Vet School Diaries - Year 1, Week 0

Hello everyone, welcome back to the blog!

I've had the idea that explaining what I was doing, every day, to my family a minimum of three times over would get a little bit boring. So instead, I thought I'd write a blog post every week about my time at vet school, and what I've been up to. I moved into accomodation officially today, but this mini diary has been on the go since last week when everything was exciting!

I'm intending to have a few more pictures next week, since I'm guessing I'll be doing things that are a lot more interesting, but for now I thought I'd share the build up to starting and all the things we did to get ready!

Wednesday

Interesting fact of the day was discovering this vaguely vetty thing on Facebook. Not sure who the image owner is so I may have just breached like a bazillion copy right rules, but it's cool so I thought I'd share it and if I can figure out who owns the image I'll come back and update the post.

Not much else to do today other than stare blankly at an introduction to maths for vet freshers for those of us without maths A-Level. A binomial doesn't even sound like it's a thing, let alone something you can expand! (Please, when will I start learning anatomy?!?!) A big Facetime with my friends as Riya just moved in the other day to her accomodation, and then bed.

Wild night, clearly.

Thursday

I'll be honest, I'm writing today's section on the following Wednesday, and I honestly have no idea what happened today. Couldn't have been that important, I didn't take any photos, so instead you can just imagine I was doing something totally worth while and related to my degree.

Friday

Spent the day with Harold, trying to get him onto his maths course. It's more complicated than it sounds, this emailing business. I nearly sent it to the wrong person twice. Good job he's got advanced qualifications in IT or I might actually do some damage.

Help. He's not gonna be around at uni to ask. And I'm rooming with mathmos. Oh, God.

Saturday

Harry's at work, and we went into B and M to get some last little bits for before I head off. I've never seen so many super noodles bought in one shop, and with any luck I won't actually have to go food shopping at all in the entire nine weeks that I'm away!

It feels weird to say that, that I'm going away for two and a bit months and I've got to survive by myself. I'm wondering how long it'll take before I blow something up or forget something or set fire to the wrong hob. Trying to research recipes that are safe for the hob, but frying pan pizza seems a bit complex given I've only just mastered egg boiling (four minutes in a pan with a rolling boil if you're wondering, which I'm sure you're not).

Sunday

Today I spent the day packing clothes and watching the news half heartedly, waiting to see if good old Gav had said anything about students being allowed to return home for Christmas (spoiler alert, he hasn't!). I also got to witness this gorgeous face doing these gorgeous things for a good few hours, and I really regret not getting these photos printed up to take with me to uni!

Monday

I hadn't expected these few days to be very eventful, given that they were mostly spent packing, but I was spending the day at Harold's house today. We were heading to buy lunch when we discovered this poor dog by itself, and realised she'd gotten lost!

Took a while to catch her, but she was desperate for a drink (she'd been drinking the dyke water before which was stagnant, so hello giardia!) and some food, courtesy of Harry's dog Maggie's dinner plate. One trip to the vets and a post on Facebook later, and we discovered that the owner was aware she was running around the field by herself, and just let her out of her home from a mile away to wander. Great ownership there.

(with any luck, the return fee the vets charge for getting the dog out of their care might remind them that animals are actually souls who need looking after, given we domesticated dogs thousands of years ago and they're not actually that great at looking after themselves these days).

Tuesday

Today was my last proper day spent with Harold, :(, but we went out to eat which was lovely. Other than that, I spent it frantically packing stuff and hoping I'd remembered everything.

(Edit: I remembered everything but the kitchen sink it turns out, although I did manage to leave the lanyard that I assured nan I totally had packed on the floor of my bedroom!)

Wednesday

MOVE IN DAY! It took two and a half hours in total to get everything sorted, and a couple of bits were broken and needed reporting, but the room is amazing! Couple of things were broken when we moved in, but one maintenance request later and we're sorted!

I managed to lock myself out of my room half an hour after mum and Shaun disappeared (well done me) and had to deal with the raised eyebrows of the Porters who said something along the lines of 'you've had this two hours, how the hell have you managed that?' Mildly embarassed until another guy on the floor realised he'd done it too, so I guess we'll get used to it.

There was a fresher's BBQ straight after, and the food was great (grilled chicken with coronation chicken potatoes!!!) and we managed to socialise whilst still being socially distant. Honestly didn't think that was possible, but here we are!

A few of them then decided they were going to go to a massive party over on Jesus Green, but given we're in the middle of a pandemic, I didn't exactly think that was the best option. So, I'm back in my room, typing this final day's summary, and hopefully avoiding the Covidiots that decided it was a good idea to party in a brand new city in the middle of a pandemic!

And that's everything for this week! This was my first post of this kind, but I thought it was a good idea to keep the whole family updated without recounting my day seventeen different times! There'll be more vetty content next Wednesday because I'll actually have started my course and can tell you more than just 'well, it's the study of animals'. Getting my lecture timetable for my anatomy class has been a big win, everything looks so interesting. Evolution, domestication, and the vertebrate body all in one week?

Yes please!