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.