First semester complete!

My first semester of vet school is over! I had my last exam yesterday and now I have 6 days of nothingness before lectures start again next week. :)

I passed all my exams thankfully, but some of them were quite difficult. Certain exams were definitely harder to pass than the ones I took for my zoology degree. I could always be fairly confident about passing my zoology exams, but here I have a feeling there’s always a chance I could fail! Most of the exams are oral here which means we get the marks back almost straight away. My final marks for this semester are:
Anatomy – C
Genetics – C
Milk Hygiene – A
Latin – A
Slovak – A

There are a few different dates for each of the final exams so you’re able to choose when you take them; you can either cram them all in before Christmas or spread them out over the whole exam period. I took 3 before Christmas (Latin, Milk Hygiene and Slovak) and I left Anatomy and Genetics until the end of the exam period. I definitely needed the extra revision time for Anatomy and Genetics; they were by far the hardest exams! It meant I got a good long time at home for Christmas which was really nice and I managed to work a few days at my job at the zoo to earn some extra tuition fee money!

I also got to get better acquainted with this little man:

He’s still a bit wary of me; I think he might prefer my mum, who looks after him while I’m at uni. He will follow Ruby over to me if he thinks there are treats but he doesn’t climb all over me to get them like she does! I’m pretty impressed with the amount of hay he eats. I’ve never had a proper hay monster rabbit. Ruby eats a lot of hay but she eats it because it’s food rather than because she enjoys it. Willow seems to really love it and I’ve tried him with a few different types as a treat. For any other rabbits out there, he especially recommends Burns Green Oat and Excel Herbage Camomile ;) 

These last few months have gone so quickly, I’m now 1/8^th of the way through the course! I’m looking forward to starting lectures for next semester now (although a bit of a break is very welcome). We got our new timetable yesterday and it looks very busy. A few new subjects we are starting this semester are Animal Hygiene and Welfare, Nutrition and dietetics, and Diseases of Fish and Bees. We are also starting to study organs in Anatomy, which sounds really interesting!

Bye for now!

Lucy

First semester of vet school

It’s been too long, I’m sorry! My excuse is that having now started vet school, I have next to no free time. 

I arrived in Kosice in the first week of September. The first week I was there I mostly spent kitting my room out, going to a few fresher’s events and exploring the town. I managed to turn my dorms room from this:

Into this:

It has changed a bit since then. I have stacked the two single beds on top of one another so I now have a high single bed and there is so much more space in my room! You’re allowed to do basically whatever you want to your room. I was slightly disheartened when I saw my room to start with but now I’ve made it feel like home. 

After that first week of relaxation we got stuck straight in with lectures. Most of what we have covered this semester has been revision from my previous degree (physiology, microbiology etc) but we also started on anatomy which I have never studied before. There are credit tests every week in anatomy which means I have had at least one credit test every week (the most in one week so far has been 4!) so it’s pretty intense. We have already covered the whole skeletal and muscular system, then next week we will start on joints, then next semester it is on to organs. I’m surprised by how much I’ve learnt already. A couple of days ago I unearthed this picture of a sheep skull that I drew about 7 years ago and I found that I could identify all the little foramen and lumps and bumps that I drew :)

I haven’t made much progress in learning the language, unfortunately! Even our Slovak teacher said we would probably never learn it. It’s very different to English, and the locals speak very quickly. I can recognise lots of words written down (which is helpful when shopping) but any attempts at conversation usually fail. It doesn’t help that when I attempt to speak Slovak, I’m usually asked to “Speak English, slowly”. My English is obviously easier for Slovak people to understand than my attempts at their own language :( I’ll keep trying with it, but to be honest studying Slovak is taking a back seat to all the other subjects. 

On a sad note, my little man Pipkin died just a couple of weeks before I left for Slovakia :( He seemed to be improving after quite a difficult year but I took him for a dental after the vet noticed some spurs and this time he didn’t survive the anaesthetic. He was such a special rabbit and I still miss him a lot. <3 nbsp="" p="">

We have since adopted another little bun to pair with Ruby. His name is Willow and he’s a nethie like Pipkin but red eyed white colour. I have only met him a couple of times so far but he is very sweet and more of a cuddle bun than any of the rabbits I’ve owned before. He is getting on very well with Ruby :) I can’t wait to get to know him properly when I go home for Christmas.  

I’ll try to make a few more posts over the next couple of days about what else I’ve been up to since I got here (no promises though!). I only have one credit test next week which is a bit of a relief! If not I will update sometime over Christmas :)

Bye for now!

Lucy