hello from TEXAS!

I have officially touched down in Texas and made it home in one piece, shockingly not jet lagged! So now that I am no longer in the fray of final (singular final by the way, which is somehow infinitely worse), I figured I’d finally give a recap of the last several months!

So first, the final! It is done! I think I’ve mentioned this previously but the amount of content is unlike anything from undergraduate. It is just an insane amount of information on any given day. In undergrad, I’d have a final for each class which would cover max 3 lectures a week for 3 months. Even then, a cumulative exam was rare. Here, I have one final that covers the entire term, which is 3-5 lectures every day, 5 days of week, for 12 weeks. So a lot of material. And if that wasn’t a challenge enough! The test is only 20 multiple choice questions and 1 short answer section divided into about 5-10 sub-questions. Plus, I only had 2 full days off before the exam to prepare. Who said vet school wasn’t hard?

Regardless, I did survive! It went about as fine as it could have. I did not completely crush it but I definitely got plenty of questions right and knew what was going on in most questions. So we’ll see! The exam is only 5% of my grade and lots of people from the program told us that they passed the year without passing these smaller exams. So, it’s done and the only way is forward!

But yeah, just 20 questions for the whole fall term—wild.

So, I feel a proper update is order since it’s been a minute since I’ve done one. I’m gonna go week by week with the major highlights and get you all caught up on the last 2 months.

The overview notes for the term are that I have unfortunately had to take a break from the soccer team because I have been some degree of sick for weeks and figured an hour practice on a wet and cold soccer pitch would not have been the best idea. I’m hoping either in the spring or next year, I can revisit the idea of being on the team! But, I managed to finish the term not sick! Especially a big win because several of my friends were dropping like flies with a cold the last week!

So! To the recaps!

Oct. 20- Oct. 26: A Feast with Friends

The big take away this week was that I got to meet up with some family friends for a really lovely dinner! We went to this excellent Asian-fusion restaurant called Tattu. We had a feast of food and all of it was incredible. We had fried rice, sushi (not me sadly :( this shellfish allergy sucks sometimes), and a fleet of food from the wok; garlic green beans, black pepper beef, and spicy chicken. Aside from the food being amazing, the company was excellent. It was just so nice to get out of my little bubble of campus and dorm and spend time with non-vet students! I had a really great time!!

Oct. 27-Nov. 2: Born with Teeth

The following week, my big outing was a little solo trip to the theater for a play! I went to go see “Born with Teeth”. It was a really interesting play. I went into with honestly very little insight on it outside of the general premise of Shakespeare and that Ncuti Gatwa was in it (from Sex Education, Doctor Who, and Barbie!) The play follows a young Shakespeare early in his career, specifically through the lens of his relationship with Kit Marlowe. The two are working together on creative projects while Marlowe discusses and tries to pull the young Shakespeare into his world of royal spies. The two have this intense chemistry, both as rivals and in this modern telling, something more romantic. It certainly brings the romantic intrigue and tension of any Bond or modern spy movie. The script is a sea of double entendres and innuendos, as is only fitting a play about Shakespeare. But the political commentary was surprising! I had expected the flirtatious aspect of Marlowe and Shakespeare—it’s right on the cover of the playbill. But the play talked a lot about the surveillance state of the 16th century. At the time, the contention between Catholics and Protestants was at a peak and spies were rampant to uncover who was who. There was deep distrust in every direction. Given the modern and queer lens placed on the two poetic rivals, there is an interesting underlying commentary on closeted relationships and the ability to live authentically and out-loud. The political tension is only ever a looming threat but never completely at center stage, bar a few moments, but captured the distinct difference in Shakespeare and Marlowe’s characters. Both trying to survive but going about it in different ways, moving divergently but yet so enthralled and tethered to the other despite it threatening their lives. It was interesting! Very steamy and flirtatious but yet maintained a serious tone with deep character studies and poignant political commentary. There’s more to unpack but that’s the briefest of my thoughts right now!

This week was also Halloween but I didn’t want to go out and pub hop. Instead, I stayed in with some friends and watched Twitches and ate candy.

Nov. 3- Nov. 9: Sick Week :(

Unfortunately, this week I was out almost all week with a brutal cold and cough. I stayed on dorm all week and had to miss a ton of lectures and an abdominal dissection of a dog and a rabbit. Apparently, the rabbit dissection smelled terribly. Unsurprising, given that rabbits are hind-gut fermenters so if the cecum is punctured, then all that lovely fermented food is able to release its pungent smells. Not so sad to miss that one I think. After about a week and a lot of sleep, I finally felt better.

Nov. 10-Nov. 16: Barns & Country Music

We had our first trip out to Potter’s Bar and the RVC barn! It was lessons in handling for cows, sheep, and dogs. The farm is pretty cool! They have an operational dairy farm and there is fresh milk and eggs available for purchase in the little shop there. I also forget how HUGE dairy cows are compared to the average beef cow. They are just so tall and bony. And because the dairy calves are often separated and bottle fed, and the cows handled daily—they are so unfazed by people. Moreover, they actually will demand pets despite being about 1500 lbs. That all being said, they are cute though. We also learned how to properly tip sheep this day. It is not the easiest thing in the world. To tip a sheep you have to first catch it, hold its jaw in one hand and keep a hand on its hip, then twist its neck to its shoulder while trying to push it’s hind end in the opposite direction. The goal is for it to trip over its own back feet and fall. Then, you can sit it up on its rump and hold its front hooves while you do the exam. It can be a challenge, especially as the sheep get more stressed or more stubborn with time. We worked with yearling ewes so they weren’t even full size. This was also our singular day to practice ahead of our handling exam in December. We also got to play with some staff dogs which included a mother-daughter cocker spaniel duo, a lovely German short-hair pointer, and a very stubborn beagle. It was great. The only bummer on the day was that I had to be up by 5 to catch the 7 am bus and we got back to the dorm by like 8 pm. So just a long day!

We did get a day off this week because the other half of the class had their handling day at the farm. I took the day to finally go and see some greenery in the city and wandered around Primrose Hill and Hampstead Heath. It was much needed after being locked away in my dorm the previous week when I was sick. Plus, we’d reached the point in the semester where I was so sick of seeing nothing but my dorm or the RVC buildings.

The other big highlight this week was seeing Tyler Childers at the O2 Forum! I’ve already shared the gallery of my photos, if you want to check it out. I went with several friends of mine and we sat all the way up in the nosebleeds. But the show was really fun! If you haven’t listened to Tyler Childers before, I highly recommend. He’s got a very bluegrass, new-age folk sound and an incredibly lyricist. His newest album is called “Snipe Hunter” but all of his work is excellent. If you need a few good first songs to wet your feet to Tyler Childers, try “Lady May”, or “Shake the Frost” for a more ballad moment, or “Charleston Girl” and “Dirty Ought Trill” for something a little more lively. He was also excellent live. I really recommend!! And it was just so nice to get to a concert again.

Nov. 17-Nov. 23: Arsenal Stadium, Aleksiah, & Adventures in Abducted Antiquities

One concert wasn’t enough though. The following week, I headed to another concert! This time, at a much smaller venue called “The Lower Third”. It’s tucked in this alley in Soho and fits only about 200 max people. I saw an artist called, Aleksiah, perform here! She’s got a great sound, very fun pop that sits between MUNA and Audrey Hobert. I brought my mini camera and got some great pictures so hopefully I will post the album soon.

Then, my best friend came in town for the next week and a half! We rented an Airbnb in Islington and getting out of my shoebox of a dorm was exactly what I needed. We laid low the first day because she came in the day before my practice exam. The practice exam is supposed to give us a good foundation of what to expect for a big single final exam at the end of term. We take the test at Arsenal Stadium, which is so strange to me. We basically all sit at long tables set up in the middle of a big restaurant/dining area in the venue. It’s fine? The practice exam went fairly easily and afterwards, we all went out to a near by pub for a celebratory pint and pizza!

With my friend in town and the exam finished, the weekend was all about getting around the city! It was so nice to get a change of scenery, try some new restaurants, all with great company. We tried a Korean restaurant I’d been wanting to try for weeks called Bonga. 10/10. We ended up going on a pub-crawl on Saturday with some friends from the program so I made sure my friend could see British pub culture first hand. On the way back from the pubs, we saw a wild fox in the middle of the street! I forget that apparently foxes are everywhere in London. They consider them vermin here basically. Like having rats in your trash. Or feral cats. Except bigger.

(We end up using a lot of cadaver foxes for anatomy lab since they are so common in England and are closely related to dogs. It’s not exactly my most favorite thing about vet school but it is a really helpful learning tool. )

Anyway! That Sunday, my friend and I visited the British Museum! We had talked about it and agreed that we wanted to see everything the British stole. It’s a huge museum and it was mostly just an aesthetic backdrop for a several hour-long yap session. We walked and talked and occasionally read an info plaque and pointed out something cool to the other. It was so much fun!

We also wandered around Soho that night for dinner and to scope out shopping for later that week.

Nov. 24-Nov. 30: Thanksgiving Steak Frites > Thanksgiving Turkey

During the week, I had to go back to lectures but my friend wandered about the city. We’d meet and go out to dinner and do any other shopping we wanted in the evenings. I bought a new pair of boots and a new dress while taking advantage of Black Friday sales before the crowds rushed in on the actual Friday! Apparently, Black Friday starts on the like Monday before. My friend bought some great souvenirs and jewelry.

It was also so incredibly nice to have someone visiting over Thanksgiving. I was bummed not to be home and see the family (and get to go to the big party they were hosting) but I had such a great time drinking wine and eating steak at a cozy French restaurant in Marylebone with one of my best friends. Literally could not have asked for anything better.

I purchased the light brown dress (I’m obsessed with it!). And the black motoboots! My friend brought home chocolates to her family.

Dec. 1 - Dec. 7: I do the DOPs

Once my friend boarded her flight back to the US, it was time to turn my focus on to the last month of the term. The first big obstacle: DOPS. Direct Observation of Procedural Skills. This exam is to evaluate our handling skills and determines us safe to go on placements with the species in question. The exam isn’t graded necessarily. It just it to determine safe/not safe and there are several opportunities to resit the exam throughout the year. You have to pass to proceed to the next year but no one has ever failed every resit and not progressed in the program due to DOPS issues. Also, going into it, we were told that roughly 1/3 of the class will fail one or all of the first round of DOPS. Kind of daunting. This sitting was for dogs, cows, and sheep. The thing that had everyone really nervous was the sheep exam, myself included. You have 5 minutes to catch and tip the sheep and do a quick exam. Mess up on any step? Fail. And as mentioned previously, we’d only been at the barn and practiced once, a month prior.

My DOPS didn’t exactly go how I’d like. I did managed to tip my sheep!! Which was a huge win! But I made very dumb mistakes on all three stations. A lot of it boiled down to just the stress of being quietly observed with a professor with a clipboard and knowing that even the tiniest mistake will lead to a “Not Safe” determination. For example, I didn’t check the hind hooves of the sheep during my exam. I failed/was determined “Not Safe” for the sheep station. I will resit and redo it in March so it’s fine but it did suck. As for the other two stations, I think resits are in May. I won’t be making the same silly mistakes twice.

That’s the thing that’s a big adjustment about RVC. There is a lot of pass/fail testing with several resit attempts. And it’s not the kind of pass/fail but really you should all only ever pass. Failing and re-sitting is incredibly common and not a bad thing. It’s a different mindset. It’s learning to be okay with mistakes and pushing yourself to grow from every single one. Even this term’s final exam. It’s difficult and not uncommon to not pass. But, you can fail this exam and pass the year because it’s only 5% of the grade. It’s an opportunity to test how you learn, how you handle tests, and give you the grace to pick yourself up if it doesn’t go well and take on the next one with a little more confidence.

Dec. 8-13: A New Meaning to Overpriced Mexican Food

After DOPS, it became grind time. The final exam was on the 19th and though there was still lectures going on, it was time to focus up and study. I have found my new favorite study spot; a cute little cafe down the street called The Good Mews. I spent almost every day I could here working on reviewing all the lectures from the term. Like I started this recap, it is so much content.

At the end of the week, my friends and I decided that a good margarita was in order as a reward for all the studying. We tried a place in Camden and well…So, the tacos were good. We almost all got al pastor and it was good. I won’t deny it. The margarita was pretty fine too. However, for only 2 small tacos (on the little corn tortillas) and a tiny glass of a margarita, it was THIRTY (30) DOLLARS. A robbery. In case anyone forgot that London is expensive!

Dec. 14-21: Banana Bread, Bao & Bye

The following week (the last of the term!) consisted of almost exclusively studying. We had lectures until Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday were free. Then, the exam was on Friday afternoon. I spent the week at my favorite cafe, The Good Mews. I got my daily matcha with a slice of chocolate banana bread and worked away. Since there was simply not enough time to review every lecture from every unit, I tried to focus on what I thought would be the most relevant and would be built upon the most and have the most interconnections, ie. virology with immunology, etc.

The exam went…fine. Like I said in the intro, I don’t think I completely failed but I definitely didn’t crush it completely. I definitely got plenty right. And I definitely got several wrong. So, we’ll see! Regardless, the only way is forward from here. I feel like studying for this exam taught me a lot about how I want to tackle my notes and studying during the next term. It also highlighted how important it is to stay on top of notes! Playing catch-up is a nightmare and once you’re behind, it’s hard to ever get caught back up. So, hopefully I can take a little time over the break to finish catching up and organizing my notes ahead of the spring term. I hope to get a little extra footing that way and take on the next term on a strong foot and with a better sense of how I want to study and tackle lectures.

After the exam, we went out for celebratory pints again. The next day, my friend group and I went out for bao at a place in Coal Drop Yards. I had some steak and rice and a brisket bao. Pretty good! I went home and finished packing. I boarded my flight the next morning and started the long trek home! After a 9.5 hour flight to Austin and a 3.5 hour drive back to Corpus (complete with the requisite stop at Whataburger!), I made it home!!

Now, I’m home and enjoying seeing family, playing with my dogs, and eating good food! I hope you all are doing the same these holidays!! Oh, and happy New Year!

I’m hoping to work on a few fun essays so you may see more of me before I classes kick off. I have a whole document of fun facts I want to write about and share. Despite the craziness of school, I managed to finish 2 books; Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth and Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan. I have the drafts of my book reviews on them that I want to polish up and share. I also have my photos from the Aleksiah concert to finish editing and post. So! Lots of fun things to work on!

Until then!

Love,

Sam

Term 1 Recap

A Weekend in Edinburgh