What happens in a typical week for a first-year vet student?
An ordinary week comprised about 22 hours of university. This included lectures, tutorials, and practicals.
Each semester consisted of four units of study. I’ve listed below which ones I undertook in my first year of vet school. *Compulsory units
Semester 1
Chemistry 1A*
Biology – Life and Evolution*
Introduction to Statistical Methods*
Animals and Us
Semester 2
Chemistry 1B*
Biology – From Molecules to Ecosystems*
Concepts of Animal Management*
Economic Environment of Agriculture
It is of interest to note that not many subjects were directly related to veterinary science this year but were still compulsory.
In a regular week at university, the lectures, tutorials, and practicals sliced out portions of the week like this:
I’ve selected a few units of study to visually demonstrate the distribution of lectures, tutorials, and practicals among them:
Chemistry: 3 lectures, a 3hr laboratory session, and a 1hr tutorial per week.
2 lectures and a 3hr laboratory session per week.
A statistical analysis of my statistics unit haha!
3 lectures and a 3hr computer lab session per week.
Concepts of Animal Management: Over the course of the semester...
39hrs of lectures (3 lectures/wk), and
24hrs of practicals at the farms (8 x 3hr practicals scattered across the semester).
It was actually quite flexible for my first year in terms of how you allocated the sessions across your timetable.
I’m sure the schedule will become more rigid as you progress further into the degree; however, for my first year, each lecture, tutorial, and practical was running several times during the week so you could almost hand-pick which sessions suited you best and organise your timetable as spread out or compact as you desired!
My typical week could be considered an anomaly in the representation of an average vet student’s week. That’s because some weeks, I was only at university 2-3 days, and the rest of the time, I needed to travel interstate.
However, the fact that I was able to cram all of my sessions into 2-3 days really surprised me because everything I’d heard before university was that vet school demands your on-campus presence all day, five days a week. In reality, for the first year, you didn’t need to be in classes Monday to Friday, all day long. Some days, I finished at 10am!
In a typical week, I would attend:
· LECTURES:
Lasts one hour.
Some units had 3 lectures/week, some had only two.
If you couldn’t make it or if it was too early in the morning for you (hehe), you could catch up with the lecture recordings. I am not sure if every university records their lectures???
· TUTORIALS:
This year, not every unit of study had tutorials. A tutor hands out a mind-bending worksheet and will very cheerfully answer any questions you may have.
· PRACTICALS:
o Chemistry/Biology labs:
Lab sessions scheduled for 3 hours.
In these, we would try out new skills such as dyeing cotton, making sunscreen, titration, extracting DNA, growing the bacteria from our noses and mouths, and dissecting some organisms and even flowers.
o Farms:
These practicals were hands-on experiences with agricultural production animals and entailed the handling of meat and dairy cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, and aquaculture. We body condition scored the animals, assessed their health, undertook husbandry practices, walked through the production cycle, and evaluated their welfare.
o Excursions:
On rare occasions, we were required to make our own way to various places around the city. Some included the Royal Botanic Garden and the Royal Easter Show where breeders and trainers displayed their show-stopping, record-breaking hens and roosters, ponies, sheep, cattle, dogs, and the list goes on! We also visited Sydney’s famous Taronga Zoo overlooking the breathtaking Sydney Harbour. A lovely field trip to the zoo!
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| A pony named 'Mr. Spots' from the Royal Easter Show |
I hope you discovered something you didn’t know about university and vet school!
Here are some helpful links which offer information about the veterinary science course:
If you’re anxious about university or vet school, I’m happy to answer any questions you may have if it can help to reduce any stresses or worries!
Looking forward to next Viernes! Enjoy your weekend!
Love, Young and Unheroic
Wow, this was really interesting! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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