Farmwork!
Yay exams have ended! Can’t believe I survived through 3 weeks of torture like that. Now it’s time for the agonizing wait for results, which will be released in 2 weeks time. And by then we will know if we need to take supplementary exams, or that we’re safe for another semester. I really hope I don’t screw up big time, because I really don’t want to fail. Not after putting so much effort into that.
Let’s contine with the exam reviews. After my last post I had 4 papers left. The first of that was animal health, management and welfare. Always has been, and perhaps always cursed to be my worst subject. I know it’s supposed to be relevant to practice and stuff, but if i wanted to learn how to be a farmer I would go to agricultural school, not vet school. Herd health, dairy farm management, beef cattle management… Goodness. And as expected exams were once again weird, asking weird questions like “How many times has the consumption of chicken changed from the 1950s till now?” I don’t give a damn about that… So hopefully this year this subject might improve. Actually I think it will, after looking at what happened in pathology exam…
And yep up next was the pathology theory paper. Boy it was a tough little cookie. Long questions, insufficient time, lots of brain-wrecking and hair pulling. There were 3 sections, and each section was a little bomb that just slowly eroded away at my confidence for the paper. The essay questions were ridiculously long (30minutes to talk about what causes a liver to enlarge? Come on…), while the 5 minute questions were pretty decent, and the 1.5 minute questions were just like little knives that pierced through my heart as I go through each one. “List 4 examples of XX” How can I do that in 1.5 minutes? I already take 30s to panic and dig through my grey matter for any relevant information I picked up during studying. So yes, that paper was more like a confidence destroyer than a booster.
But if we thought that was bad, the patho practical exam was worse. Way worse. 1 hour to do 44 questions. Although the lecturer will only be taking the best 40, but that still won’t make much of a difference to most of us. Every single question was ambiguous, and every single answer option seemed plausible. Pictures after pictures, slides after slides, I could just feel the spirit in the room deflate into a pile of nothingness that was sobbing away in a corner. Even I felt the colour drain from my face as I contemplated the consequences if I failed this paper. It was that bad.
Immediately on the next day we had our parasitology exam as well, where we spend 2 hours looking at 28 stations of specimens and try to figure what they were, what their names are, and whatever relevant tiny details about them. Fleas, lice, ticks, mites, nematodes… with names like Spilopsyllus cuniculli (rabbit flea thingy) and Felicola subrostrata (cat biting lice), you needs lots of RAM in your brain to cram in foreign sounding words and strange details regarding those words. And having to relate a picture of a specimen to that foreign word. I hope I didn’t do too badly. Only time will tell.
And on Friday morning, the 26th June 2009, the king of pop Micheal Jackson passed away. And for the first time in a long time, I cried my eyes out. I woke up to many facebook updates claiming that MJ has passed away, but I refused to believe it until I checked the local news website and realised that this wasn’t a cruel prank, and that this was a cruel reality. I cried as I felt the loss of a legend, an inspiration, despite his mistakes over the years. Here was a boy, trapped in a man’s body, confused, angry, joyous, playful, and immensely talented. I fell in love with him and his music when I was a little girl in Mauritius. Every single time I went onto the car with my dad, I will request for his songs, and I would sing and dance along to the music, the beat, the tune, the voice. I had an old VCD of one of his music videos, and I remember feeling so sad when that was spoiled beyond repair. Until I was able to find another new copy to replace that one. It cannot be denied that his music has touched the world, and may he be immortalised through his songs, and how they have influenced everyone on the face of this earth.
I may not be your #1 fan, but I was definitely a fan, and will continue to be. I will never forget that windswept little girl who would dance to the tune of Billie Jean and how she fell in love with one of the greatest musicians of our age. Rest well MJ, you’ve had a tiring day.
And so on that note, I will end by saying… I will be away for farmwork at a pig farm for the next 2 weeks starting tomorrow (yes, despite the swine flu fears). Will be going with 2 friends. Hope everything will go well and we will enjoy ourselves! Will try to upload some photos of that onto this drearily plain blog. Until then, take care!
Ciao.
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