Friday, October 03, 2003
I Don't Think I Hate My Life. . .
Geez, this has been a tough week for most of us. First of all, there are a bunch of sicklies in our class, and in this little corner of the world, germs don't have much trouble finding a warm body with a stress-weakened immune system. Lately in class I hear more sneezing and hacking and phlegming than actual talking.
The sicklies (Jason, Rebecca and Kara) have to eat their lunch alone.
I've been studying with them all week, and I'd better not get sick!
In addition to the misery or fear of getting acute bronchitis, frustration and freaking out are commonplace. We are done with our first round of exams rolling into our second, and many folks were disappointed with their performance on the nuero exam, myself included. I did well on the practical part, but lousy on the written part. I don't think it was that difficult—I just didn't study the right stuff. Now today we had the Anatomy exams, written and practical, but I feel okay about those. But Tuesday we have the Renal Physiology exam. . .will it ever end?
Well, this is what we asked for; right? We all wanted to come to vet school, and here we are. So we should enjoy it. Only a little over 1300 days until graduation. . .so the end
is in sight.
This stuff is not impossible to learn, but it's no cake walk either--there's just so much information we need to learn in such little time. Yes, I feel disappointed after taking an exam that just whipped my a**, but then I have to think. . .is it really worth hating my life? Yes, I feel academics are important, and yes, I think its important to learn this stuff, but if you perform poorly on an exam or two, or even three or more, we still have more chances to pick up our grades. The world doesn't implode, your family and friends don't desert you, you don't suddenly become a horrible human being. There's absolutely no shame if you tried your best, and if in the long run you can understand and apply the material.
And I can understand why people are stressing out; much of our coursework is extremely difficult and fast-paced, even more so if you haven't heard of the concepts before. I've had classes like human physiology, cell biology and embryology before, so I have some general knowledge base to build from (and I'm still not doing as well as I could). However, if I hadn't had these courses before, I probably would be struggling big time right now.
Why am I going on about this? Because I feel terrible when I see my colleagues stress out to the point where they can't sleep, are making themselves sick, or are on the verge of hating their lives. I don't feel sorry for them or anything, I just feel bad that it happens. People shouldn't hate their lives, or dread the day ahead of them.
It's even worse when you can't making it through the day without coughing your lungs out every five minutes.
Stay away from me, you sicklies.
