We found out the official total number of people that we lost from our semester, and it's depressing. In third we had 127 people in our class. As of this semester we have 97. We lost at least 30, because I'm not sure how many people repeating 4th semester we gained. I have heard that 20 of that number is due to Virology alone.
So when I talk about how hard classes are or how scared I am about failing out and people back home kind of hem and haw about it or tell me I'm overreacting, I have to point to shit like this and go, "Nuh uh!" We lost 27 people from our class in 1st semester, I'm not sure how many in 2nd, and another 30+ in 3rd. These are not stupid people. These are not lazy people. And perhaps most glaringly, the most recent crop of students made it through rounds one and two of weed outs and still got nabbed.
This is a ridiculously difficult program and Ross is an unforgiving mistress when it comes to failing out. You fail two classes, you're done. Appeals rarely work. You fail you're gone, and $100,000+ more in debt than when you arrived. That's why I'm so scared. That's why I've been struggling with anxiety and panic attacks these last few months.
On the other hand, you're still there. If this degree were easy, everyone would have one. Try to remember the animals that are counting on you to understand what's wrong with them. My sweet diabetic could have lost her life to a vet who didn't remember that diabetic girlies need to be spayed regardless of glucose. I was only able to convince him to spay her by getting the textbook of veterinary endocrinology through interlibrary loan and showing him all the places where it says that's the one exception to the no-surgery rule for an out of control diabetic. Until then she was losing a pound a week and he was wasting my money on useless curves. You won't be one of those vets!!!!
ReplyDeleteWe actually haven't learned that one yet, and it's possible that he/she hadn't either. The body of knowledge is constantly changing. New editions of texts, continuously updated CE... And aside from that, it's nearly impossible to remember it all, even if you're amazing at your job. Granted, that's something that after so many curves and no improvement on insulin, your vet should have been devoting their spare time to literature reviews to try and find out why.
ReplyDeleteI stayed with him because my girl was his first intact female diabetic, but I left soon after because I felt that after I had brought up the spay and the research I'd started to do he didn't make an attempt to learn on his own. It's not like there aren't internal medicine specialists around that he could call. Also, he used dissolving stitches for the internal spay stitches because "steel ones are too much bother" and he only used one drainage tube for her 9 mastectomies because "dogs hate it and the owners hate them" and then had to go back in to add a second tube and a few days later the internal spay incision popped open and the bladder slipped through and couldn't empty so he had to go back in with steel stitches anyway. Just too many judgment calls that went the wrong way
DeleteOuch. "Dogs and owners hate them"? How about you actually talk to your client and find out what they'd prefer?
DeleteI made a point before surgery of telling him I'd previously handled two tubes after major surgery with another dog too. He was just being lazy.
DeleteRoss is a huge pressure cooker - I know so many people who had stress-related illnesses while there (including myself). The one thing that I reminded myself over and over - and it seemed to help - was knowing that for all the people that have to repeat or fail out, MORE students - the MAJORITY - make it and are terrific vets.
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