First prac of the year.

Damn. I've been sneezing pretty much non-stop for the past hour. Don't know why these few days I feel like I'm going to come down with flu at night, but by morning it's gone. Not that I have anything to complain about its disappearance. Been eating medicine on and off but that can't continue like this? Strange. I think I'm eating pretty well and sleeping the same number of hours back in Singapore too.

Had my first practical class of the year, and it happens to be a Small Animal Medicine rotation for me and some other students. All the students in the 4th year are split into small groups of ~10 and put through different practical components through a rotation system. Anyway, so we put on our light blue clinical coat (reminded me of my secondary sch uniform) and equipped ourselves with stethoscope, penlight, thermometer, pen and stopwatch, and off we went. Considering it's our first Small Animal prac, it was introductory as expected, and then some of us went into a small conference room to talk about cases. Though we had a very nice vet/lecturer conducting the talk, overall it was still quite like a blow in the face. We jumped straight into discussing some clinical case examples, and everything that we ought to have learnt but have forgotten stings. Especially when he suddenly requested for us to each give a possible cause of polydipsia/polyuria. How the hell do I remember? For the umpteenth time this week, I wish I had read more extensively.

Following an hour of that, we then proceeded to a room to palpate the hospital greyhounds. These were very docile gentle creatures, and they were standing there patiently for us to prod them all over and manoveur their body parts around. Anyway, a lady vet then went through the steps of proceeding with a normal physical examination, and basically I just can't remember them all, cuz she went through it so fast. I suppose they expect us to know these things already. The poor dogs.. each of us were just tugging at their skin here and there trying to find the lymph nodes. Somehow I feel, that perhaps everyone was just learning the skill of touching somewhere and then go "ahh.. yeah, yep, I think i feel it" with the right expression on the face to accompany that.

When u think about it.. 2 years seem pretty short. While all these skills have not been acquired yet, the general impression is that we OUGHT to have already picked up somewhere. which may be true for certain people but surely not everyone.