Musings of an Entrenched 4th Year Veterinary Student

By: Misha Neumann

University of Illinois, Class of 2011

• For me, the 1^st day of a rotation, is the worst. I tend to have the unfortunate luck of staying well after hours and get the emergencies
• Why oh why do I always get the crazies? (both animals and owners)
• It’s really hard to talk to an attractive client face-to-face without sounding like a total idiot
• Why am I required to wear nice professional clothes when I just put a dumpy labcoat over them?
• It never fails that as soon as I hand-bleach the heck out of my labcoat, I get it mucked up, due to no fault of my own
• There isn’t a day that goes by where I almost walk out the door and never look back
• It only takes a sweet animal or an appreciative word to make it all worth it.
• I admit it.  I’ve dance in the Equine wards at 3am with my hoodie up and my iPod blastin’.
• I am very thankful that I am not one of the unlucky souls who have found poop in my pocket.

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Clinics

By: Dawn M. Fiedorczyk

Class of 2010, University of Pennsylvania

After sitting in classes for two and a half years entering clinics is a terrifying, yet exhilarating new experience.  All of the information that you studied and tried to store away in your brain now needs to be available, but not to regurgitate on a test paper but to use to save a life.  Nothing can quite prepare you for your first days in the hospital.  The new faces, protocols and requirements; it can all be very overwhelming.  However, as I get ready to graduate, I promise that it is conceivable. 

Just when you think you can’t possible take on another case, you can’t seem to muster the strength to do one more blood pressure on a feisty cat, give one more tube of banamine to a horse, restrain one more unruly parrot, talk to another overly concerned client for an hour after your day has ended, take one more order from a difficult resident or get any less sleep than you have over the past couple of days; clinics draw to an end and you wonder where time has gone. 

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