We got course syllabuses for all of our classes and found out that many times exams for several classes fall in the same week -so it's clear this program won't be easy. Kennel and barn duty schedules were posted although the dogs and cats won't come in for a few weeks, so until then we won't have to come in early to do that. Many students are coming in from far away -Chicago, Schaumburg, even Champaign! So, even though I'm coming from Aurora, I don't feel like I have the right to complain ...too much.
The school has sheep in. We got to halter them and give them fake pills with a balling gun. It wasn't all that easy! Dr Stein put a tube down one sheep's throat and let us smell the gas from it's rumen. It was pretty noxious. The rest was just anatomy, but we were told that next week we'd be drawing blood on them. It'll be the first blood draw for most of the students in my lab group. It's kinda nice because their jugular vein is so big. My first blood draw was a dog's front leg, so it was a much smaller target.
Since we don't have dogs and cats yet, we haven't done much hands-on stuff although we did inject some expired FeLV vaccines into oranges for practice. I've given injections before, so it was a little redundant, but many of the other students in class have only the 100 hours of experience shadowing that's required for entry into the program, so it was good practice for them.
Most teachers are giving us a lot of hand-outs. I'm not sure if that will continue, but if it does I have a feeling my little folder won't hold it all. We're being given printouts of the PowerPoint slides used in class with room to take notes, so if that continues I'm not sure I'll need to continue bringing notebooks. ...we'll see.
