Thursday, May 12, 2005

End of Freshman Year - Fall Semester Review

It's been quite a school year, these past nine months. I have completed the first year curriculum at UMN and been successful.

Last semester I took what seemed like an impossible number of credits (22.5). Some of it was review, some of it was new. Some classes were interesting, some seemed like a waste of time. Sadly, it wasn't everything that was new that was interesting, nor was everything that was repetitive useless and boring. We took the basic sciences: Gross Anatomy, Radiographic Anatomy, Biochemistry, Cells and Tissues, Nutrition. We also took some classes that were supposed to help prepare us to be vets in the future, namely Clinical Skills and Professional Skills. Animal Populations is the class that doesn't fit into any good category, where we learned about everything from breeders to dairy farms: very exciting, I assure you. Then we got to take some electives if we chose (and of course I did). I took Neonatology (with the requirement of being on Foal Team at the hospital Spring semester) and Preparing and Teaching Puppy Classes (with the requirement of teaching puppy classes between last semester and this coming December).

I remember feeling last semester like I both had no time, and that I was not busy enough. I was one of those overachievers starting sometime in high school (some say even before). Last semester my sole commitment was attending school. Granted, there was a lot of school to take up my time. But at the same time I was making friends, creating relationships with clinicians and professors in the vet school, and maintaining my sanity and my relationship at home. It was the first time that I didn't have a concurrent job or research position, I wasn't an RA (and thus was really, truly only in charge of myself), and I wasn't on a million committees and committed to everything and everyone.

In law school, they say that the first year is the hardest because they're trying to scare you. In vet school, they never stop wishing that everything was as easy as it was freshman year. With a maximum of one exam a week, it was really quite a nice deal that we had going.

So why didn't I get straight A's? Pretty simple I guess - I chose to make those extra relationships, stay sane, and develop the non-academic parts of my career instead. I wish I had a better GPA, but I've been told over and over again three things:
1. C=DVM
2. It's not what you know, it's who you know.
3. Everything and anything that you need to know, will be repeated over and over and over and over throughout the four years in school.

I was pretty proud of my first semester of vet school for the most part. I could have done better (and I had several good cries over those grades), I could have made better friends, I could have gotten to know the city better. But overall, I feel like I survived with room to spare, and never for one moment was I in any danger of not being asked back for Spring semester. Though the fact that I still felt like I didn't have any true friends in Minnesota would be a recurring theme in the Spring semester.

And the Spring semester I will write about another time, when it's not so late out.

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