1st Semester. Check.

After 6 written essay exams, 3 MCQ practicals, 3 group projects/presentations, 2.5 weeks of studying and 2 LITERS OF COFFEE (probably more than that), I am done with my first semester of veterinary school. WOW. That feels really good to say; almost as good as saying I got into vet school. So that's 1 semester and 7 more to go.

I could probably go on for hours about how crappy my exam schedule was (7 exams in 4 days is a little crazy don't you think?) and how much I missed the ease of Denison exams, but I won't bore with that. I'll just say that we had to write our exams at an external exhibition hall in Dublin.  It's the same hall where they have craft shows and the major horse show in the spring. So we kind of all felt like livestock being shuttled into these massive halls, given a seat number and having to show our student ID to enter the hall. It makes sense for the sheer number of students that have to sit exams at the end of the semester, but it takes 30 minutes to walk from campus to the hall and we had to be there 15 minutes before the exam started anyway... so basically an hour before the exam you had to quit studying and hope that you had it all locked in your brain. At the end of all of this, I do feel good about my exams, some better than others, but over all a good feeling. I won't find out the results until late January, so until then it's out of my hands and I've done all that I can do. With all the studying in the past couple weeks, I do really feel like I learned something this semester. And I feel like it was useful what I was learning and I'll be able to apply it in the future. Like I've said before I'm learning for my career now and not just a degree. If there is one thing I can tell you, I love anatomy.

I've had a couple days off now and fly out (fingers crossed) on Friday morning for the OH-IO. It's been snowing the past 2 days and even though there's only about 4 inches accumulated, the whole of Dublin pretty much shuts down with that much snow, including the airport. They just don't have the means to deal with snow. They plow the streets and footpaths with front end loaders for example. I'm excited to be home and see my family and just have a few weeks off to relax and visit with friends.  I'll be back in Dublin for round 2 before I know it.

I guess you could say I've been busy and haven't been able to post on here as much as I'd like to. Next semester doesn't look so bright either for frequent posts. Though maybe I could do a one sentence post each day. I'll be on the farm once a week so that should produce some fun anecdotes. Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Sláinte!

Work Hard, Play Hard

They (whoever "they" are) weren't kidding when they said vet school was a lot of work. Especially, because unlike undergrad, they expect a lot of the learning to be self-directed. We're not in class to fulfill GE requirements or follow the required courses for a major; we're learning about inner workings of all the biological systems that we'll apply in later years when we're diagnosing patients or preforming surgeries. It can be hard to see the connections now, but the professors do a good job of giving us the reasons why the stuff we're learning about now will be relevant to our practice of veterinary medicine in the future.  For example, the mechanism by which enzymes are activated are the same mechanisms utilized in the development of drugs to either activate the process the enzyme regulates or to inhibit the process. It's frustrating as hell trying to understand every little nuance, but the fact that I still find this fascinating and to actually understand it enough to be able to explain it in both scientific and layman's terms makes me think that I've made the right choice studying what I'm studying. And yes, I am a nerd.

Even with all the work, I have been able to play, getting out to explore the country side with my roommate Sarah, which I have absolutely fallen in love with. What can I say, I'm a country/small town girl at heart. I've been to Howth and Bray (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069812&id=28502552&l=415ce3c716) along the east coast as well as Glendalough (pronounced Glendalock) in the foothills of the Wicklow mountains (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070222&id=28502552&l=45e1fb21b3 ). Oh, there are also some pictures from the Dublin Zoo in there. I can't go anywhere without going to the zoo. These have all just been day trips within Ireland, but a group of vet students are all going to Edinburgh, Scotland for the first weekend in November. There is a big event for veterinary students at the University of Edinburgh called AVS. There were limited tickets for the weekend, and although I didn't get a ticket, I'll be able to meet up with the group for some of the open events like the pub crawl through Edinburgh. We'll take a bus to Belfast, then we and the bus will get on a ferry to Scotland, then the bus will take us to Edinburgh. It should be a lovely weekend with plenty of good craic (aka "fun"). I also got to see Joshua Radin and Train in concert (separate concerts) as kind of a late birthday present. Both shows were in smaller House of Blues type venues... really great shows :-) and totally worth going to even though I had a midterm later in the week. It's all about balance.

I go back and forth being homesick and really enjoying my time here. I'm currently sitting in a Starbucks-like chain here called Insomnia studying for my Cell Metabolism & Replication and Cells, Tissues, Organs & Development midterms on Friday.  It's no River Road or Whole Day Cafe, but it's nice to have a change of scenery and not be in my room. I've come here the past two Sundays after I go to Mass as the church in Donnybrook. I have yet to ask if they can get English toffee and Irish creme syrups (since the syrups they use are Torani :-) ) in order to make a Union Jack latte. I've found that the more I make comparisons between UCD and Denison or places here and places at home, I tend to miss them more. It's really about finding what I like about being here and letting the other things go. "It'll be grand."


60 days...

Cunningham and Dyce are my new best friends

Week 1. Complete. Only 14 weeks til Christmas break and 110 weeks until you can call me Dr. Kauffman.

We finished up our 3 day orientation at the farm working with the horses (my favorite). A lot of it was stuff I already knew but some of the Irish terminology was different. We learned how to make an initial physical examination including lunging the horse at a canter to monitor respiratory rate as well as giving oral medication, taking blood samples and restraint techniques.  After this exhausting but really fascinating 3 days on the farm, a lot of the vet students went out in the City Centre for a few beers, a little whiskey and a lot of dancing. I can't say that the Dublin club scene is for me. A lot of it is geared toward a younger "undergraduate" crowd. The pubs on every other corner are my favorites. There are enough of them that we could go out every weekend and not go to the same one twice. I have yet to find one with really good live traditional Irish music but it's only my second week, so I'll give it some time and a bit of exploring.

Classes started this week. I'm taking 6 courses this term including Homeostasis & Fluid Balance; Cells, Tissues, Organs & Development; Cell Metabolism & Replication (Biochem); Cardiology & Respiratory; Neurobiology & Head Structure; and Animal Behaviour & Welfare. The first 5 are classroom taught classes and Animal Behaviour is actually a online class. We have a 7th course on top of that but we don't have grades in it until next term; there are just a handful of lectures that we are auditing this term since they're in tandem with a couple other courses in undergrad at UCD. So likes a lot, right? You can say that again. Though the cool thing about all these classes is that they are interconnected, and we'll be able to go into more detail with such specific courses. Also the courses incorporate both structure and function and teach them together.  So as we learn about all the body systems, we'll be able to place them in context with anatomy labs and dissections. We've already been down in the dissection lab looking at bones and radiographs. I'm pretty sure that this kind of lab work will be my favorite. This week alone we got assigned 9 chapters of reading between 2 of our books: Veterinary Physiology by Cunningham and Veterinary Anatomy by Dyce.  And all that is just The second year grad entry vet students joke about sleeping with Dyce (falling asleep while doing readings) and having dates with Cunningham (lots of reading assignments).

They say that getting into vet school is the hardest part. And that's probably true, because even through this first week all of the professors and staff have assured us that if we all had the ability to get in here, they would make sure that we could all get out of here in 4 years as good veterinarians (and their peers). It's just seems like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow right now.

Down on the farm

This past week has been filled with a variety of orientation activities--nothing like June-O or Aug-O at Denison though, so kudos to Denison for all their logistical organization skills. The group of 40 grad-entry vet students were divided up into 6 groups, each with a peer mentor who is a second year in the 4-year program. Their class is actually the first to go through the 4-year program, so they've been the guinea pigs and we'll benefit from them paving the way for us (though I'm sure there will be a few kinks to still work out as my class moves through the programme this year). The first day was just an overview of the coursework, meeting the Dean of Vet Med, professors, staff and of course the other students. After all that, we got our student cards and were able to finally move into our on campus housing. First off, it had been pouring rain all day and didn't let up when we had to haul all our luggage from one side of campus to the other. (The Veterinary Sciences Building and Vet Hospital are on the North side of campus whereas Glenomena and the other student residences are on the South end. There are a good number of us living on campus this year so it took awhile to get our paperwork filled out in order to activate our student cards as our room keys. The Glenomena Residences are fairly new and relatively nice as far as student apartments go. there are 10 houses each with 12 apartments, 3 on each floor and each apartment with 6 rooms. On initial inspection, my room was actually bigger than I expected with a bed, bedside table, large desk with shelves and an open closet with cubbie shelves built in. The bathroom however is pretty small with little difference between the shower floor and the rest of the bathroom floor. It only drops down about 2 cm in the corner in order to drain the water from the shower which is only separated from the sink and toilet area by a shower curtain.  As for the common room and kitchen, that was another story.  I walked in and there was a jacket on the couch, dirty dishes in the sink and a mess on the stove... there was a flash back to first walking into the trailer at WRR (pre-sexy six) and a "aw Hell no I didn't leave the south side for this." And as I walked to the other side of the common room I noticed something globular on the arm of the far couch. Upon further inspection, it was magpie poop. A magpie had managed to fly in through the slightly cracked window and left a little duty on our couch. rude. Being accustomed to picking up poop, I did just that and while it wasn't a big deal in the scheme of things, it was just the cherry on top of a miserable day. Not to worry though, it did get better when my other vet student roommate Sarah's mom (a real life Lorelai Gilmore and self proclaimed best mom ever) offered to clean things up and get a bottle of wine to take our minds off things. In the end, it was a really great night with the two of them and Christa as well.

The second day started with us breaking into our groups and doing one of those team building mind teaser type activities. We were given one half of the phrase "the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese" and had to argue why either the first bird or the second mouse was better. Then we were given a folder with a load of paper, glue, plates, tape, scissors, rubber bands, toothpicks, cups, paperclips and some string to create a model describing our argument. We had to use everything in the envelope and have 2 moving parts as well. They were presented by 2 people in each group and the winner was.... My Group! The Early Bird does get the worm. He gets the best pick of the food, is therefore healthier and able to grow big and strong and display plummage in order to procreate, and there is less competition when he wakes up before the other birds. (I guess all those years listening to mom work with Destination Imagination kids really helped.)  The rest of the day we spent touring campus, the vet library & hospital.

The past two days (Wednesday and Thursday) were spent at the Lyons Farm in Newcastle County Dublin, which is about 45 minutes Northwest from UCD campus. We were again broken up into 2 groups to begin our animal handling orientation. There are beef and dairy cattle, horses and sheep on the farm. Half the group spent the first day with the horses, and the other half (including me) worked with the cattle, both dairy and beef. We learned proper restraint techniques as well as administration of oral, SubQ, and IM dosages of medications. We were also introduced to the variety of common breeds. I even milked my first cow on this day! It's stuff like this that cemented my decision to come to Ireland and to go through with vet school. This kind of work just makes me happy and especially the practical applications of all the stuff I learned in that first day on the farm. We only had a half day on the farm today and split up in the same two groups but each group learned about sheep. We wrestled with rams, ewes and lambs in order to examine them, to learn the signs of a healthy sheep and to discriminate between the common breeds. It brought me back to the week of sheep shearing at WRR. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do that because a lot of my other classmates had never really interacted with sheep, so I had a bit of a leg up.  Again, the time on the farm reaffirms my desire to be a large animal veterinarian and have the opportunity to work with these animals as well as to work out side a majority of the day (especially when the days are as beautiful as today: warm, sunny and about 70 degrees F). We got back early today for the President's Welcome ceremony. It was more geared toward the new undergraduate students during their orientation week but other first year and international students were welcomed. I got a free scarf out of it so I guess it was worth it. There was also free food at the Science building cafe (Elements) afterwards... when you're a college student and they say free food, you show up. We also had a wine and hors d'oeuvres event with the Grad-Entry Medicine Students. A lot more gentlemen in that course of study, especially Irish.

When it's not raining, the country side really is beautiful with the fullest greens against a crisp blue sky. It's kind of a good thing that the winter will be cold, wet and grey, that way I'll be more motivated to stay inside and study. Classes start up on Monday, so it's only a short bit of time to enjoy the area and not be stressed out by the difficulty of the course I'm getting myself into.

Little Fish in a Big Pond

I arrived in SUNNY Dublin on Friday the 3rd with my new friend Christa, another first year vet student in my programme at UCD. Through some pretty serendipitous connections (my mother's student's uncle is from Dublin and lives in the country side near the city), we were picked up at the airport a chatty Irishman named Philip. Since we couldn't check into our hostel room in the morning, Philip took us to his cottage and his wife fed us some delicious Irish breakfast and let us snooze on the couch before taking us back to the hostel in the evening.

We've been exploring our new city a bit over this past weekend. I'm certainly not used to the big city and have yet to develop my "city sense" but it gets a little easier every day. (It's also nice to have a travel buddy in Christa). On Saturday, we took the bus to campus for a meet and greet breakfast with some of the other vet students and faculty. Since we're only the second group to go through the 4-year graduate entry programme (as opposed to the former 5-year programme), we'll each be assigned a peer mentor who is a second year vet student at UCD. That way we'll be eased into the organized chaos that seems to be how things work here. After the hot breakfast, we walked around campus to orient ourselves a bit. It's no College on the Hill (all the buildings are a "sky grey" block), but it's nice enough with plenty of construction going (always a good sign as my dad told me when I was going on college visits senior year of high school; means the school has a decent endowment. I don't know if that's the case here, but they're refurbishing some buildings and adding a pool to the rec center). After that we took the bus to the main shopping area and just walked around a bit and then it was only a short walk back to the hostel for a nap and then out for a bite. Something I've learned pretty quick: Dubliners eat big breakfasts and dinners, but supper isn't really much, especially later in the evening. They just go to the pub to drink.

Today (Sunday the 5th), we took a FREE walking tour of Dublin provided by the hostel. A charming James took us around the city with a group of other folks from some of the hostels in town. The Irish have a very sarcastic, almost insulting sense of humor but they're "just messing." I love it. And as it turns out James is graduating from UCD in December, so we found some favor with him since we are going to the same school, especially when we toured around Trinity College, which is right in the middle of the city.  We ended our tour in St. Stephen's Green, which is an absolutely gorgeous green space in the middle of the bustling shopping district and next to Trinity. For going on the tour, we got vouchers for a discounted meal at O'Neill's Pub. The fish and chips were as big as your forearm and I got a large bowl of Irish Beef Stew made with Guinness and a Coke all for 10 Euro. I'm still full from it.

We're spending our last night at the hostel in Dublin and going to our first day of orientation tomorrow. We'll also be able to move into our on-campus accommodations tomorrow once we finish orienting around 4. I'll be glad to be in my own room and on the UCD campus. That's a slightly smaller pond. As the second year vet students told us, "It'll be grand."

"If you can dream it, you can do it"

So here I am, about to fly halfway across the globe to study veterinary medicine at University College Dublin. I think it's finally set in that I'm really leaving home, that I'm really going to veterinary school, and I'm really living my dream.

Am I excited? of course. Am I nervous? OF COURSE. It seems not that long ago that I was in the middle of nowhere Texas, releasing a ring-tailed cacomistle when I got a voicemail from a woman with an Irish accent saying that she was from University College Dublin and that she had good news for me. It was February then and September was months away.

I have my life packed into 4 bags (180lbs) and leave on my jet plane on Thursday afternoon. I'll be meeting up with another UCD vet med student in Philly then flying together to Dublin and sharing a hostel room before we can move into our on-campus apartments. Wish me luck on this new adventure in my life and keep me in your prayers. You can SUBSCRIBE to this blog (on the right), become a follower or just bookmark this site and check it out periodically to get updates, pictures, and hopefully a few good pub stories.