Life of Vet Student - 2 days until Midterm week

If you're a first year vet student at Mizzou, life is hard this week. Everyone has been on edge...likely to break down at the slightest percieved insult. At least most of us has been that way... to help the non vet student understand I've heard and thought of many analogies:

1. You're thirsty...dying of thirst. And your trying to drink out of a fire hose.
   
2. you've trained all your life as a martial artist. You can break bricks with your pinky...and someone walks up behind you and shoots you.
3. Chromophobe is one of the cells found in the pituitary gland... it used to have granules of various content, but now it's empty and it's life is colorless (lack of granules leads to the cell refusing to take up stain).
4. Danan: Vet school is like you're trying to push a boulder up a mountain, but everytime it gets to the top.... Like Sisyphus.
5. Santana: Vet school is a huge monster...each day you go sacrifice yourself to appease its hunger.

So those are all fairly negative things. However, I'm feeling much better than when I started the week. My rather persistent cough is still around, but I seem to fall asleep easily enough. I passed (with a nice cushion) all of my quizzes and tests this last week. I made an a on my Developmental Anatomy exam which brings my anatomy average up to a comfortable C. Unfortunately the Anatomy lab exam average clause still worries me, but there's no reason why I can't bring my practical average up. Sometimes I think that I should just drink a glass of wine (or a shot of something) before going in. That darn buzzer that goes off every minute notifying the frazzled test takers its time to switch stations annoys the hell out of me. I think I could even do well on an anatomy practical, if I could just get over the anxiety. Panic answer-changing and just panic in general sunk my last practical score. I would have gotten a B if wasn't for the panic and nerves.

I just have to survive the 4 midterms this upcoming week. I'm still hopeful I'll get through all of those with flying colors. Luckily, I have the best, most supportive friends I could ask for here. We eat together, study together, work out together... They've solemnly vowed to get me through my Anatomy practical anxiety :) Haha...but I think God himself will have the most to do with that...not a shot of tequila or even my wonderful friends.

In other news, Chase is steadily working on his application for Mizzou engineering doctorate program. He's a 4.0 masters student so we're hoping and praying he'll get a fellowship here. Without the fellowship, he'll probably just have to get a job up here. I've talked to some friends, and they don't think it will be too much of a problem for him to find a job because of all the private research companies. Beth's husband will be switching jobs soon (making a lateral move within the company)..he's a chemical engineer who manages a lab focused on developing new waste water management techniques. They are keeping thier eyes open for a replacement, but aren't in any hurry. I'm sure this will all work out for the best even if he ends up working instead of going to school. He's fairly certain that the University of Arkansas would offer him A LOT more money than Mizzou would (Arkansas seems to have more funding for fellowships etc). His current thesis adviser wants him to do his doctorate work at UA so he can continue his current line of research. So maybe we'll end up back in Fayetteville after I'm done. Who knows!