Monday, November 21, 2011

Blogging Finals: Days 3-5

My equine medicine exam was on Saturday morning. My current inability to recall anything for more than 1 minute after learning it hurt me a bit, but I was so happy to be done with horses that I didn’t really care. I left the exam to find a voice mail message from my sister-in-law, inviting me over for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Since they live an hour and half away and I was in the middle of finals, my acceptance was kind of a surprise to all of us.

Hanging out with this kid instead of studying? Heck yeah!


I had a productive studying afternoon so I headed out to the Stell mini-farm feeling pretty guilt-free. Dinner was delicious and it was great to see everyone. I ate a lot and drank a lot, played with my niece, looked at stars with my brother’s telescope, chased chickens around the backyard, and helped my sister-in-law treat a cut on her horse’s leg. Who would have thought that on the same day I said goodbye to equine medicine, I would be doing a little equine medicine?!

I stayed up late and slept late, and I was reluctant to leave on Sunday morning. But I had to get back home and back to studying! Sadly, I did more napping and watching football than I did studying, so I went to bed early so I could get up early on Monday morning to finish studying for the Tox exam.

Monday morning Toxicology exam: The exam was fine, although I struggled a little to recall some facts. It’s amazing how quickly memorization-heavy material vacates your brain in times like these. (ETA: Our professor already graded our exams! What a shining example of the way things should be done, especially in a semester where most of our exams haven’t come back to us for 2-3 weeks!)

Since the Monday afternoon exam was open book, I spent the time in between exams studying for tomorrow’s Small Animal Medicine exam. Except I fell asleep about 30 minutes into it… I suffer from Studying-Induced Narcolepsy Syndrome (SINS).

Monday afternoon Exotic & Emerging Diseases exam: took 1.5 hours, which is 50-100% more time than I’ve spent on all the other exams in much higher credit hour classes. And it didn’t take long because it was open book: all the answers were easy to find. Really, really should have been a take-home exam. Instead, it pretty much ruined my whole afternoon, the day before my biggest exam.

I’m not very good at evening studying. My brain just works better in the morning. I don’t feel like mastering the details for tomorrow’s exam. I’m not sure I could, even if I wanted to – that whole “brain is full” feeling is really kicking in right about now. Since the exam is cumulative and is on material I actually really care about, I already know enough to do pretty well. If I could just get those last few items stashed somewhere safe in my brain…. damn broken Memorizer! It looks like it’s turning into another Netflix/early bedtime/get up early to cram kind of thing…

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