Third year has been royally kicking my ass. Seriously, I have no idea how I have made it through this year without failing something or bursting into tears in class (There have been major tears at home, but I have held it together in public). Advice: Stay organized. As someone who is TERRIBLY unorganized, I am really struggling managing classes, labs, tests, assignments, surgeries, extracurricular's, family, work, and friends.
I think another factor of stress is that we have started to think about rotations. After our third year exams we do an 8 week externship at a mixed animal clinic then head into 30 ish weeks of clinical rotations in our stream. OVC offers Small Animal, Equine, Food Animal, and Rural Community (Mixed) streams. For each there are "core" rotations that HAVE to be fulfilled, stream priority internal electives, and external electives. It is a bit more complicated than this, but I will try to keep it simple.
My plan is to stream food animal. My cores include anatomical pathology, primary care (communications), food animal therio, diagnostic pathology, ruminant farm service, swine health, and 6 weeks of approved external large animal practice at local clinics.
I have to rank the following by priority. These are my stream priority electives. We will get 4 out of the 11. Fish health, poultry health, beef health, small ruminant health, swine industry, swine production dairy nutrition, problem solving in dairy, Heartland dairy practice, and ruminant surgery. We do not get guaranteed our top picks but the computer does its best to schedule us in the highest rated possible. There are limited spots in these so its tough. I could rank something number one, but if four other students may get it. As a rough idea, my following rankings are going to be:
1 - Dairy Health
2 - Ruminant Surgery
3 - Problem Solving in Dairy
4 - Small Ruminant Health
5 - Poultry Health
6 - Heartland
7 - Dairy Nutrition
8 - Beef Health
9 - Fish Health
10 - Swine Production
11 - Swine Industry
Swine is last, not because I don't like it, but because I did not take the prereq so I am not eligible to take it. I took the poultry prereq instead. This may change asI think about it... not sure. Small ruminant and beef require letters of application. I didn't get my beef one in because I am more interested in dairy at the moment, but I will be handing in my small ruminant application.
As far as electives go, we have some OVC ones that we can choose, as well as being able to pick our own. I can go to a clinic, university, shelter, zoo, anywhere really, so long as there is a vet that will mentor me for 40 hours minimum per week. I have been looking into some places in Michigan and around Guelph. I haven't had time to firm anything up yet, with the endless class, but it is on my to do list. The OVC ones I am interested in are Green Meadows at Michigan State, large animal medicine, large animal surgery, another dairy health, another small ruminant health, mixed animal anesthesia, equine primary care, and vet business management. We will be ranking them in March so I have some time. My schedule won't be released until April.
We also recently got approached about NAVLE prep courses. North American Veterinary Licensing Exam - our boards. We will write in Nov/Dec. There are two main prep companies. VetPrep and Zuku Review. Both offer 6 months of access, practice questions, review material, and justifications for questions. Both are about $300. It is HIGHLY recommended that we take one of them. I am leaning towards VetPrep. But I have until May to decide. The NAVLE website will also sell practice tests, which again are recommended, for $50 each. The test is around $1200. This is not going to be cheap.
But at least I will be working this summer.... NOPE! I will be doing my externship. Hello student debt shovel, let me dig this hole a little deeper!
And my final mind burden has bee housing. I want to move into a different apartment with the boyf but it is a little complicated. The apartment landlord can't tell me sooner than 60 days before if I get accepted for the place. I applied in October and have spoken with her, but she won't know if she has availability until May. I need to give my landlord 60 days notice. I plan on living at home for my 8 week externship so I do not need my apartment. The boy's lease is up beginning of May and is a year contract, so he won't be signing it and will need to move his stuff out. So I have a choice. Move out May 1st, put our stuff in a storage bin for May/June, get the apartment July or Aug 1st, move in. OR Keep my room until the end of june even though I won't be living there, store his stuff in it, and move in to the apartment July or Aug 1st. The problem is, what if there is not an apartment available... Then I will be homeless. And I will have to be apartment hunting in the beginning of July, when my rotations start. So you see the dilemma. The boy wants me to keep my room just in case. My parents do not want me spending this crazy amount of money and want me to move out ASAP. I am not sure what I want. I just want to have some certainty in my near future.
Hopefully everything will figure itself out. Sometimes it actually does.But until then I am going to lose sleep over it, stress eat, and drink wine. Sounds like a plan.
