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.