Life as a Beaver…

Paws for Thought…the trials and tribulations of a veterinary student…while she’s on vacation.  Okay, clearly I have severely neglected my blog.  I may make the “while she’s on vacation” bit a permanent presence in my blog tagline.  I’ll try to do a few blogs this week to catch up.  So…where to begin?  The first day of school is as good a spot as any. 

September 28th dawned gloriously sunny.  There are many routes to Corvallis from my home in Albany, but I chose to take a country road called Riverside Drive.  It curves through grass farming country and is resplendent with big red barns and U-pick signs.  I started my drive with fresh notebooks and pencils in tow and smiled at the passing scenery.  My car reminds me that I am safely back in the wraps of the US.  Monster, my Suby, is such a far departure from the vehicles of Grenada with their European driver’s seats, rusted interiors, and doorbells for horn.  I had a country station cranked up and was singing along to Jason Michael Carroll’s song “Where I’m From”.    If you aren’t familiar with this tune I added it to the music set to the right.  And while I listened to the line about “where the trucks a Ford and the tractors green”, and I rolled by the fields being plowed, I got teary eyed.  I was home.  In the US.  And by some snowball’s chance in hell, going to my dream school. 

It is strange to be back.  I still marvel at the ability to have/adjust hot water in the shower, and I’ve been known to spin a pirouette on my way to doing a load of laundry.  I have a new appreciation for law enforcement and 911 service, the taste of Oregon  microbrews, the ability to choose from a cornucopia of cultural restaurants and prices, and the convenience of well…everything.  I greatly miss my SGU classmates and our times on Grande Anse beach.  Grenada gave me an experience that changed me on so many levels.  I learned that a person can live happily with just a few suitcases and a camera.  That the ocean can instantly calm your heart and mind.  But I am a mountain, NW girl and I was wilting in the heat of the island sun.  It was time to leave.

School is an ongoing adjustment process for me and my Grenadian cohorts.  The teaching style here is very different.  SGU (as with most large medical schools) administered multiple choice exams.  OSU prides itself on being small, and because of that can practice written exams.  Studying for a multiple choice exam is an entirely different strategy.  Recognizing the right answer is a far cry from being able to recall, let alone spell, the right answer.  My buddies and I realized this rather abruptly after our first pathology exam.  Nothing quite as demoralizing as getting a lower grade on a subject you once received an A in.  Joe, Justin and I spent several late hours going over topics on skype and creating a study routine that worked with the OSU system.  After a grueling week of back to back finals we emerged with GPA’s higher than our last go round at SGU so we must be doing something right.

The OSU program also brought new opportunities for me.  We have a weekly equine rotation that is the highlight of our week so far.  There, senior veterinary students review a case with us and we discuss it for 45 minutes.  These cases have ranged from fractures to tendonectomies (which is quite the procedure to observe).  I rarely wince during surgeries but watching two grown men use finesse and brute force to work 6 inches of tendon out of a horse’s hock is quite a sight.  I also got to participate in a wildlife capture session and spent the morning lobbing darts at wildlife posters.  OSU also spends a lot of time and research on llamas.  A section of the hospital is even deemed “Llama Land”.  Although we haven’t done anything with these banana eared creatures yet, I am looking forward to the day that we do.  January brings the foaling season, and I am signed up on the Foaling team.  This hopefully means that I’ll be called in during the wee hours of the night to sit with foals in intensive care, helping administer medication and fluids, while reveling over how cute they are.

But for now Inca and I are happily home in Montana, far from textbooks, professors and assignments.  Cheers to the holidays!