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Life as a Vet Student:

Scalpel. Forceps. Maglite?

Trisha J Oura - Tufts University - Class of 2008

Despite the lingering smell of formalin in the air, it almost could have been a romantic night. A few tealights on the tables, a little violin music and it could have been the perfect date. But instead of swooning, 82 freshmen veterinary students were trying not to lose their cool as the sound of a fire alarm screamed through the building for nearly 30 minutes.

Taking a six hour anatomy exam is a special rite of passage for every first year veterinary student at Tufts. I walked into that first exam in September anxious, palms sweaty, repeating every mnemonic I learned about the brachial plexus and muscles of the forelimb. ‘Cows love pasture?.... Every cow loves pasture???....Every cow loves me??’ I was absolutely certain that I was going to fail out of veterinary school and my dreams of helping cute furry animals would be over. I started wondering if it was too late to fill out that application to Wal-mart. But somewhere along the 5th hour, I found that I was in the zone. Answering questions about Horner’s syndrome, throwing in a little something about myasthenia gravis, and I started to realize that the exam wasn’t the most horrible thing that could happen. I mean, falling into a pit of poisonous snakes was still an option.

And so, the anatomy exams started dwindling in number. There are only six, and before I knew it, it was nearly May, and all I had to survive was one more anatomy exam. I’d spent hours relearning all of the cranial nerves (because, let’s face it, no one remembers anything useful from the same exam on the dog and cat head four months ago), I’d finally learned what the guttural pouch was and the 2.3 million structures associate with it. I could taste that celebratory beer that was already chilling in my fridge and waiting for me as soon as the clock struck 6pm.

Somewhere into that second hour, as I dug through the contents of a bisected horse head, the lights suddenly went out. The pounding rain on the metal roof had been almost soothing, but this seemed a little too much. Some students groaned, others laughed, and I’m pretty sure someone was whimpering. In what was already one of the most stressful moments of veterinary school (thus far, at least), the added bonus of a power outage really didn’t help. Forty of my other classmates taking the written portion of the exam struggled to block out the high-pitched whine of the fire alarm as they crowded around the building’s few windows, trying to read the multiple choice questions. Meanwhile, those of us in the lab were rolling tables of specimens into the hallway under the emergency lights and were debating running to our cars to retrieve emergency flares. Reading radiographs got a little interesting too. ‘Name this structure’? Does ‘nebulous mass of something slightly radio-opaque’ count as an appropriate answer when you’re holding the film up to a skylight?

Overall, I’d say that everyone handled the situation fairly well. Eventually almost everyone was laughing about it. I still have no idea what those structures labeled in the guttural pouch were. It’s pretty dark in there to begin with, and I had left my spelunking headlamp at home. I keep telling myself that it was a learning experience and gave me a good story to tell in the future. I still wonder a little if it wasn’t just a parting gift to us from our professors to toughen us up a little bit. A little retribution for all those times we whined about lengthy exams …Six hour exam? That’s nothing! Let’s see ‘em take it in the dark!

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