Winter breaking is coming to an end. I leave Saturday morning, stop over in Portland for the night and get to school (hopefully at a decent hour, and with as little driving in the dark as possible) on Sunday evening. Classes start back up again on Monday.

We're doing more of a block schedule this semester, since this is the first time the majority of our class will be in different courses (electives and such) and I'm hoping it's more manageable than last semester (since surgery is over and done with). Looking at our schedule is stressful on its own, though. I'll be taking: food animal anesthesia and surgery, equine preventative medicine, topics in advanced equine medicine, health of aquatic food animals and ecosystem, topics in small ruminants, topics in poultry and swine, bovine lameness and welfare, bovine herd management and nutrition, production&infectious diseases of food animals, exotic pet medicine II and comparative animal medicine. THEN I have my normal course load, including renal/genitourinary/immunology, clinical pharmacology/toxicology, GI/hepatic/dental diseases of small animals, dermatology/endocrinology, diagnostic radiology and medical exercises. Broken up into blocks it shouldn't be quite as bad as it looks, but we'll just have to see how it pans out.

As if that all weren't enough to deal with, we'll be sorting out our rotation schedule this semester. I've done some groundwork/planning that should be helpful, but I'll probably have to do more up at school as things shake out. Worst case scenario, I don't get the schedule that I want and I have to bounce back and forth between home and school. Even in that case, I'd get to be home earlier than planned (if it works out the way I want it to, I won't be home until next Decemeber - yikes) which isn't a bad thing at all.

I remember last New Year's Eve looking forward to the year ahead of me; getting married was the big thing on my plate. This year, rotations and residency applications (due in November) are the big ticket items. I'll probably forgo the resolutions this year, but I definitely have goals for myself academically: get on the dean's list again (so far so good with my first semester grades), put in solid work for my rotations and make myself the best possible residency applicant with the time I have left. Easy peasy, right? :)