Monday 26 September 2011

Halloween Costume

okay, I know it's early but I went with my housemate to Value Village today and may have spent 53$ on stuff for my Halloween costume... all I am missing is the hat!

My housemates and I are going as Alice in Wonderland characters. I am the Mad Hatter, we have an Alice, White Rabbit, Chesire cat, and the Queen of Hearts. We are making our costumes, making it a more human version of each. I was the only one super gonghoe to go today but everyone's juices got flowing once we were in the store. Obviously make-up, hair, and the infamous hat are still to come but I thought I'd give a sneak peek. This is also the first time I used my new webcam to take pictures... it's actually not horrible quality.



AMAZING SHOES!!!!!


AMAZING VEST!!!!! with the gloves in the pocket!

Couldn't say no to the tie!




Mad Hatter <3
Yay!

Sunday 25 September 2011

Dear Lord, it's Week 4 already!!

Time is flying... I wish it would slow down because these have been the best three weeks of my life by far!!! I want to savour them...

Professional Welcoming Ceremony:
Fantastic morning of a whole bunch of veterinary organization representatives and our Dean telling us how awesome we are and welcoming us officially into the veterinary profession. The moment I walked up on the stage and they gave me my lab coat and stethescope made it all seem real. WOW! I can't even believe I made it here. <3



Being piped in by a Scottish Bag Piper in Alphabetical order! Everyone dressed up nicely, very weird to see the people I party so hard with can actually clean up! Hahaha. Everyone looked fantastic!

All Official!!!
Had lots of family and friends wandering around, mothers crying, people hugging, absolutely EVERYONE smiling!!! Such a great feeling! I was lucky enough to have my parents and aunt come to support me. They have helped me get here so I was glad they got to see me up there! OVC also had it's 150th Anniversery Fall Fair afterwards full of games and activities. Way to go OVC for being the oldest vet school in North America!!!

Anything But Clothes Party at OTS:
So we had a pub crawl that was an ABC theme. If you don't know, the rule is to dress in things that are not traditionally used as clothing. We all looked great! Not everyone from my class came, just those in the frat. Everyone was really creative, and managed to look hot in platis bags, beer boxes, shower curtains, duct tape, vet wrap, twister mats, envelopes, post it notes... you name it we were wearing it!! We played some sweet games. In one we had to 'Suck-and-Blow' a card down the line of people on your team, then run to a pitcher of beer full of straws and chug the pitcher dry!! Another was we had 60 cc syringes and the team had to line up and one by one get 60 cc's of beer shot into their mouth... first team to empty their pitcher doing this wins! hahaha SO MUCH FUN!! messy... but fun!

Here's some creative costumes:
Duct Tape Tuxedo and our American classmates in Canadian Flags!!

Matching 'Simpsons' Sleeping bags!!!

Horse feed bags! (Leave it to the vet's to think of that!!)


My friend in a sexy Biohazard bag!! And I in some scarves and hats that I sewed together.
The strap is a tensor bandage!
 Hockey:
Played my first game with our team tonight. The Co-ed 2015 Stags vs. 2014 Elephants. We lost 4-3 but man was it close! We played very well together considering that 1/3 of us (including our goalie) had never played hockey before! So much fun. And what a work out! We play a regular intramural season within the University of Guelph, then we do an OVC Challenge Cup in the Winter Semester!!! Last year a very dedicated prof (and a player on the OVC Prof team) learned how to WELD so that he could make us a 'Stanley Cup'. It is engraved with ALL of the winning teams from 1932, which was the first year they had a Challenge Cup tournament. It looks AMAZING!!!! I hope that we can get good and have a chance at winning this year! It would be an honour to get the Stags up there!

Speaking of the Scarlet Stags... We chose a mascot!
OVC 2015 Scarlet Stags
Can't wait for our merch to come out!!!!

School:
Ok, I guess there has been some school in between all of our tomfoolery! We started our dissections in Anatomy last week. Dog, Cat, Sheep, Calf, and Horse. The small animals can lie on the table, but the large animals have to be hanged from the ceiling.... which makes dissecting difficult. There is also other species' prosected and on display, but our prof and TAs do those. The OVC has quite an osteology museum, which is not only impressive, but makes comparative learning very easy. The department even has their own BUG BOX (a box of flesh eating bugs to clean of skeletons)!!!! We got to see an Orka skull almost cleaned completely... have to be careful none escapse when you lift the lid though! Histology is actually not so bad... yet. I know I will feel VERRRY differently about that soon enough. We have motored through epithelium, glands, nervous tissue, and muscle tissue... Labs are, well, boring... but he goes over every cell type and slide very thoroughly so if you pay attention, it makes studying MUCH easier. For physiology we are still on Neuro... and plan to be there until the end of October. In Clinical Medicine, we have ALREADY finished our Small Animal lectures and are now on our Large Animal ones. We have learned the theory behind history taking, building a problem list, a close and far physical examination, and a differential diagnosis (which obviously we won't be good at til we are in fourth year) so in our labs in a couple weeks we will start practicing on the teaching animals, doing TPRs (Temp - Pulse - Resp Rate), checking eyes, ears, nose, mouth, feeling joints and lymph nodes... blah blah blah. You all know what I mean. Health Management is boring because we are on Epidemiology... which I have taken. And the notes are EXACTLY THE SAME!! Very tempting to not go, but I am trying to be a good student... no promises. No Biochem or Genetics yet. Art of Veterinary Medicine (AVM) is again, boring. We are doing animal welfare, which again I have taken, and again the notes are very similar, so again trying to stay motivated and go to class.

Now we also hae some mandatory stuff outside of class that we have to do; Teaching Animal Enrichment (TAE), Primary Healthcare Center (PHC) shifts, and 4th Year Shadowing. Now I have not done any of this yet, so once I do I will fill you in on the details. Unfortunately we were told that their is a STRICT no camera in the hospital rule, so no pics of actual cases, but I will try to do my best and get what I can.

So until next time my furry little friends!!!! Hope you all are enjoying the Winter shows coming Back! Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy, Community, Revenge, New Girl, PanAm, How I Met your Mother, and The Office!!!! w00t. I totally study....

Friday 16 September 2011

Feeling a bit tired this... aft...

Ok so definately had a BLAST partying with the OTS members last night. We had a "rewards" night full of free booze because we pledged on Tuesday. SO MUCH FUN!! But I am hurting today... I went to my AM Anatomy Lab but I am skipping Epidemiology... Lab was good because it was just osteology so no formaldehyde... thank god!

One more event tonight, CVSA Cornroast, then I am taking a break from partying for a while!!!

Haha who am I kidding!!!

Monday 12 September 2011

One Week In... And I am Still Alive!!!

HELLO! Omg... what a week!
I have been having a blast so far but we are kept nice and busy the first couple of weeks with LOTS of organizing and extra-curricular stuff. Doesn't help that my birthday was this weekend so we had those celebrations to organize too! Let me walk you through what has been happening so far...

Day One:
We got name tags and found out who was going to be in our practice groups. Lots of awkward, nervous, excited energy in the room! It definately took a couple hours for us all to settle in and start to get to know each other. Class introductions and free lunch! We all went out for beers that night to relax and form friend groups. We had our class picture taken too!

Class of 2015!!!

Week One:
So lots of Department Heads, and Deans spoke at us. We learned the DVM curriculum, necessary protective wear orders, had a class-wdie pizza and trivia lunch, had a Frat Welcoming BBQ, did group bonding excersises, worked through our Myers-Briggs types, voted on a mascot (WE CHOSE SCARLET STAGS!!!), had an open hockey game to learn how to play hockey, went out as a class to the local Country bar, toured the campus, blah blah blah. Orientation was fun but I was glad to start moving into lectures by Thursday. We started out easy; professor intros, exam weights, course objectives. All easy stuff. Actually, the only difficult part of these two days was figuring out who I was going to sit with. We all just met so a seating pattern was tough. What ended the week off perfectly was the Frat's Pub Crawl on Friday night, themed Anything But Clothes. What a great way to REALLY get to know your classmates! We had so much fun and everyone made such creative costumes!

So what else does September have in store?
TONS. I have so much going on already:
- Coed Hockey team
- Candidate for Class President
- Volunteer for Wild Ontario
- Frat Pledge and Rewards night
- Ruminant Field Services sign up
- Rabies Titre Clinic
- Professional Welcoming Ceremony
- My Cousin's Baby Shower
- A shit load of classes and labs
- CVSA Cornroast
- Teaching Animal Orientation
- Lab coat and Coverall Distrubution
- A new boy that I have no time to go on dates with :( haha

So you can see that I will be kept very occupied. Hopefully this will teach me to be well organized or else I will spiral into a crazy pit of death... I do have more pictures, but I can't find my camera cord so you all have to wait! Wish me good luck in tomorrow's class predident elections and in my OTS frat pledge night!!!

Sunday 4 September 2011

Day Before The Big Day

I start vet school TOMORROW!!!
And of course, inspite of my best efforts, nothing is organized. I moved back to Guelph last night, and of course, forgot stuff at home... Now my parents have to figure out when to bring it all to me because I do not have a car here... I have one day to get it all together.

I found out I am in Group 6 (Section B) which means I have 8 new best friends! Haha our group just gets to share lab specimens and for group projects, we all have to work together. Its just a way to organize us because not every person can have a calf, horse head, dog, cat, and sheeep to disect to themselves. Also there is only so much space in the histology lab room. Even so, what I have heard from upper years is that there is a sense of commradery between the groups, you end up becoming good friends which is great when you have 113 new class mates to meet. I am meeting them tonight at a pub, all of which was organized by our phase 2 mentors. These mentors will be helping us through the first week of school, and what is cool is I know them. I have a feeling we are going to have a great frosh week!!!

Classes don't start until Thursday, but they have jam packed our first three days with talks and fun activities. I will fill you all in later about the details. There is a OTS BBQ and party this week!! Frat parties always rule! Our first time on the ice for hockey is also on Thursday. I have all of my equipment and practiced at the free skate this weekend so I can't wait to start playing hockey. The season doesn't start yet, but we have organized some shinny to practice getting the team sorted out and positions organized. I want to play left wing because it is a position where you have low responsibility but if you are in the right place during a play, you can be very useful.

I hope to get some pictures up of our orientation so please stay tuned.