?" and realised how funny it would be to throw water balloons at a bunch of first year vets. Once we made it through that, they had us run across campus to the field outside the sports centre. On the way there, some of our braver classmates got them back pretty well. If anyone managed to catch an unbroken water balloon, it was thrown back (plenty of other things were thrown back too), and a few upper years got tackled and/or chased. By the time we got to the sports field, the upper years were as messy as we were.
There was a hedge lining the field, and we were being funneled into a little opening in it. You could hear screams from the other side, so the slowed traffic added to the suspense. Finally, it was my turn to slip through the hole, and on the other side there is a big hill with a plastic slide set up. I'm not sure what the slide was lubricated with but I heard people saying it was soap. At the bottom of the slide there was a huge pile of horse poop. Behind the huge pile of horse poop was a huge pile of vet students, who, just to make sure you had at least some contact with poop, were throwing it at people coming down the slide. I took one to the forehead.
If you've never seen horse poop before, don't worry, it's pretty innocuous. There are much worse things they could have chosen to throw at us.
After going down the slide, people were dispersing, so it looked like it was over, though one of the upper years had a megaphone and was shouting something incomprehensible. Turns out they had taken our shoes, locked them away, and put the key in the pond outside the vet tower. This did at least result in several upper years being tackled into the pond. It's not as bad as it could have been, because the key was in a water balloon, and it was just a matter of wading out and checking every balloon until we found it. It was in the last balloon.
Veterinary Leadership Experience
One of the first things I was confronted with in vet school was this thing they call VLE. With a name like "Veterinary Leadership Experience," it's chances of turning out not awkward are dubious at best. Considering there were a million other things we needed to do that week, it wasn't very welcome, and frankly, just sounded weird.
They drove us out about an hour to this place that's normally some sort of Christian camp, with little rooms that have four bunk beds and a bathroom and shower. I had to borrow a sleeping bag from one of the faculty, because when you're an international student packing to go off for school, you don't think "Oh! I better remember to bring my sleeping bag in case I need to sleep in a cabin for three days at the start of vet school." It was also winter. Admittedly, winter here is a bit of a joke, but I still like to be warm, and the necessity of packing blankets and sweaters ended up with me lugging a massive suitcase around and feeling like a total dweeb.
The first evening, they showed us a video "about" VLE, so we would know what to expect, because apparently some people had got the idea from a vet school in the states that has been having lots of success with it. They have to go for an entire week though, and not just three days. The point was to get to know our classmates in a more intimate and non-stressful environment: if you remember, a lot of them just finished pre-selection, during which they all hated each other for being competition. So this was aimed at fostering cooperation, teamwork, and maybe professionalism, and also just getting to know everyone so you're a more coherent group. VLE probably did do a bit of that, but I don't think it worked out as well as they intended. In my experience, who we talked to at VLE had very little influence on who we ended up getting close to, and now that we know who everyone is, it's hard to think back to VLE and connect it to the same people. Also, I did a lot of talking to the other girls in my cabin when we were in bed or getting ready for bed, so I didn't have my glasses on and I have no idea who I had which conversations with.
So back to that video. It showed lots of people doing teamwork exercises and having deeply personal moments with each other, and there were short interviews with a bunch of crying people that were like "I have just had the best time ever here, it's been life-changing for me. I was hesitant at first but I'm so glad I got into it. I can't believe it's over, I'm so sad sob sob sob!" This makes me slightly worried. Am I going to be like these people by the end of our three days? Could this mysterious "VLE" thing have such a profound life-changing effect on me, and I will go home and next week feel like a new person?
Maybe unfortunately, that's not how it turned out.
Our time at VLE was divided, mostly, into two things. There were all sorts of vets, some of them faculty from the school and some of them practicing vets that came along, and they gave us a bunch of presentations. In between, we were divided up into groups of maybe ten or fifteen people and were sent off to do teamwork building games. As far as the presentations go, apparently veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates, so they were very, very concerned about getting that across to us. They spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about stress management and I don't even remember what else. The main point I took home from VLE was "please don't commit suicide."
The group games were alright. Some of them were actually fun, but a lot of them were lame. There was one where we got in a circle and were supposed to open up to each other, which was about as deep and touching as you'd expect it to be. There was one where everyone had to have one finger supporting a long stick and, as a team, lower it to the ground. This didn't work very well because, apart from the controlling people and the not paying attention people, there wasn't enough room for everyone around the stick. They had the entire class play a game where you ran around stealing people's fabric "tails", and I think it was supposed to teach us something about professionalism but I'm not really sure. Figure that one out.
They also had a karaoke night. Unfortunately, it wasn't optional, because every group had to do a piece. I don't remember what we did, but I didn't know the words. Everyone was exceedingly awkward, and all the shy people hid in the back behind the tall people and away from the mics.
The best and most memorable part of VLE was one night when they took us out to a glow worm grotto. It started out badly, because they needed to take several trips to get everyone there, so there was a lot of standing around in the pitch blackness wondering if we had been abandoned. Then we went tromping down this excessively muddy, narrow path into the forest, filled with spiders and slippery banks around a creek that you had to clamber up, and I was starting to wonder if it was at all worth it. But then, we finally got to the grotto, and you could see thousands of little glow-in-the-dark spots all over the walls. It went on for a ways, coming up to a dead end with a water fall and tons of the little glowing guys. Then, after your brief moment awe, you had to squeeze around everyone else and tromp back.
They drove us out about an hour to this place that's normally some sort of Christian camp, with little rooms that have four bunk beds and a bathroom and shower. I had to borrow a sleeping bag from one of the faculty, because when you're an international student packing to go off for school, you don't think "Oh! I better remember to bring my sleeping bag in case I need to sleep in a cabin for three days at the start of vet school." It was also winter. Admittedly, winter here is a bit of a joke, but I still like to be warm, and the necessity of packing blankets and sweaters ended up with me lugging a massive suitcase around and feeling like a total dweeb.
The first evening, they showed us a video "about" VLE, so we would know what to expect, because apparently some people had got the idea from a vet school in the states that has been having lots of success with it. They have to go for an entire week though, and not just three days. The point was to get to know our classmates in a more intimate and non-stressful environment: if you remember, a lot of them just finished pre-selection, during which they all hated each other for being competition. So this was aimed at fostering cooperation, teamwork, and maybe professionalism, and also just getting to know everyone so you're a more coherent group. VLE probably did do a bit of that, but I don't think it worked out as well as they intended. In my experience, who we talked to at VLE had very little influence on who we ended up getting close to, and now that we know who everyone is, it's hard to think back to VLE and connect it to the same people. Also, I did a lot of talking to the other girls in my cabin when we were in bed or getting ready for bed, so I didn't have my glasses on and I have no idea who I had which conversations with.
So back to that video. It showed lots of people doing teamwork exercises and having deeply personal moments with each other, and there were short interviews with a bunch of crying people that were like "I have just had the best time ever here, it's been life-changing for me. I was hesitant at first but I'm so glad I got into it. I can't believe it's over, I'm so sad sob sob sob!" This makes me slightly worried. Am I going to be like these people by the end of our three days? Could this mysterious "VLE" thing have such a profound life-changing effect on me, and I will go home and next week feel like a new person?
Maybe unfortunately, that's not how it turned out.
Our time at VLE was divided, mostly, into two things. There were all sorts of vets, some of them faculty from the school and some of them practicing vets that came along, and they gave us a bunch of presentations. In between, we were divided up into groups of maybe ten or fifteen people and were sent off to do teamwork building games. As far as the presentations go, apparently veterinarians have one of the highest suicide rates, so they were very, very concerned about getting that across to us. They spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about stress management and I don't even remember what else. The main point I took home from VLE was "please don't commit suicide."
The group games were alright. Some of them were actually fun, but a lot of them were lame. There was one where we got in a circle and were supposed to open up to each other, which was about as deep and touching as you'd expect it to be. There was one where everyone had to have one finger supporting a long stick and, as a team, lower it to the ground. This didn't work very well because, apart from the controlling people and the not paying attention people, there wasn't enough room for everyone around the stick. They had the entire class play a game where you ran around stealing people's fabric "tails", and I think it was supposed to teach us something about professionalism but I'm not really sure. Figure that one out.
They also had a karaoke night. Unfortunately, it wasn't optional, because every group had to do a piece. I don't remember what we did, but I didn't know the words. Everyone was exceedingly awkward, and all the shy people hid in the back behind the tall people and away from the mics.
The best and most memorable part of VLE was one night when they took us out to a glow worm grotto. It started out badly, because they needed to take several trips to get everyone there, so there was a lot of standing around in the pitch blackness wondering if we had been abandoned. Then we went tromping down this excessively muddy, narrow path into the forest, filled with spiders and slippery banks around a creek that you had to clamber up, and I was starting to wonder if it was at all worth it. But then, we finally got to the grotto, and you could see thousands of little glow-in-the-dark spots all over the walls. It went on for a ways, coming up to a dead end with a water fall and tons of the little glowing guys. Then, after your brief moment awe, you had to squeeze around everyone else and tromp back.
Wednesday 13 April 2011
Hello World
It occurred to me that I actually have a lot of stories from my time in vet school, and as I have another three and a half years to go, they're only going to pile up. In the interest of not forgetting them, I decided to start chronicling them. Talking to non-vet friends has led me to realise that normal people do not often consider the kinds of things one actually does in vet school.
First, there are some important things you need to know. The program here is 4.5 years long, so that puts me having completed one semester ("first year") and so now I'm in second year, and there are a bit over 100 people in my class. Another important fact is that here, it's an undergraduate degree. In case it comes up in a later story, remember that most of my classmates are freshly out of high school and this is their first degree. These two facts sort of come together in that domestic students have to go through a "pre-selection" semester (the extra 0.5 that would make it 5 years total), where their grades determine whether or not they make it into the vet program. And they totally don't find out until like a week before vet school starts. If you don't get in, which is likely since it's something like 300 people for 75 seats, you suddenly have an empty half a year staring you in the face.
Fortunately, that stuff doesn't apply to me. I'm an international student and I got my bachelors in biochemistry and molecular biology. I didn't have to do the stupid pre-selection thing, but I guess I got my fair share of stress involved with applying anyway. For instance, the GREs are a total scam. They are the most worthless test ever, checking to see if you memorized completely archaic facts on ancient computers with a horrible interface and in a creepy quiet, cold room, where all you can hear is other people typing. Then the questions are completely absurd and abstract, and you start panicking, because you know the grading system makes no sense and the first questions are weighted way more for some reason.
I don't know why they cost so much to take. I don't remember how much it was, but it was way more than I can possibly justify a test needing to cost. Then, every grad school wants your GRE scores, even if they don't really care what you got. So I think it's a plot, and someone out there is sitting there very smugly and making lots of money off of other people's pain.
Now, like I said, I'm not at the beginning. I'll share stories from last year as I think of them, but they probably won't be in order.
First, there are some important things you need to know. The program here is 4.5 years long, so that puts me having completed one semester ("first year") and so now I'm in second year, and there are a bit over 100 people in my class. Another important fact is that here, it's an undergraduate degree. In case it comes up in a later story, remember that most of my classmates are freshly out of high school and this is their first degree. These two facts sort of come together in that domestic students have to go through a "pre-selection" semester (the extra 0.5 that would make it 5 years total), where their grades determine whether or not they make it into the vet program. And they totally don't find out until like a week before vet school starts. If you don't get in, which is likely since it's something like 300 people for 75 seats, you suddenly have an empty half a year staring you in the face.
Fortunately, that stuff doesn't apply to me. I'm an international student and I got my bachelors in biochemistry and molecular biology. I didn't have to do the stupid pre-selection thing, but I guess I got my fair share of stress involved with applying anyway. For instance, the GREs are a total scam. They are the most worthless test ever, checking to see if you memorized completely archaic facts on ancient computers with a horrible interface and in a creepy quiet, cold room, where all you can hear is other people typing. Then the questions are completely absurd and abstract, and you start panicking, because you know the grading system makes no sense and the first questions are weighted way more for some reason.
I don't know why they cost so much to take. I don't remember how much it was, but it was way more than I can possibly justify a test needing to cost. Then, every grad school wants your GRE scores, even if they don't really care what you got. So I think it's a plot, and someone out there is sitting there very smugly and making lots of money off of other people's pain.
Now, like I said, I'm not at the beginning. I'll share stories from last year as I think of them, but they probably won't be in order.
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