One of the things I've wanted to do (now that it's a new year and I should be setting myself to being better than ever, right?) is log posts with more substance to them. I tend to use the blog as a place to just empty my mind when I'm particularly stressed but a blog should be more than just a sounding board - it should be a place to reflect and hopefully help or inspire others. I don't know that I've found my "blogging voice" yet all these years into having this thing, but I certainly hope someone out there enjoys reading whatever I haphazardly toss up from time to time.

Sometimes, over the years slogging through academic stuff, I'd think to myself, "Is this really worth it? Do I really want to be a vet? What if I don't? What if I just did this because I never wanted to do anything else and ohmygosh how many people would be so disappointed if I just threw in the towel?!" I don't know if this is normal or whatever, but I figured it was probably just one part of my brain trying to pysch out the other parts. But then I go to work over the summer, or do lab animal stuff, or sit in my new favoritest class ever (comparative med) and I feel like someone injected me with happy juice. Every single aspect of lab animal medicine is for me. It's like whoever made up jobs said, "Oh yes, and this one will be for [mynamehere]." It just resonates with me and I wonder how I can ever have doubted my place in this field. I am so, so excited to get to my lab animal rotations (I'm also terrified that I'll make a fool of myself, but that's probably that Negative Nancy section of my brain working again).

There, I've given myself a motivation pep talk. Now it's time to crank out this last external rotation letter and send it in. I can't believe that after all this time I'm sending in rotations applications. Won't be but the blink of an eye before I'm blogging how I can't believe it's time to apply to residency or it's time for graduation or it's time to start residency or time to start my first job...crazy.

Back to the grind...arrived back on the island around 4pm Sunday afternoon. Fortunately the weather was good, but the backroads of PEI leave much to be desired in the way of a snowplow. There is plenty of snow to go around - I imagine at least 18" in my front yard, blech - and I don't forsee it all melting any time soon. Today wasn't bad temperature-wise, though.

I dragged myself out of bed early this morning, as it was the first day we could attempt to switch the rotations we've already been pre-assigned and the office opened at 8am. Many of my classmates were in line ahead of me (I heard someone say people had gotten there at 6am?! WHAT.) Unfortunately I didn't get any of the ones I wanted, being toward the back of the line, but did get a better position for anesthesia. While waiting in line I managed to miss the first class of the semester (whoops) but made up for it in classes the rest of the day. So far so good, although I think the block schedule will take a bit of getting used to.

Not much to do tonight other than look over potential topics for my lab animal paper and put important dates on my calendar like I did last semester. I should really put my clean clothes away and make a grocery list for tomorrow, but I can't be bothered right now. I'd much prefer a warm shower and my book before hitting the hay early. Last semester of classes, here we go!

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? :)

So with the new year just around the corner, I've begun to brood on my resolutions. Last year, I did "mini-resolutions" where I made a new resolution each month in an effort to get more accomplished and stave off the doldrums that are early February and onward by changing it up too frequently to lose momentum. All went well until school kicked in (and kicked my butt) and so I got probably only eight or nine months of solid resolutions in.

The thing is, I didn't stick to them very well after the month was done. What's the point of a resolution that you accomplish and then abandon later? It's made me feel both as though I can accomplish just about anything I put my mind to and as though I'm just wanting to check things off of a list to prove to myself I could do it. Which is pretty worthless in the long run.

I still need to decide if I'm going to go back to the mini-resolutions format or try to just live my life and improve it as best I can. There are definitely things I want to accomplish in life (running again, photography, volunteering, etc) but not much is exactly feasible during vet school. So we'll see.

Happy Boxing Day!

I had a great holiday with my family and Danny. I took charge of Christmas Eve dinner (my dad did help with the turkey), and we had my sister, aunt and uncle over for dinner and some gift exchange. They stayed late and I was too tired to wrap Danny's Christmas present - whoops. Fortunately, he was off to church with my mom the next morning, so instead of sleeping in, I got up and wrapped his gift (Caps tickets) and helped my dad get breakfast together. When they got home from church, Danny made french toast and my sister and her boyfriend (and my dog-niece) came over for breakfast. We carried our mimosas over to the family room and went through all of the presents. Even though we'd decided on a specific budget for gifts, there were tons of them. My sister and I were given the task of completing a gingerbread house that my aunt had brought over the night before - some friend had given it to her, and she didn't want to decorate it, so she gave it to us. Well the friend asked my aunt to send her a picture - eek! So my sister and I got it done and it looks great ;) It took a bit longer than we'd planned, though, and Danny and I had to scramble to get ready to head out to dinner at the place he stays with their family. We got a couple of gifts from them (and ate some of the best reindeer-shaped cookies ever) and headed home where we busted out my season 1 DVD of Vikings. It was a great day :)

Another beautiful Christmas behind me, another new year to look forward to. Usually the time between Christmas and New Year's feels sad and lonely to me: my mom and Danny go back to work (no rest for the weary!) and even though we keep the tree and mantle lit up, it's just not the same. This year, though, I'm determined to enjoy every ounce of my winter break and I think keeping busy will help me not feel like these days just go by in a boring blur. Even if that means I start working on my rotations schedule for next year!

Today, I went to visit my supervisor from work who's in the hospital with a nasty post-op infection. She is like a favorite aunt to me and was one of the people who kept pushing me toward my goal of vet med even when I had lost confidence in myself. While we were chatting today, she told me that because she never had kids, she considered the students that came through work (like me) to be like her kids, and she wants us all to succeed so badly, especially because she thought she wasn't smart enough to be a vet. She told me how proud she was of me (overcoming my measly 2.97 GPA to get in to vet school and now doing really well); she introduced me to all of her doctors and nurses that stopped by as "her friend, Dr. [mylastname]." And yeah, I'm not a doctor yet (and I didn't pretend to be), but I knew she called me that out of pride; I can't even describe how that makes me feel.

I'm so lucky to have such amazing people in my life. My husband never complains about me being 1200 miles away, in another country, for four years while he saves money to buy us a house. My family takes me even every school break and puts up with my worldly possessions in their basement. My friends and co-workers invite me to spend time with them as soon as I'm home, and are always so happy to see me. I hate that I'm still in school, so far away, which makes me the selfish friend. But I am so, so fortunate to have such great people around me and I hope I never take them for granted.

At long last: winter break!

I spent (probably too much) of Wednesday cleaning the house and packing up my stuff. My last final was Thursday morning and I left for home immediately after I finished. I made good time to Portland, Maine, had a delicious dinner of Chipotle and watched Duck Dynasty and Thursday Night Football before going to bed. I made it home the next day (Friday) around 5pm and was reunited with my amazing husband and wonderful family.

Since then, I've still managed to be busy somehow! Saturday night Danny and I made an appearance and two parties (one of which netted me a crocheted scarf hand-made by my friend - awesome). Sunday we slept in late and ran some errands. On Monday, my parents, my sister and I met up at a pottery shop and did our annual Christmas ornament painting followed by lunch. Then my sister and I went out and did girly stuff like get a pedicure (which I almost never do!) and I got to see her new apartment and my dog-niece, Trudy. Every time I spend any amount of time with a dog, it makes me miss Ella but I know that I'm not really at a good time in my life for another dog right now. Danny says whenever I start residency we'll get one, so that's something to look forward to I think.

We went out ice-skating with friends last night and I did a bit of wrapping today - just little things here and there that I'm getting done. I have a bit more "serious" stuff to do (rotations and such) but I think I'm going to wait until after Christmas when I really have nothing else to do. I'd like our grades to be posted - I think I would have managed straight As except for my optho/neuro class, but we'll just have to wait and see.

My last final of the semester is tomorrow. Afterwards, I'm getting into my car and heading home! I always stop in Portland, Maine overnight to break up the drive (and also because there is a Chipotle there for dinner...) but it'll still be nice to be back in the States :) I still have quite a bit to do today - mainly cleaning up the house but also running a couple errands in town and, of course, studying for this last one.

I'll try to post a few times while I'm home, but I usually end up really busy with visiting friends/co-workers, doing my Christmas shopping, hanging out with my family and Danny and just unplugging my brain for a while. Can't wait!

Switched up the template of my blog because it no longer looks remotely summery outside. We got hit with probably 4-6" of snow all day yesterday - it was like a blizzard out where I am, could barely even see the road (~20yd from the house) from my window! There was a final exam for a class that I dropped, but school was closed and exams were re-scheduled.

Even though I spend a good deal of time at home on weekends normally, I was definitely feeling the cabin fever by last night and was glad to get out of the house this morning for my food animal medicine exam. After the exam I sat around with some friends for an hour and at 11:30 we went over the campus chaplaincy center and got free lunch! They had chili, pasta, rolls, hot dogs and baked potato - delicious. Full on free food, I came home and have been doing pretty much nothing ever since. Oops.

I have four finals left to take and in exactly one week, I will be headed home. I need to clean the house desperately (do I say that every post? I think I do...) and get some "administrative" odds and ends done, as well as continue to study. Fortunately, the hardest exams are done with so let's hope I don't lose my motivation.

Since last posting, I've taken three of my eight finals (five of ten if you count exotics and radiology that we finished earlier in the semester). This morning was my most difficult one (neurology), and probably one of the most difficult exams I've had to study for in the history of my academic career. I enjoy the material, and it makes sense if you apply all of the right principles. But there is so much to memorize and understand and no two animals are identical. It's tough to determine if something is normal or abnormal many times because of normal variation...but knowing normal versus abnormal is critical to localizing where the heck the problem is! Blech.

So with the most difficult exam over and my next one not until Thursday morning, I'm giving myself the day to "relax" (read: not study). I have a handful of other things to accomplish (like cleaning the house - it's ridiculous how messy it is right now) and I figured what better time than now when I don't want to cram anything else into my brain for at least a little while but still need to be productive. I'm also going to submit transcript requests for the rotations I'm applying to and maybe do some rotation planning. Or I might lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling for hours on end, who knows ;)