Hello Everyone!
My name is Alex and I have recently joined the blogging group here at the vet school! Let me first start off by introducing myself:
I was born and raised in Montreal, Canada (Salut!) and I am currently in Year 3 (GEP Year 2) at the Dick Vet. Before beginning my vet school journey about a year and a half ago, I completed an undergraduate degree in Arts & Sciences (art history and biology majors) and a master’s degree in Neuroscience back in Montreal (I know, I’ve don’t a lot of school!). It was during my masters that I applied to vet schools and got accepted to the Dick Vet, which was still one of the most exciting days of my life! I can’t believe I am now halfway through my second year of vet school and I can confirm that it’s true what people say, time flies by when you’re having fun 🙂
The start of the 2020 semester has been great so far! Here are a few of my highlights from the past two months:
1) We started off this semester with a new course, Integrated Clinical Course: Dogs and Cats, which has been really interesting. The course brings together much of our foundation knowledge from first year courses (ie. anatomy, immunology, parasitology, animal body systems etc.) and more clinical concepts we learnt in our last semester (ie. vet pathology and clinical foundation course), with a focus on conditions in dogs and cats. I have always pictured myself as a small animal vet once graduating school, thus this semester to me has been the most exciting as it has brought to light the type of cases a small animal vet would commonly see in practice. My favourite topics that have been covered so far have been surgery, neurology, and ophthalmology!
2) Our first weekend back into this semester was the class of 2022’s Halfway Ball! This was a night organized by students in the third year to celebrate our achievements in vet school thus far and mark the “half way” point of our veterinary journey! It was a fun night filled with lots of friends, food, and Scottish dancing!
3) Near the end of January, our class was fortunate to get an extra Friday off added in our schedules for the week. As many of my classmates and I were on top of our studies, we decided to take advantage of this long weekend to travel outside of Edinburgh! Myself and my fellow Dick Vet friend took the short plane ride to Italy, where we were able to enjoy the beautiful scenery and food of Milan and Lake Como.
4) At the start of February, I was lucky to have my mom come visit me for a week! While she was here, we went on many walks around the city, as well as visited some museums (something I love to do in my free time!) One day we headed to the Queen’s Gallery to check out the Leonardo DaVinci drawing exhibition, which held over 50 of the artist’s drawn pieces. After the museum, we took a short walk over to Saint Margaret’s Loch and got to see the beautiful swans that permanently reside there.
5) Finally, last week I had the chance to take over the vet school’s Instagram page to give prospective and current students a look into my life as a vet student. I absolutely loved the experience, and really enjoyed answering everyone’s questions about the Dick Vet and living in Edinburgh as an international student.
That sums up just a few fun experiences of my second semester of Year 3! I’ll leave you all with some cute animal pictures of my pets back at home: meet Luna (10 month old German Shepherd) and Rainbow (17 year old Lovebird!) <3
Thanks for reading! 🙂
Alex
