It seems as though everyone around me is having a really tough time coping with all the stresses of second year. It’s as though the class is collectively at wit’s end we’re all annoying each other with silly little things. Interestingly enough, I don’t feel that stressed. I like to say that I don’t freak out. That’s the technical term for it: freaking out. I’m afraid that sometimes my lack of “freaking out” can be misconstrued as not caring. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I am so painfully optimistic that I keep saying “it’s OK, it’ll get better. We’ll make it.” over and over and amazingly enough, it’s been helping me to avoid the “freak out.” However, I’ve never had to reassure myself this many times in one day that I can succeed. I’ve been told that second year is the emotional pit of veterinary school and I’m beginning to agree.
It is really hard to memorize information on 200+ notecards. It is really hard to even begin to study when you see the stack of 200+ notecards and measure it with a ruler and get a value greater than 1 inch. After all, when you’re writing said notecards, you don’t ever really see them all stacked up neatly until you’re done. I memorized as much as I could, took my bacteriology exam, and switched my mindset to pathology for my next exam this week.
I was thinking about pathology and how amazingly similar veterinary school is to a severe, chronic, multifocal, suppurative encephalitis. Each course takes up a little space in your brain. It starts as a pinpoint of a fact or idea you’ve never heard. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is quite resistant to a lot of antibiotics. There…that’s my pinpoint for the beginning of my bacteriology knowledge. As you learn more and more, the infection around that little point spreads to adjacent tissue until you have a full blown abscess of bacteriology knowledge. However, before bacteriology can invade your whole brain, you wall off the infection. We’re not all cut out to be bacteriologists, after all. But the whole cycle starts afresh when you attend another lecture. Rabies virus belongs to the Rhabdoviridae family. Commence virology knowledge abscess formation, but be sure to wall it off before immunology lecture starts.
In closing, I would just like to point out that I’ve compared learning to a pus-producing brain infection. Second year is most certainly addling my better judgment. Now I’m off to study pathology.
