as you can tell I have been very busy, hence I have not written here in a while.
What's new?
Let's see, I studied a moderate amount, and finally took my veterinary boards last saturday. I had 7.5 hours to take the 360 questions, broken down in to 60 question blocks. One of the questions was actually fake with possible new test questions for next year, but you don't know which. Mark drove me to the test center in Boston. I actually had offered to take the T, but he knew I was nervous and joked that he "wanted to be a part of my becoming a veterinarian" and that he wanted to drive. So we got up at 7:30am, the earliest he had gotten up in a month. He dropped me off and in I went. It was at a Prometric Test Center. I was the only one taking the NAVLE (The National Association of Veterinarians Licensing Exam). There were several students taking the equivalent to be medical doctors, some GRE takers, and mostly insurance or construction licensing exams. I felt rather spoiled since most tests were strict on breaks, etc., but when the proctor read off the NAVLE directions, he informed me I would have 6 blocks of 60 questions with 65 minutes allotted to each. I could leave the room whenever I pleased for breaks. I was given 10 minute breaks between each block and an hour and a half at lunch IF I choose to take them. If I did not take all the test time or break time, it would continually be added to my break time overall. I could look at notes and do as I please whenever i left the test room. I could eat, etc., without any question. Not that looking at notes would help me answer a bloody question when the material covered on this exam spanned all species (even humans, while I am not allowed to treat them I am still expected to know what diseases they get from animals and how it works in their bodies), 3.5 years of veterinary education, and probably some stuff that my educators meant for me to know but never got around to teaching.
Well, it was uneventful. I took three breaks, each for less then 5 minutes. I starred questions I was not positive of the answer in (although only sometimes was I completely clueless) for each block and re-assessed them when done with the section, amounting to an average of 20/60 per block. I finished in 5.5 hours. After, I tended to remember tough questions as most classmates did. Overall, like those I have talked to before, I think I did ok, but it is also a very fair possibility that I failed, which would tend to be just bad luck since I studied adequately and I know I have the knowledge to pass. So I just have to wait until late January for the results.
Ambulatory, the rotation in Connecticut I have been on, is now officially over, and I am so happy. I have spent the last four weeks riding along with large animal clinicians, seeing the occasional pet pig or goat which I love, but more often then not spent freezing cold with multiple layers, outside on a farm with my left arm up a cow's ass up to my shoulder attempting to locate her ovaries to tell what cycle of heat she is in or her uterus and to stage a possible pregnancy. It was satisfying in the third week when my palpation skills were honed in on and I could quickly grasp the repro tract, lift it into my hand's grasp, and find those ovaries or feel the placentomes along the outside of a fetal sac with a baby calf inside. Then in the middle of the third week when I was in 10 degree weather on the top of a windy hill sticking vaccines in 5 month old calves necks and tattoos in their ears, with my vaccine freezing in the syringe if I did not inject it within 15 seconds of drawing it up, the fun was over. I was sick of seeing sick cows with 6 month old foot injuries wasting away, or seeing a cow that could be fixed and having the farmer tell us to stop so he can ship her as beef. The other shitty part is the rotation has a reputation of being one of the easier ones, one where you get weekends off (true) and you tend to get to go home before 4pm. Sadly, this was not the case for me, and of course the clinicians couldn't stop talking about it. They kept commenting on how abnormally busy for this time of year it was, and only twice in 4 weeks did I finished before 6pm, and since it was a 2 hours commute for me I was not home until after 8pm almost every night, which made me very bitter.
Luckily I am all done with rotation officially today. The clinicians kept joking about how great the snow would be and i kept getting pissed since I did not want to drive home 2 hours in a snowstorm (1 hour of driving for most of my classmates). Then yesterday evening before leaving the doctors told us that plans were changed. They rearranged the schedule for the day and figured out ways to make sure all of us were done by noon. I asked the director why and he told me that 7 years ago a senior student was driving home in a snow storm when she crashed and she is now a paraplegic. Since then they don't take risks. This morning I met Dr. White in Walpole at the Norfolk Agricultural School for calf vaccinations from 7-9am and my day was done. Now I get to enjoy the snow from my house and make chili and chowder for my annual Xmas gifts.
