Day 2!

One interesting thing I have noticed during all the talks by vets at orientation. At least half of the vest said they ended up doing something different than they wanted to do when they started school. (examples: dog & cat -> birds, small animal -> large animal, practice -> teaching)

We started out today with breakfast again, but I ate beforehand to avoid potentially bad food and the line. At 8:30 we had a couple more vets present cases to us... for fun I guess. Then at 9 we spend thirty minutes going over policies and procedures in our "Professional Student Handbook." The only thing that was fun about that was that we have an "audience response system," where we each have a remote thing with which we can answer multiple choice questions. The fun part was choosing the blatantly wrong answer, like in "which of the following is true according to your handbook?" Answer: "each student is allowed one unethical act during their four years in vet school." Some people also chose E, which was blank.

At 9:30 we heard from reps from several student organizations, including SCAVMA (Student Chapter of American Veterinary Medical Association; I am already a member), a class BBQ put on by the second years every year, Open House (the huge vet school open house they have every year, which is super-cool and totally student-run), and Pet Fare. Pet Fare is a place open during our lunch where we can buy insanely cheap Purina and Hill's pet food. The highest price is $9 for a 40# bag. !!!

At 10 we were released for 45 minutes to peruse the tables in the hallway set up by a bunch of student clubs/organizations. I was really interested in some of them: the Student Veterinary Emergency & Critical Care Society (SVECCS), the Pathology Club, and the American Veterinary Society for Animal Behavior. The cool thing about SVECCS, besides that the president is Kimberly Martin, a HP grad, is that they have programs called "SA ICU Program" and "Large Animal Emergency Team." In these, you follow a 4th year around during their emergency-type rotation for a 5-hour shift (7-midnight) about once a month. But you actually get to participate to a certain extent. I'd really like to do the large animal one, since I already have a fair amount of small animal emergency experience. During this time I also got a bunch of free stuff, like a water bottle, some pens, candy, cat food, highlighters, and colored pencils.

I didn't need the whole 45 minutes to look at the tables, so I went to try and find the locker room. I couldn't though, but a nice vet student passing by helped me out. When I asked her, she didn't just tell me - she walked me into it, gave me some advice on which lockers to pick, and was generally very nice. It made me happy to think that the upperclassmen are like her! I hope they all are, anyway.

At 10:45 we talked about the honor code, then had a presentation from the Texas Veterinary Medical Association and got a free medical dictionary from them. Lunch was at noon, catered from Blue Baker. I made sure to be in the front of the line this time, which resulted in me being all done at 12:15 with 45 minutes to kill. I chatted with Christi, the girl from the organic labs, and her friend from physiology. After lunch we had a never-ending talk from the computer guy. We were all restless at that point and he talked about 5 times as much as was necessary. But finally we got released, and now it is the weekend!

I'm about to go to a little get-together with, well, four people from my World of Warcraft guild (one is starting grad school here in Comp Sci, her husband obviously lives here too, and a guy from Austin and a guy from Huntsville are driving in). In my mind, I'm seeing Atsukana the hunter, Istavon the mage, Doune the warlock, and Dugloth the warrior. =PSo we'll see how it goes. Matt gets in tonight to visit, and he will rescue me if necessary.