Clinics: round one!

I'm all moved into my apartment in Urbana, Illinois. It's a nice one bedroom in a pretty nice complex. I have a pool just outside of my building (not that I'll have time to use it). Of course my bedroom is as pink, orange and yellow as it was in St. Kitts.

It helps in feeling like home. It certainly calmed Mama down when she was so anxious at the noise and bustle of move in day when I pulled out her blankets.

Urbana is that mix of small town and metropolitan city that I'm used to in college towns. And I've got a Meijer again! If you're not from the midwest, you won't know what that is. Imagine if you combined Wal-Mart low prices with Target quality, and the best produce section ever.

Today I'm just running some last minute errands, doing laundry, and tinkering around the apartment. Monday I start my first rotation - Rural Animal Health Management, also called "Farms" by the students. I'll be randomly assigned to ambulatory (farm calls) or in house on Monday, and then dive right in! I've been told to brush up on right and left displaced abomasum surgery, and respiratory diseases of large animals. So that's what I'll be doing all day tomorrow.

I'm a mixture of excited and terrified. But the people here are super nice, and we were basically told in orientation that if you volunteer to do things, answer questions when the clinician quizzes the group during rounds, and basically just try your best and have a good attitude, you will pass all of your rotations. Even gross medical errors, as long as you acknowledge them and work toward fixing them, probably won't fail you unless you try to hide it or make excuses. So hearing that helped a lot with the fear.

I'll definitely update when I can about clinics, but it's a busy time. I've already been told we basically live on campus from 6am until well past dinnertime most days. I already predicted that and bought a lot of protein powder to make smoothies to bring with me for liquid meals.