Tuesday, February 22, 2005
What do you see in the upper right?
This new advertising program takes certain words and phrases from recent posts to generate ads for related products. So, due to my Friday post, ads keep popping up for products to treat a certain embarrasing infection. . .
So let's see if I can turn this around.
This blog is about veterinary school. Veterinary medicine, veterinarians, and a little about pets such as cats, dogs, horses, birds, parrots, parakeets, cockatiels, hedgehogs, hamsters, guinea pigs, reptiles, frogs, llamas, tropical fish, hissing cockroaches, sugar gliders, and all that. Also wildlife, wild animals, cows, pigs, zebras, lions, tigers and bears. And big hairless monkeys.
I need to buy some new scrubs, so how about some ads about that? Or stethoscopes? Or tablet PCs and other school supplies? Or medical dictionaries? Textbooks? Educational CD ROMs about horse anatomy?
I also like natural foods, camping, bicycling, playing guitar, painting, drinking beer, reading novels, and watching movies. I'd like to see ads for DVDs, sheet music, used books, art supplies, camping and backpacking gear, free recipes, cookbooks, spices, soup mixes, and all that crap.
Well, I'll see where this gets me. I just want to get rid of those dagnab ads for. . .treatments for cauliflower-like lesions of the private areas.
Stay tuned for a *real* post in the near future.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
(This reminds me that although I'm just
starting to empathize more with
D. Blue about "not letting complainers get to you,"
he's been dealing with this issue
for years. . .)
If parents cannot show responsibility or respect for teachers, what kind of example does that set? Kids should learn that it's okay to question authority and make a stand agains true injustice (where would we be without civil disobedience?), but they shouldn't be misled to believe that they can always blame someone else for their problems, and that yelling, threatening, and whining will give them power.
And parents should definitely stop kissing their kids asses, giving them the false impression that they are the center of the universe and will always get their way--because if kids carry these misconceptions into adulthood with them. . .I don't know. . .will they eventually get an ugly awakening, or will these squeaky wheels keep getting the grease?
Does complaning and whining impart power, in this day and age?
I'd sure like to know D. Blue's secret to dealing with these folks. I suspect it involves copious volumes of beer.
Friday, February 18, 2005
I'm Also the Class Tramp!
(Yay for me!)
Tuesday afternoon, the class got together to discuss clinical ophthalmology cases with the beloved Dr. Hamor.
While discussing a case of feline keratitis caused by a herpes virus, we talked about administering
oral lysine to keep the infection from spreading. The
topical antiviral we discussed, trifluridine, is a bit expensive, so I raised my hand and asked:
"Dr. Hamor, what about
topical lysine? When I get herpes on my lips, I just go to the drug store and buy a $2 tube of lysine ointment."
(You can see where this is going. . .)
After stating that he wasn't sure of the safety of using topical lysine on the eyes, Dr. Hamor took advantage of the opportunity to ask:
"So what are doing with herpes on your lips?"
And, as you'd expect, the classmate next to me elbowed me, and the whole class roared.
"COLD SORES!" I explained. "COLD SORES! ! !" and I proceeded to hit my classmate across the arm (sorry again, Jason).
Dr. Hamor continued with "Oh, never mind! I don't want to know! Too much information! T-M-I! ! !"
Feline Herpes vs. Cold Sores.
. . .Insert Foot Here
I am officially the class meanie. Yes, I'm a hardass, and I don't tend to be quiet about it.
Yesterday, during our 7 a.m. neurology exam, we were having technical difficulties with typos, et cetera, so the professor proctoring the exam had to keep interrupting the class to announce corrections. In addition, the professor who actually wrote most of the exam was not present to answer questions.
Since anticipation of this exam had been causing stress for the class for almost a month, these little typos caused a great deal of frustration amongst the already tightly-wound class.
As for me, I was tightly wound not about the exam, but about my classmates, who, in the preceding weeks, had made me believe I wasn't worrying
enough about the exam.
I've also had very low tolerance lately for a very small number of people in our class who've
consistently demostrated disrespectful,
whiny, and flat-out rude behavior towards our professors reagarding tests and quizzes (I guess I just expect better from veterinary students, or, as we call ourselves, professionals).
So what did I do with all this tension? I took it out on the wrong people. As people were coming to the front of the room to ask the professor questions about the exam, most were whispering their questions quietly, but others were being a little loud about it. So I had trouble concentrating on what was, I'll concur, a quite challenging (albeit
fair) exam.
So, when cuddly Mike M., a very nice guy, came up to the front with a question, I could hear every word, and at that point all I wanted was quiet. When he continued with his questions, I looked at him and said, loudly: "Mike--go sit down!"
When I realized he had already taken a seat next to the professor, I pointed my finger to the seat he came from and said, "No, over THERE!"
Mike is definitely NOT one of the rude-ies in our class, but I took my frustrations out on him anyway.
To top it off, when 2 more people came up to the front with questions, I could hear everything they said and thought their questions were ones that had already been answered to the whole class. . .so I muttered to myself--but out loud: "Just TAKE the TEST, PEOPLE! It's not that *effing* HARD!"
Yes, I cursed. And, once again, much louder than I thought. I was sitting in the front, and people in the back were chuckling. The classmate next to me drew more attention to my faux pas by yelling, "You need to CALM DOWN!" to which, of course, I responded with an annoyed roll of the eyes (sorry, Jason!).
So I apologize to Mike, to Jason, and all my classmates, and especially to my professor.
So. . . what am I going to do about my little tension problem? Yoga? A shrink? Massage? Aromatherapy?
I think I'm going to accept that fact that there are rude people even in populations of professional students who are supposed to be intelligent and mature, and if I don't accept that as par for the course,
I can become one of them. . .and express my frustrations at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in the wrong way, and at the wrong people.
And I
am going to schedule that massage. . .
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Eye, Aye!
Tuesday we had ophthalmology lab, so we once again we got to work with the cute doggies that the 3rd year students spayed and neutered (and yes, they are up for adoption--
Tiffani restrains this very tolerant puppy as Joyce rinses flourescein dye out of its eye (the orange dye is from the strip of paper in her right hand). Joyce will examine the cornea with a special light to see if there are any ulcers that picked up the dye.
Jim examines the retina of this playful black pup. The light in his right hand reflects off the back of the eye, and the lens in his other hand helps magnify the image.
Kim uses a magnifying loupe (like the ones jeweler's use) to examine the external parts of the eye: the lids, conjuntiva and glands, for inflammation and abnormalities.
.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
You know you're a nerd when. . .
. . . you get so excited about a new tecchie backpack that you have to blog about it.
I've been using my laptop more in class this semester, and I've been lugging it around in a regular backpack. The pack is high quality, but isn't made to carry a 7 pound computer and another 23 pounds of notes, texbooks, pens, lip balm, chocolate, Cold-Eeze, and other staples of the vet student lifestyle.
So while I stopped at the office supply store for notecards and a five-pound tin of
Royal Dansk cookies last night, I decided to drop a small fortune on a bag that can actually hold all my stuff.
I'm so glad I did.
It's got a special padded pocket for the computer, plus the remainder of the bag has more space than any backpack I've ever owned. There's a compartment just for texbooks and binders, with a sturdy divider to
further organize books, plus another deep comparment that's made for notebooks and folders. This pocket is deep enough to fit a few grapefruit (my usual 10 a.m. snack) and water bottle in addition to the notebooks!
And of course, there's compartments for my pens and gadgets, and two side pockets for miscellany.
The only downside: no lumbar padding. There's a waist belt, but no lumbar support. I'm a strong believer that if a bag is big enough to warrant a waist belt, it probably needs lumbar padding. So I tightened the waist belt and secured foam padding around it with electrical tape to make my own little lumbar "pillow."
Now it's the
perfect bag. (Let's just ignore the fact that it protrudes about four feet out from my back, exacerbating the already clumsy stumbling of a 5-ft runt.)
Note to MTD Bus Drivers:
I love you guys. You get me to school, usually promptly and consistently, when the weather is too crappy or I'm feeling too lazy to ride my bike.
That said, I have a favor to ask. When you pull up at the vet med buidling, please stop. And look to see if anyone wants to board the bus.
When it's cold out, people tend to wait for the bus inside, especially if the bus is running late, so please allow at least 30 seconds for these people to come out of the building and board the bus.
On a nice day, if you see people sitting on the bench or standing on the sidewalk outside the building, they may be waiting for YOU. Stop for them. Please.
That's all. Thank you.
