So I have officially survived my first 2 weeks of my [hopefully] last semester as a college student. And I am not exactly looking forward to it. I'm taking 18 credits with my internship, so I have 4 classes, 3 of which have 2 parts. AKA Thats why I haven't been able to keep you all up to date. But that would change now. I'm starting to get the hang of everything.
This semester I've got Anesthesia/Surgery, Lab & Exotic Animals, Comp & Integritive Approaches, and Comp Review.
Anes/Surg is by far the hardest class. We get one week as an intro and then are expected to step right up and do everything perfectly. It is very stressful, but that's gonna be just like in a clinic so why not get used to the stress now? Last week I was Preanesthetist, so I gave the preanesthetic drugs and charted EVERY single thing that happened in the animal's record while recording heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and amount of oxygen every 5 minutes. What a way to start. Anyways, I survived, as you can see.
Lab & Exotic Animals (LEA) is a lot easier, and more fun. We get to play with rats, mice, guinea pigs, ferrets, rabbits, pigeons, parrots, and degus. Each student is also assigned an animal to be the primary student in charge. I was assigned a ferret named Tum-Tum. He's so fun! It's really fun playing with all 3 ferrets cuz they chase each other all over the lab room. The first week wasn't very exciting, but the second week we got out the guinea pigs. We performed physical exams, drew some blood, gave injections, and gave them a bath. It was pretty fun.
This semester I've got Anesthesia/Surgery, Lab & Exotic Animals, Comp & Integritive Approaches, and Comp Review.
Anes/Surg is by far the hardest class. We get one week as an intro and then are expected to step right up and do everything perfectly. It is very stressful, but that's gonna be just like in a clinic so why not get used to the stress now? Last week I was Preanesthetist, so I gave the preanesthetic drugs and charted EVERY single thing that happened in the animal's record while recording heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and amount of oxygen every 5 minutes. What a way to start. Anyways, I survived, as you can see.
Lab & Exotic Animals (LEA) is a lot easier, and more fun. We get to play with rats, mice, guinea pigs, ferrets, rabbits, pigeons, parrots, and degus. Each student is also assigned an animal to be the primary student in charge. I was assigned a ferret named Tum-Tum. He's so fun! It's really fun playing with all 3 ferrets cuz they chase each other all over the lab room. The first week wasn't very exciting, but the second week we got out the guinea pigs. We performed physical exams, drew some blood, gave injections, and gave them a bath. It was pretty fun.
Comp & Integrative Approaches focusses on alternative medicine and rehab for animals. We will be studying topics like acupuncture, aroma therapy, chiropractic, hydrotherapy, and homopathy. We will also be taking field trips and having guest speakers.
The last class is Comp Review, which prepares us for our certification exam in January. It basically sums up everything we have learned in our entire college life into 1 14-week course. It is pretty intense, but at least we aren't learning anything new! This class also allows students to have a primary animal (dog or cat). My first animal is a rat terrier cross names PeeWee. He is really cute and playful, but he's dog aggressive. So no playing with other dogs for him.
In addition to my 18-credit load, I am a part-time intern at an animal rehab center not to far from school, so a couple times a week I get to assist with the water treadmill, exercises, and restrain for alternative medicine procedures. It should be a great experience. Thats all so far, time to get to my homework now. If only it could do itself.
2 comments:
So where are you interning? Your blog didn't really explain it well. You've been talking about where you want to intern for like a year, so I'm curoius to where you ended up. Maybe this summer I could tag along a day and see what it's like?
Tum-Tum is an awesome name for a ferret!
Post a Comment