Improving Vet Student? | 3rd year GYG blog

11/12/23 Pathology heavy day

I skipped the first parasitology lecture today because honestly at 7:30 outside was grim and as I don't really get much from these lectures I thought I'd be happier today with an extra hour in bed. Then me and my housemate went in for 10 for the 2 cardiovascular pathology lectures, only for the fire alarm to go off and not stop for quite a while so we had to go outside the building, and then a mix up whether the lecture is meant to be online or not as the heating still isn't fixed (but us + lecturer were already present) but essentially they did go ahead in person it was just freezing. Then ate lunch and have been in the library since doing my cardiovascular pathology summary tables which honestly have taken me 3.5 hours today and I started some yesterday lol. It has fried my brain so I'll be heading back home soon. Tomorrow I'm intending to put on the very final touches on the research project and submit it so it's out the way and then I'll probably do some more summary tables.

you're so close to Christmas !!! GOOD LUCK submitting the research project, I'm sure it'll go great 💛

15/12/23 Pushed through the last day of semester 1!

For some reason I couldn't get to sleep at all until 3am last night because my brain wouldn't shut up but like very intensely. So that kind of made everything else worse today but I was just really in a mood where I wanted to be at home and as all my practicals today are compulsory I obviously couldn't. I tried my best in the practicals but I feel so done now ahah. I did do some work in the time between sessions today - filled out a parasitology crossword and begun making some revision material. Because the one good thing that came out of my brain thinking last night is that I came up with a way to revise during placement/work that isn't much effort but still allows me to do something at least. I'm going to make little booklets for each subject with some 'main questions' on the topic, not long ones but just with the idea that I can do spend 10/15 min a day either during lunch or after doing some not too difficult questions to keep my brain active. Ideally I want them short enough that if I spend the 10/15 min every day I will finish the booklet within a week. I don't know how effective it will be but it'll be better than nothing and the short amount of time to spend on it won't make it seem too daunting. I already finished making a clinical skills booklet in about 30 min earlier so hopefully I can get a few done this weekend.

I felt the same today in our last dissection of the term. Really bad ICA yesterday that kept me up all night going over it all. But hey! first term is done !
Such a great idea about the notes . I’ve got placement next week and hate not using up time effectively but also conscious to give myself some down time over Xmas!
Thank you so much for all your blogs and support this term . Here’s to the next x

Whoever says the stress stops once you get into vet school lied haha it is very non stop. Tbh I am yet to successfully revise whilst on placement, so if you don't manage to I wouldn't worry too much - placements themselves are good for teaching and going over some content practically! But my little question booklets are made are like maybe average 5 questions per sub topic so I'm hoping it means I can spend a small time every day revising which will hopefully be better than nothing. Where's your placement?? Well done for finishing first term!

17/12/23 Last day before starting first placement of third year had another house stress addition

So just to brighten my weekend more after yesterday's fire alarm beeping fiasco, this morning I got woken up at about 8am from a blaring alarm outside. Now, for whatever reason for a GOOD while I didn't think anything of it, thought it was someone's car alarm so I checked mine (despite that I know it doesn't have an alarm lmao) and tried to go back to bed. After like half an hour of this I'm like hmm, like could it be from our house? As far as I know our burglar alarm isn't functional and noise wasn't coming from inside. WELL yesterday I took out the fuses from above the control panel as instructed to try and get the fire alarm one to shut up and left them out to try and drain the battery (which, it didn't, it's still beeping right this second, the main fuse box also didn't work, we just covered it with coats for the night which didn't really do much but not much we can do). Now, apparently the burglar alarm is sort of functional and it has run out of battery and is now blaring outside as I came to find (sorry to my entire street <3). So I put the fuse back in, it shuts up outside and is now blaring inside. I have no knowledge of a code, I try the fire alarm one which doesn't work. Try contacting housemates to see if they know, contact the out of hours number again, the electrician but no one is really up at this time. Try to figure it out with my dad on the phone, look through tenancy agreements and emails etc. I stand outside to try flag neighbours down or whatever. After another good at least 20 min of this the alarm turns itself off... After this I got a reply from the management agent to say they were never given any codes for the burglar alarm, they'll send someone tomorrow to reset it, but effectively if it goes off again there is no way to turn it off which is just amazing. So yeah I've well and truly had enough of all alarms for this weekend and I will still have to deal with the annoying beeping until tomorrow.

I did escape to the library again, tbh with no work in mind I just wanted to get out of the house. At least the library is quiet and warm lmao. I ended up spending 2.5 hours updating all my pathology tables from this year with pictures because I feel that will make my learning a lot more effective, and doing it also meant I have at least glanced at all the diseases again so it was a bit of revision. I'm having a little think about some of the things I could try and ask to do at the placement as it is quite common that the staff are so busy they forget to include students, but I obviously also don't want to take the p. I think asking to do some injections or something wouldn't be too much? I'll see how it goes, I'm really excited but also a little scared ahah I haven't had a proper smallies vet placement since 2019 and I am there with a 5th year student who I probably won't know. That slightly takes the pressure off as I assume they'll be getting asked more questions they're expected to get right ahah but I'm worried in case it means I don't get to be as hands on or if they judge me or something. But I'm sure it'll be fine and I'll love it - I'm only there for the week but I am coming back to the same place in the first 2 weeks of summer holidays so hoping to make a good impression, and it is at a PDSA hospital which is something I might be very interested in doing once graduated (and in the right location I want to move to once graduated too). I might do a little non-revision update tomorrow to say how it went.

Haha oh this is a 1000 times harder than anything else I’ve done but will be worth it 🙏
I’m in an exotic and small animal vets . I’m an RVN so was kidding myself a bit that I would have time to revise. But I do have a third year on placement with me which is nice as getting to go over things. Might start picking her brain tomorrow in return for showing her some practical skills lol 😂.

Haha oh this is a 1000 times harder than anything else I’ve done but will be worth it 🙏
I’m in an exotic and small animal vets . I’m an RVN so was kidding myself a bit that I would have time to revise. But I do have a third year on placement with me which is nice as getting to go over things. Might start picking her brain tomorrow in return for showing her some practical skills lol 😂.

Glad that you’ve had some time off. D is doing 8 until 7 shifts for two weeks. Unfortunately Boxing Day isn’t a bank holiday here so getting up this morning was a bit hard, but as a first real clinical placement it’s been fun.